On Sun, 14 Sep 2014 13:44:31 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Sun, 14 Sep 2014 20:12:18 +0200, nestork
wrote:


Dottie:

The "food colour test" is where you put a few drops of food colouring
into the water in the toilet tank.

If water is leaking from the toilet tank into the bowl, then the water
in the bowl will soon start to have that same colour to it.

Oren, how come you didnt' take issue with Nestork, when he said pretty
much what I said?

The color doesn't go into the bowl immediately, because first it has to
disperse enough in the tank to be in the water where the flapper is
leaking. And it still doesn't change color quickly, because it can't
disperse in all directions until it makes it through the leak passage,
and the leak is small. HTH

The idea here is just to prove that water is leaking from the tank into
the bowl. I think that's pretty well already established, but it just
confirms that the water isn't leaking out anywhere else, such as onto
your bathroom floor.

If water leaks from the tank, on the floor, a good test is to use a
paper towel or a newspaper to cover the floor area under the toilet
tank. Normally, it will leak down if the tank is cracked I gives an
idea of the leak location... paper gets wet.

I doubt Dottie has a cracked tank. But we do not know her plumber or
his abilities. If the tank was cracked or leaked, the water would run
longer than a few seconds as she suggests...