Quote:
Originally Posted by Piwoslaw
I've also been fighting a leaking toilet seal, which it turns out can never be closed completely, but I've found out how to make it leak less. That toilet is the first thing on the replacement list for next year's renovation.
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The toilet has been acting up recently. I put four lead weights on the flap so that it would leak less water, but sometimes it doesn't close properly and water would pour through at about 1-1.5 liters per minute. Unfortunately, Dad-in-law doesn't hear the water flowing, and our guests don't know that special attention is needed, so on a few occasions water was flowing all night
This brought the 5 day average to as high as 450 liters/day, while normally we use 180-220 liters per day. This happened 3-4 times within two weeks, wasting about 800-1000 liters each time before someone noticed it in the morning. Below is a graph of our average daily consumption (10 day intervals):
These problems caused the spike in late Feb/early Mar, and brought our daily average for the preceding year (yellow line) from less than 210 to more than 220 liters per day
So the Wife and I decided that the toilet needs replacing now, and not during the renovation which won't happen any time soon. We wanted one of those low flow, dual flush (3/6 liters) compacts, but once we opened the box at home it turned out that it doesn't have a double button. Instead, it has a single button, which stops the flush if pressed a second time immediately after the first. Running back and forth between the bathroom and the water meter in the basement shows that a small flush (pressing twice) is about 3.5 liters and a big flush (pressing once) is 6.5 liters(*). I've lowered the bouy to cut the water earlier, it's probably down to 5.5 l now (the tank holds 7 liters).
No, wait! Here's a better idea: Instead of reducing the amount of water in the tank by lowering the bouy, I should raise the bouy higher and displace as much water as possible at the bottom. That way the flush is still smaller, but with more force, since more water is higher up, i.e. has more head. Gotta measure the inside dimensions and see what I can find.
* - No water was wasted during these tests. The water was flushed only when needed, that's why testing is taking so long...