A few things.
1) There will be a couple of bolts hanging down under the back of the stool.
These come through the bottom of the tank. If they are not too rusted they
should remove and allow you to lift the tank. They don't want to be too tight
or they will crack the porcelain tank or the stool.
There is also a nut which holds the supply line to the float valve apparatus
inside the tank too. It needs to be removed. The tank will then lift off of the
stool.
There will be a rubber ring, more recently it is usually made of neoprene foam
of some sort which is tapered and fits between the tank and the stool. You will
want to empty the tank fully before disassembling the tank from the stool and
take care when reassembling not to tighten the tank to the stool so tightly as
to crack them.
2) Now, the valve. Are you talking about the stop cock out of the wall which
controls the water to the toilet or are you talking about the fittings inside
the toilet tank?
If the valve on the wall, the stop cock, it is probably soldered to the pipe
sticking out of the wall and you will damage it and the pipes trying to remove
it with a wrench. Only compression fittings will disconnect that way.
More likely, if it is leaking you need to remove the valve stem and replace a
washer inside there and possibly the packing, probably a small rubber 'O' ring
along with a touch of plumbers grease.If it isn't leaking while shut off then
there is no need to change the valve. It has to be the stem packing or the
connection on down stream to the tank.
----- Original Message -----
From: Betsy Whitney
To: blindhandyman-yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, October 24, 2009 6:16 PM
Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Loose toilet tank
Aloha all,
This is a bit of a long story, but I'm venting along the way.
Well, my first mistake was telling "he who knows everything" that I
was going to replace the supply-line valve on the toilet because it
was leaking. Not a big deal, just get the spare one out of the
storage room and replace it.
He wanted to be so helpful, so he went to the storage room and said,
"Gosh, there doesn't seem to be one. You must have used it on the
kitchen sink when you put the new faucet in and forgot to get another.
I knew we had purchased two for that job and there was another one,
but I had to go to another island the next day, so just shut the
water off to the toilet and decided to deal with it later. While I
was away, he went to the store and reported that there were so many
different ones, he didn't know what to buy. When I got back I found
the one we already had and he ran off to the bathroom to be the hero
and replace the valve. In the process, he managed to shove hard
enough on the tank that it broke the seal between the tank and the
bowl. He tried to convince me that it had been leaking from there all
the time as the water was running down between the tank and the bowl.
Yeah, right!!
So, I know nothing about that seal between the tank and the bowl. It
is an American Standard. I'm not sure how old it is, but I've been
here 12 years, and it was here awhile before I moved in. Any
suggestions are much appreciated. Oh, and by the way, he did not
manage to get the old valve off and it is soaking with liquid wrench.
fortunately, we have two bathrooms.
Betsy
Teamwork: Together we achieve the extraordinary.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
