My toilet flushes twice

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We recently had to replace the flapper in the toilet tank, and it is a slightly different style than the one that came with the toilet (two-year old toilet). It works fine except that now the toilet flushes twice in succession each time you push the handle once. It uses the whole tankful of water whereas before it only used part of the tankful. This is wasteful and fills up our septic tank with excess water, I'm thinking. Is there an adjustment we can make?

-- Debbie in MO (risingwind@socket.net), February 13, 2002

Answers

should be something to adjust,, not sure what your describing ,,, do you mean, the "OLD" flaaper,,would only use a half tank,,, thats strange,, sounds like that was modified. The "new" one actually FLUSHES twice,, or just uses twice the water?

-- Stan (sopal@net-port.com), February 13, 2002.

The old one used half the tank and flushed just fine, until the connector broke, the NEW one really does flush twice, in succession, and uses the whole tank, each time you push the handle.

-- Debbie in MO (risingwind@socket.net), February 13, 2002.

The actual flapper rubber plate proabily has a bubble trap on the underside that protrudes into the metal rim at the bottom of the tank above the bowl. Is the configureation the same as the old one? It may be necessary to cutoff the bubble trap if their not the same shape. A few years back toilets became required to use less water and the designs may not be compatable without modifications.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), February 13, 2002.

your saying,, you flush it,, it fills back up,, and on its own,, it flushes again?,, Mitch may be right,, if your hearing it flush twice,, the flapper comes up,, allows water to go down,, closes with a trappes air bubble,, then comes back up,, and you hear it flush again.,, asuming you have a flapper type. Take the top off,, and watch it as you flush,,

-- Stan (sopal@net-port.com), February 13, 2002.

Take the top off,and watch it as you flush is good advice! I keep my chain as long as it can be, but still be able to pull the flapper up to flush.

This allows controlled flushes in small water amounts, as the flapper never raises up, and therefore drops back over the outlet as soon as you let go of the handle. It also allows you to stop flushing should your toilet or drain be blocked. This has been necessary many times in our house.

Trade off is you must hold the handle while it flushes.

-- Rick in Southwest WV (Rick_122@hotmail.com), February 13, 2002.



In order to get a flush started, I already have to hold the handle down for about 5 seconds, otherwise the flapper just claps shut and the flush is aborted. Does that help explain the problem more?

-- Debbie in MO (risingwind@socket.net), February 13, 2002.

Put the seat cover down, take off the tank cover, flush, and tell us what is happening.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), February 15, 2002.

It doesn't look like anything wrong is going on in the tank, the flapper only goes down once, and it lowers smoothly with the water level. In the bowl, however, the contents swirl on down, then the bowl fills up again, and then swirls on down a second time.

-- Debbie in MO (risingwind@socket.net), February 15, 2002.

I suggest that you go to this site: "How Toilets Work"

It would seem to me that the tank is filling with too much water. The tank sends to the bowl a gallon which is enough to start the siphon action which flushes the toliet. The tank continues to send water and it flushes a second time. If the tank only held 1.5 gallons (+/-) of water, there wouldn't be enough water to flush twice. So lower the float in the toilet tank to see if that makes a difference.

--Happy trails, CF

-- Cabin Fever (cabinfever_mn@yahoo.com), February 15, 2002.

May be the air vent is stopped up, climb onto the roof with a flash light and see.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), February 16, 2002.


We just got new toilets which are quite cool. If you make wee wee you just hold the handle down momentarily and the tank just partially empties. If you make doo doo you hold the handle down for a couple of seconds and it does a complete flush. Less water is great for our pressurized septic system.

-- jz (oz49us@yahoo.com), February 16, 2002.

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