Image by Editor B via Flickr

Are your water bills high in one of your rental units, but you aren’t sure why? If you’ve already ruled out leaky faucets, pipes and outside hoses, tenant’s washing their cars (and their friends cars and filling inflatable kiddie pools, etc.), or a bum water meter, then maybe it’s a toilet that’s the culprit.

You can’t always hear or easily see a toilet tank that is leaking. If you look inside your toilet, you’ll find a rubber flapper which is normally at the bottom of the tank, over the hole which allows the water to go from the tank to the bowl. When you flush the toilet, the flapper is pulled upward, which allows water to go from the tank into the toilet bowl and “flushes” the toilet bowl.

If the flapper is not creating a tight enough seal when it is down, water can slowly leak into the tank. Slowly enough not to be seen, but over the course of the month it could result in a lot of water wasted, and an excess water bill! The quick fix is to buy a kit which normally runs about $10-$15 and replaces the inside “guts” of the tank.

But before you spend a couple of fivers and a half hour of your time on the repair, here’s a simple test you can do to see if this is the problem:

1. Make sure you don’t have any toilet cleaning tabs or solutions that color the toilet water. You want to do this test with clear toilet bowl water!

2. Add a few drops of food color to the tank (preferably a darker color like blue or green) .

3. Wait an hour or so and check to see if any of the colored water in the tank has leaked into the bowl.

4. If it has leaked, you can usually replace the “guts” of the toilet pretty easily. The cost is nominal, usually around $10 or $15 bucks for the do-it-yourself repair kit at the local home improvement or hardware store. The time to do the repair is probably about 20 minutes to a half hour if you are handy, maybe more if you aren’t.

5. Reap the water savings of a non-leaky toilet and feel good that you are helping to conserve water! (Save green and be green!)

Just another day in SMART landlording!
-Steven Boorstein
Landlord and Author