The Most Overlooked Tasks When Maintaining Your Toilet

Your toilet is an extremely important part of your overall plumbing system. Obviously, you want to make sure it’s always available for you to use when you need it. Therefore, it’s important for you to stay on top of general maintenance with your toilet.

However, many homeowners are unfamiliar with some of the most basic elements of toilet maintenance. This can result in them overlooking some important steps that keep their toilets in good condition.

Here are a few examples of some of these frequently overlooked tasks that could result in your needing to call for the services of a plumber in Vacaville, CA:

• Caulking: The inner mechanisms of the toilet aren’t the only thing you need to keep an eye on when maintaining it. You should also keep an eye on the exterior, and in particular the caulk around the base of your toilet. If the caulk has degraded, your toilet might come loose, which could result in a variety of problems. Add more caulking as necessary to prevent issues such as leakages from occurring.
• Valves: Your toilet’s valves should always function properly, but many people tend to overlook checking the valves. For most people, they only think about their toilet valves when there’s an emergency, but you’re going to want to know you can easily shut off the water valve to the toilet quickly and easily if such an emergency occurs. Therefore, every now and then, turn your shutoff valve to make sure it easily moves to the “off” position. If you cannot get it to turn, you might need to either clean or replace that valve.
• Bolts: While your toilet might feel like a solid unit, it’s important to remember that it’s not a single piece. The bowl of the toilet and the tank are connected with a series of bolts and gaskets, which can deteriorate over time—most of the time without your knowledge. This can result in a lot of issues you’d likely rather avoid. Therefore, make sure you examine these pieces of hardware every now and then, and if you start to notice signs of rust, make the replacements.
• Inner equipment: Every so often, you’re going to need to replace the mechanisms inside the toilet, including the flapper, ball, flange and other pieces. You’ll know it’s time to make the replacement if you have a constantly running toilet, or a toilet that has water leaking from the tank into the bowl. Once replaced, it should be years before you have to worry about replacing that equipment again. This is a simple job you can easily accomplish yourself for much less than it would cost to hire a plumber to come out and do it for you, so pull up a tutorial on YouTube and get the job done quickly.

If you have more questions about toilet maintenance, we encourage you to contact a plumber in Vacaville, CA at ABC Plumbing, and we’ll be happy to tell you more about how we can help.

Categorised in: Plumber