Today I replaced a toilet fill valve. I could have called a plumber, of course, but after my alternator experience I decided I’d prefer to do it myself. It was surprisingly gratifying to fix something physical, as opposed to pushing electrons around all day. Anyway, a few tips:
- Although the connections only need to be hand-tightened, they may need to be mechanically loosened. Make sure you’ve got a wrench, or, preferably, some channel locks.
- The nuts (one each for the valve and supply line) are bigger than they look, and you’ll need pretty wide tools to grip them. This is why channel locks are better than wrenches or pliers.
- Supply line valves (the things mounted in the wall) are surprisingly leaky. (Maybe because they spend 99.99% of their service life in the “open” position?) Make sure you’ve got a bucket or something to catch water from the disconnected supply line while you’re swapping the fill valve.
- There are a bunch of different types of supply line fittings, and each one has slightly different rules for re-attachment to the fill valve. Figure out which one you have before you start disconnecting anything. (Also note that the fill valve will probably come with hardware for reattaching the supply line, but that you probably won’t need it.)
- Disconnect everything (that needs disconnecting) from the fill valve before you unbolt it from the tank. You don’t need to be wrestling with connections while keeping an eye on the leaky, balky, disconnected supply line.
- Be sure to keep a grip on the fill valve while tightening both the mounting and supply line nuts. It’s pretty easy to spin the valve into an undesirable position inside the tank while tightening things up.
Perhaps this will be useful to you one day.
