Have you ever awoken in the middle of the night too your toilets flushing? This can lead to an unexpected spike in your water bill, too. There can be a few reasons why your toilet is haunting your water bill. Its called the phantom flush, the most common culprit to this “phantom flush,” is the toilet’s flapper. The flapper is what seals the hole from the tank to the bowl. These do, unfortunately, wear out over time. If it’s worn, it doesn’t seal the tank’s hole completely and gradually seeps water into the bowl. You can normally tell just by looking at your flapper if it’s time for a new one. Fortunately, these are very inexpensive, and easily found at big box hardware stores, like Home Depot.

However, what happens when your flapper is brand new and it still happens?

Another possible cause of this phantom flush phenomenon is that the water level just may be out of adjustment. The overflow tube has a line towards the top of it. This is where the water level should stop filling. If the fill valve is out of adjustment however, the water may continue to rise until it begins to pour into the “overflow tube.”  When this happens, the toilet will just run and run until corrected and / or adjusted with the float adjustment screw. If you think this is the culprit, experiment a little with the float adjustment screw until you have it where the water level is happy. It should stop running.

FIX-IT-YOURSELF!

This annoyance; running toilets, can ruin a good night’s sleep because the waste of water is a bigger annoyance on your water bill!