What is wrong with your toilet if you have to hold down the handle to get it to flush all the way and how can you fix it?

Answer 1

To be honest, my whole family have had to hold down the handle to get it to flush in one of our toilet for two years until today that I searched this page and do my trouble shooting.

I replaced the Flapper two years ago, and did not realize that the first step that you need to do is to cut the collar off from the new Flapper if your toilet has mounting arm. The Flapper is designed to fit two different kind of toilets, the one with mounting arm and the one that doesn't have(and thus need a collar). If the collar is not cut off. it generates push down force every time you press the handle to flush the toilet. That is the reason that you need to hold down the handler. Inside the tank, there is a flush valve. Depending on the age of the toilet, it typically either is a "flapper" or "tank ball' style. Each type have a little bouyancy...when you press tank handle, the suction is broken, and the flapper or ball floats open. As the tank empties and the water level gets lower in the tank, the flapper or ball re-settles on its seat. Your flapper or ball is not floating open. Look inside tank, press handle. Observe flapper or ball. If the flapper or ball does not float open, you may need to simply shorten the chain...just a little. Typically, you can readjust the chain linkage where it connects to the handle. Also, you can pull the chain from inside the tank...without using the handle to see how it is supposed to work and determine how much slack is needed in the chain. Good Luck The "floating open" problem in the previous answer may be from a deteriorating flapper. The upside down cup that holds the air may be torn, and allow the air to escape too fast, dropping the flapper prematurely.

I had the same problem and thanks to these previous answers, I solved my problem. It is very hard to describe parts without pictures, but here goes. There is the small hose that emits water into a "column" which goes to the "rubber flapper". I first checked my flapper to see if it had eroded and it seemed fine, actually almost new. While I was checking that, I noticed that the flapper had a rubber round part which instead of being over the "column", was behind the column. It made sense to me that this round rubber part should go over the column, so I pulled the flapper off at the sides where it was connected (by these two small tabs) and pulled the rubber ring up and over the column. I pushed the ring all the way down to the bottom of the column and over the two plastic tabs at the bottom of the column. I then felt around and made sure the flapper was not leaking (kind of like checking to make sure a rubber stopper in a sink is not leaking) and it was good. The chain was adjusted so there was not a lot of slack.

I had a toilet that was constantly running in the powder room. It is an Eljer installed when the house was built in 1992. The flapper valve was quite deteriorated and the flush handle/lever was worn and sticking. I replaced the other 2 toilets in the house with much higher quality Toto toilets a few years back. Money is tight at the moment so I decided to just fix this one. I bought a new "Korky" flapper valve and a replacement flush handle at a local hardware retailer and replaced them. After this I noticed that the water level in the bowl was much lower after refilling and that I had to hold the lever down to get it to complete a flush. After reading the above answers and several others from other websites I took the lid back off the tank and this is what I found:

The new flapper valve was manufactured with a hole in it that immediately let the air out once the flapper valve is vertical, causing it to drop down and reseal the tank too soon. I shut off the water and removed the flapper valve, dried it off, and placed a smal piece of electrical tape over the hole to see if the flapper valve would then perform properly and it did.

Also I noticed that when I had done the original work I failed to replace the bowl refill tube back into it's original location in the overflow tube and that was what was causing the lower water level in the bowl after flushing.

There is nothing complicated or requiring long explanations about this - Simply remove flapper, get a universal flapper and fit it - done !

Answer 2

The chain to the flapper is too long and not pulling the flapper high enough or the flapper needs to be replaced.