Pro Handyman Blog

Food Coloring in Your Toilet

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Sure, adding food coloring into your toilet tank will help you determine that you have a leak. But didn’t you already know that anyway? I mean, when the toilet suddenly refills (starts running) you probably figured out that water was leaking out of the tank and into the bowl.

Here’s how it’s done…flush the toilet and as the tank refills, add a few drops of food coloring into the tank. The refilling action will help distribute the color throughout the tank. Now, DON’T FLUSH THE TOILET! If you start seeing the food coloring in the bowl, then water is somehow getting from the tank into the bowl when it shouldn’t be. The only time it should is when you are flushing the toilet, but since you haven’t flushed the toilet, all of the color should remain in the tank. I suspect if you are adding food coloring into the tank, then the toilet is refilling when it shouldn’t be.  The ideal time to do this is right before you go to bed. If you don’t have food coloring, you can also turn the water off to the toilet and then check the level in the tank the next morning to see if it has dropped since the previous night.

This all means that water is getting past the flapper or flush valve and leaking into the toilet bowl. It could also mean that you have a crack in the tank, but generally instead of leaking into the bowl, the water will leak onto the floor. The fix here is to replace the flapper, the flush valve, or the tank, in that order.