Well-Check For Paco

My freshmen year in college up at the dorms, I made a lot of friends and had lots of fun with them. One of the memories I have is that we always called the toilet "Paco." We would joke around and say we have to go talk with Paco or that we have a date with Paco. Kinda quirky, but fun.

Well, a little while back, after going the bathroom, I noticed that there was dripping water coming from my toilet. I got all bummed because I didn't have any clue about plumbing and wasn't sure what was causing it.

So, I decided to inspect it one morning to figure out how bad it was. My leak was coming from the top of the tank and streaming down so I decided to lift the tank lid and flush it to see what would happen.

Well, that's when Old Faithful started. Apparently, I had a geyser of water coming off of the cap on my refill valve and as soon as it hits my closed tank, it would stream down the side to the floor.

After googling and asking questions in various search engines of ehow and do it yourselfers, I decided I was going to replace my refill valve. Jared has been swamped with plenty of other things on his plate with the test coming up next week. Not wanting to add to his burden, I decided to get down and knowledgeable and take a crack at being a plumber since they are so very expensive to hire.

I went to Home Depot the other day and made sure with their workers that it was the whole refill valve that needed to be replaced. I then purchased the needed part by Fluidmaster and then tried to figure out when to attack Paco. After contemplating the steps and discussing with my Dad, I went to work this afternoon on the project.

This is the old refill valve

After shutting off the water, I flushed the toilet to drain all the water out. I then sopped up the remaining water to get the tank dry. After disconnecting the washers and couplings, I was able to take the whole valve out.
Next, I put a new washer on the bottom of the shank of the valve and then put it in the proper place while tightening the new locknut in place by hand since you aren't supposed to make it too tight. That was emphasized multiple times. I then reconnected the coupling braided water line back on the locknut.
From there, I had to connect the black tube to the angle adapter clip on the overflow pipe to the valve nipple connector. There shouldn't be any kinks and it should be pretty level.

From there, I had to remove the valve cap to clear out the water and grit in the unit by turning on and off the water a couple times. After that, I reattached the cap and checked the water level by turning the water on and holding the float cup under water for 30 seconds. From there, I adjusted the water level with moving a clamp around.

After a couple hours give or take, I was finally finished. Voila! A brand new functioning Paco! (I recounted this with a briefer form of instructions so you would get the picture without a novel. So don't do just what I explained if you try this at home. Make sure you read the instructions that come with it)

Tada! I am a plumber ;0)