My toilet bowl will fill after flushing, but after @ 15 min, has about an inch of water left- why?

Question

Besides a leak in the bowl, can anyone think of another explaination for this? The toilet flushes, the bowl fills, then after about 15 min, there is only enough water to fill the hole in the bottom. Any other ideas besides a cracked bowl?

This is a brand-new toilet...

Answer 1

I would guess that there is a leak around the seating of the flush release valve.
You can check this by flushing, and then drying around the top inside of the bowl. If it gets wet again, then it means that water is passing down as if it is being gently flushed.
You probably need to replace the flush release valve, but a temporary solution might be to clean the rubber on the valve, and the porcelain where the rubber seats. If something is wedged there, you will get the effect which you described.

Answer 2

I have these ideas:
1.) Is the toilet flushing like a normal toilet (bowl fills and swirls and then goes down with the usual suction type noise) or is your bowl filling and then slowly draining down without really getting that flush) If it is not, you could have a clog in the sewer line or a clogged vent line, or both.
2.)If you get a "normal" flush but then the bowl doesn't fill afer the flush has completed, you may have missed or knocked off the tube from the ballcock to the overflow tube that refills the bowl after the flush.
3.) IN these newer toilets, you don't have a large pool of water like you did in the older toilets. This is supposed to save you money and water.
4.) The seal (wax ring) that was installed with the toilet is not seated correctly or is bad and needs to be replaced.

Answer 3

If your talking about the bowl only having a little water in it after about 15 mins, that has nothing to do with the mechanisms in the tank. It's possible that the vent on the roof is plugged with a bird nest or something of the sort and other toilets or drains on the same vertical line are sucking the water out when they flush.

Answer 4

Gregg has the right idea here. Your problem is a siphoning action being setup and acivated by a plugged vent and the action of other drains running water past the line that your toilet empties into. The water going past the line causes a vacuum when there's no proper vent available and sucks the water out of the bowl, leaving very little there. Either call a plumber to come inspect the roof venting or climb up there yourself and stick a garden hose down the pipe and turn it on. Sometimes birds fall down in the pipe and then die, then other stuff, leaves, twigs, etc. get stuck on top, pretty soon, PLUGGED. The garden hose trick usually works quite well.

Answer 5

The water level in your tank is probably too high, and it hasn't finished draining out into the bowl before the siphon action that makes a bowl empty out starts over again. Your flapper or flush valve may be hanging up too, remaining open longer than necessary to dump enough water into the bowl to start the flush. Adjust your fill valve, ballcock, or float so that it doesn't fill so much. You only need a tank level high enough to get the bowl to start a vortex, flush out, and refill.

Answer 6

HI, IT IS POSSIBLE THE VENTING SYSTEM BUT IF THIS PROBLEM DIDNT HAPPEN WITH YOUR OLD TOILET THEN IT IS VERY UNLLIKELY, THE TOILETS ARE BUILT WITH A TRAP IN THEM TO KEEP THE SEWER ODOR FROM COMING INTO THE HOUSE AND NOW AND THEN SOME BRANDS OF TOILETS ARE BUILT WITH A LOW TRAP AND THAT CAUSES THE WATER LEVEL IN THE BOWL TO SLOWLY LEAK DOWN TO A SMALL AMOUNT,I WOULD SAY YOU HAVE A VERY CHEAP TOILET FROM LOWES OR HOME DEPOT AND YOU MAY HAVE TO TAKE IT BACK AND BUY A BETTER GRADE TOILET IF YOU WANT TO FIX THIS PROBLEM, GOOD LUCK.

Answer 7

It could easily by a bad flapper (which should be replaced every once in a while).

Answer 8

The flapper is not making a good seal. need to buy a new one.

Answer 9

NO WATER GOING DOWN LILL TUBE ( OVERFLOW ) DURING FLUSH, BUT LEAKING PAST BALLCOCK TO FILL BOWL!