- [Voiceover] Plumberparts.co.uk
Honest reviews and advice.
- Hold tight and welcome to today's
Plumberparts.co.uk video.
Mmm, mmm, mmm!
My name is James and today we're gonna
be having a look at a very very simple problem
you can get with your toilet, especially if it's
a push-button one like the little one
that we've got in the background here.
What can happen is sometimes you can press
the push-button flush on your toilet,
it can be one of those nice little
remote push-button flushes, the ones that
are just on top of the cistern,
that look a little bit like this one here.
Then once you've pressed it,
everything comes out the cistern,
then it just keeps on tricklin' in.
Now, we're gonna show you very quickly
how one of these work, using our
lovely little fake system we've got
in the background here, and then
we're also gonna show you how
very quickly to fix this problem cause it's so easy to fix.
Alright, I hope you enjoy the video
and remember to subscribe.
Hold tight!
So let's first here have a quick look
at the flush unit we've got here itself.
A closer look at these, they're really, really
easy to instal in the first place.
They got a nice little rubber seal
underneath and there's a big nut that goes up
underneath the system that holds
that on and makes the right water-tight seal.
You can also have a lot of these
have adjustments for how much you want to flush,
how much you want to go through.
The other slight difference you can have with
two different types of push-button flush-unit
are you can have the fixed-button one like here.
You've got your half-flush and your full-flush,
and you have two little rods that go down
onto the button from the cistern cap
and they can go on there or the cistern lid.
Or, you can have one that has a remote cable
that goes off to a button elsewhere
like in a bit of woodwork or something like that.
They're really popular as well
cause they're so versatile.
So if you look here, when we push this up
you'll see there that that little paddle
lifts up like so, and lifts up like so
as well on both those buttons.
Now, we have different heights of float here
that when the water gets down to a certain level
that'll activate the flow and also close the flush, okay?
Now the thing is sometimes the main problem
you can actually have is that the water-flow
going into the cistern is so high and so fast that
the water-level never really gets down far enough
to actually allow the float to activate
and shut the valve off.
And it kind of holds the valve up like so, just like that.
So the first thing I do is pop the lid off,
press the button and have a look,
and actually see if the amount of water
going into the system from the fill valve
is so much that it's not actually allowing it
to fully empty, it's kind of beating
the water going into the toilet and flushing away.
So have a look at that first.
If that is the case, you'll see a small pipe
underneath, just like this one here,
and that will have a small valve on it like so.
You've got a cross on the valve just here,
at the moment that's in the off position,
if that is in the inline position like so
it's fully open as you can just see there.
So what you often want to do is
basically half-close it and try and
strangle down the amount of water
going into the toilet cistern.
That is usually the problem and
that's the quickest way of sorting it out.
So easy to do.
The other thing you can do with these
to see if there's a problem, is sometimes you can actually
pull off this top flush piece just like so, like that.
This bit will stay in the toilet
this is where the water comes out of,
we don't need that for this bit now.
I'm just gonna plop that down.
We're interested in this piece here, okay.
This is the damper that moves up and down.
Now, as you can see on the bottom there,
we've got a nice little rubber seal.
And what can happen is, is the rubber can get old.
Sometimes it can actually sort of mould itself in the
up position, it doesn't actually quite seal properly.
You can buy rubber seal replacements for these
in most the plumber supplies in the U.K.
They're really, really easy just to pull off
and pop another one on,
and often that will sort your problem out.
The other problem you can have is,
when you put this back together,
and we take a close look here, we can see that
this has to sit down on this seat.
If anything gets stuck under this seat,
a little bit of limescale, sometimes people put
the smelly tablets and that, that gum the cistern,
that can get stuck under there.
So you know, it might be a good idea
to stick you hand in there, the water is not dirty,
it is only like fresh water, it's not got any wee-wees
or poo-poos in it, so you don't have to worry.
And basically run your finger round there
and make sure that that's nice and clean
and there's no nicks in the plastic.
And often if you do that, you see something
maybe flow into the toilet and then
that will seal up properly and work fine.
But anyway, we're have a quick look at how these work.
And we're gonna fill up our massive bucket with water
and flush loads of water out into the bucket.
Enjoy!
Tell you what let's fit this piece in here now,
real simple we put that on there, we fit our hole in here.
We did a video a few weeks ago about how siphon-units work,
and we used this box here.
I'll leave the link to that just about now,
on the screen so you can click on that,
and have a look if that's gonna help you out.
Remember to subscribe.
God, how many times do I have to say it?
You know, hopefully we're gonna help you out here, so.
So right now, we've got this nice and full of water
here, you should just be able to press this.
Oh yeah, the laughing wear.
You see how quickly that cuts off that one there,
and there we can set our half-flush as well.
As you can see it's a lot quicker.
You can hold to these flushes
using those scales on the side.
And honestly now, I could just probably
put my hand in here, and act as if there was
a bit of something caught under the seat
of this little flap here, and make it so
it sort of half starts to leak you know?
Basically just imagine there's a little bit
stuck under there and what would happen
you just start gettin' that.
That's a start runnin' and runnin' and running.
As I said, you can change that rubber washer
really, really easily just by pullin' the top-hat.
What will happen is, you turn the water off,
you pull the top-hat and the whole of this system
will empty into our toilet, you watch this.
There we go, you get that out of here
and now it's going down the toilet.
No big deal, everything's fine.
But we can still change this bit here at our leisure.
So if we look closely, if we've got too much water
going into this cistern here,
it's not going to allow us to activate
this float we've got here on our half-flush.
And if we twist round and have a look
at the other side, further down you'll see
there's the float there for our full-flush, okay?
So that's the main problem, so when we
press our button, you'll see now when we press
the button for half-flush, you'll see how this
actually reacts as water leaves the cistern.
Did you see that?
As soon as that dropped there,
it allowed our plunger to actually make a seal.
The other thing that can cause one of these to actually
run into the toilet, is if you've actually
got your ball-valve set too high.
That means is that ball-valve like this is set so high
that when it shuts off in the cistern
it's actually letting water go into this integral overflow.
Now what these do, these are brilliant, they basically
eradicate the need for you to have an overflow pipe
that sticks outside and may drip.
And what can happen is, if one of these fails
instead of flooding all over the floor,
it can go down this pipe here and into the toilet,
warning you there's a problem.
So that's the great thing as well, and it's the
last real reason that could be why these constantly run.
Sometimes of course, the actual flush-unit
just can be knackered, I mean it could be the fact
that one of the floats is ruptured, or got old
or brittle and released its air, and isn't
actually shuttin' off the damper anymore at the bottom.
Or it could be the bottom piece
that's attached to the toilet, that the rubber
actually sits on, is so knackered and mashed up
that it's never gonna work again.
But that's quite a rare case, and really,
ninety-nine percent of the time
you should just be able to effect a quick repair
like the ones we've shown you there.
Obviously, if you've got a problem with a fill-valve,
we've got loads of videos
on how fill-valves work in toilets.
Just check out our Toilet Playlist
that's appearing in the corner right now.
I hope you've enjoyed today's video
and I hope you subscribe.
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We've got lots of pictures of plumbing disasters,
also if you've got any questions, or you've seen
something that's really unusual in the world of plumbing,
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It might make it onto one of our "ask the plumber" videos.
We're also gonna show you a playlist to that
coming up right now.
Anyway, again, I hope you subscribe
and I'll see you in our next video.
Remember everyone, to hold tight!
- [Voiceover] Plumberparts.co.uk
Honest reviews and advice.