How to stop a toilet from running

• Remove the lid and place it somewhere it won't get broken.

• Your running toilet might be caused by too high water levels: fix this is by pinching the clip on the fill valve and lowering the fill valve.

• If this doesn't work, the problem is probably the flapper, which you should replace.

• First, shut off the water at the shut-off valve located below the toilet.

• Flush the toilet twice so the water goes out of the tank.

• Remove the flapper from the fill tube. Then remove the chain from the trip plugger. Once you get that out, replace the old flapper with the new.  Reattach the chain and then you're good to go.

STEPHANIE: Hi I'm Stephanie Glakas-Tenet

JULIE: And I'm Julie Sussman

STEPHANIE: The co-authors of the Dare to Repair book series

JULIE: And we're on howdini to show you how to stop a running toilet. 

STEPHANIE: First thing you need to do is remove the lid and make sure you put it some place safe so that you don't step on it and break it.

JULIE: Now, the first thing to check with a running toilet is that the water level might be too high. And the way to fix this is by pinching the clip on the fill valve and lowering the fill valve like that. 

STEPHANIE: But if the water continues to keep running then probably the problem is with the flapper. It's really easy to change I'm going to show you how to do it right now. 

JULIE: But first you want to shut off the water at the shut-off valve located below. And then we're going to flush the toilet now twice so that the water goes out of the tank.

STEPHANIE: It's as simple as removing the flapper from the fill tube. And then all you have to do is remove the chain from the trip plugger. Once you get that out, you can replace the old with the new. And you just reverse the steps. Snap it back on, reattach the chain and then you're good to go.  And we'll test it out.

JULIE: Now that the tank is filling up with water--

STEPHANIE: You can put the lid on.

JULIE: Hear that? Yeah, the annoying noise is gone. 

STEPHANIE: And we've stopped flushing dollars down the drain.