To be honest, I don’t deserve any credit for this one. I only had the opportunity to save $44 because I let a leaky toilet run for about four months and only did something about it when my bill for one month was $83! For reference, my normal bill should be in the $32 – $35 range. It slowly started creeping up and I didn’t think too much about it until the problem had snowballed and I had easily let more than $100 run down the drain.
Now the good news. Fixing the toilet only took about ten minutes of research and about fifteen minutes of work. The only tool required was a Philip’s head screwdriver. I’m not a handyman by any means, but I can take care of most things if I have a good set of instructions. This article from Ace Hardware is very comprehensive and includes some illustrations and a list of parts you may need. If you want something a bit more short and sweet, try this article with a nice illustration from Denver Water.
It turned out that I didn’t need to buy any new parts and just making some adjustments solved the leak. So….I traded about a half hour of effort for well over $100 wasted due to my laziness. Ouch! I have to admit that I’m somewhat new to the homeowner thing, going on three years now, and I really didn’t get the fact that a little running sound coming from the toilet could cost so much money. All I can say is, pay very close attention to your statements and as soon as you start to see water usage trending up, start looking for the problem. I wish I had jumped on this sooner. I hope this will save someone some money!
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