On 23 Sep 2004 14:04:41 -0700, (Andrew
Richman) wrote:

My water bill went from $25 a month to $400. The utility says that it
was a leaky toilet. I did have a toilet leak during this time, but
could it really use this much? My usage record has me using 1,000
-6,000 gallons a day when I usually use about 50. Could this really
only be a running toilet?



I had intermittent leakage that was driving me nuts and my bills up.
It was caused by the flapper chain plastic links acquiring a kink now
and then during the flush cycle. The water pressure was strong enough
to keep the flapper down during refill but not let it seat properly
because the single kink in the chain made it slightly shorter. So
there was this unpredictable, moderate but long duration leak that
might correct itself with the next flush.. I could not diagnose the
problem because looking into the mechanism everything looked normal
and functioned normally. Eventually it was a faint but persistent
squirting sound in the plumbing pipes that caught my attention and
traced it to the toilet fill tube. I could only hear this in the
middle of the night when everything was quiet and I lying in bed
unable to sleep. This was quite an achievement as the washroom was
two doors from mine and at my age most people would have hearing loss
problems.