Toilet phantom flushing or water pressure?

[Ted Bear]

Replace the flapper...they are all different so take the original to a real plumbing/hardware store. Nothing to it once you have the correct piece in hand.

What you are hearing is the water refill valve opening to top up the tank from the water leaking into the bowl through a deteriorated flapper. Happens to all units eventually. Sounds a little (very little) like a flush.

[catsmom21]

Originally Posted by zitsky

No well. City water.

Yikes, your water bill is going to be sky high! Leaky toilets are murder on metered water systems!

[victimofGM]

Flush toilet. When tank is finished filling shut off water to tank fill valve. Check back in an hour to see tank level. If level dropped then you need a new flapper valve. If water did not drop then turn water back on. If you hear a flush again then your fill valve is leaking by and needs replacing.

[old_cold]

The fill valve can also be adjusted.( Sometimes ?) I "googled" it and fixed mine.

[Listener2307]

OP should replace both parts - fill valve and flapper.
It's easy. You almost don't need tools. Almost.


But, OP, when you install the fill valve BE SURE to put an arch into that rubber line that shoots water down the tube. It needs an arch in order to break what would be a siphon action from tank thru the tube to the bowl.


The whole toilet works as a siphon. When the bowl fills to a certain level (by flushing the tank into the bowl) the siphoning action takes hold and sucks everything out of the bowl down the sewer pipe. Kinda neat if you're a geek like me. But if you're not it's kinda, "who cares?"

[Voebe]

Originally Posted by zitsky

We've noticed maybe once a day or every other day the toilet tank will "phantom flush". I understand this is caused by a slow leak into the toilet bowl. I do notice what sounds like a dripping inside the tank. We used to be able to fix it by flushing the toilet and it would stop. But now the dripping happens maybe once a minute, so perhaps this is the leak. My partner is convinced this is just water pressure doing something to the toilet tank.

Should we have a plumber come take a look?

You might start with a handyman. If you're lucky, it may just be that you need to change the flapper.