When the seal inside the toilet basin incompletely seals, and water slowly drains out, do you need to replace the entire internal mechanism?

I’ve always just replaced the entire assembly. My thinking is that since the gasket has gone, chances are the arm holding the chain will probably go soon too. Lord knows, that’s happened to me often enough.

Generally nowadays everything is sold as a rather simple unit, ill made and doomed to fail over and over. I rather dislike buying things I don’t have to buy. If it were my toilet, and it had an older, well-made mechanism, I would just replace the gasket.

This is super simple. It could be something like the chain is getting fuckerered and tucked underneath the flap. Or the chain is disconnected. Both are easy fixes. Pop the lid off and it should be obvious. You are a doctor, lift the hood off the tank and the problem will be obvious.

@johnpowell I’ve done that, and it isn’t so simple. It appears that the gasket is leaking. If I press down at a couple of spots along the seal, it does seal, but obviously I don’t want to be doing that every time someone flushes the toilet.

Well, you shouldn’t let my grumpiness dissuade you – go to Wal*Mart and buy a new unit for $7.99. You can install it with one hand, blindfolded.

Replacing the entire mechanism is the easiest and often the only fix, as it is difficult to find individula parts. I’ve found that by the time the seal starts leaking, the rest of the assembly is getting corroded as well. So a wholesale swap makes snese.

Buy a new kit from Home Depot. They are about 20 bucks and are not hard to install.
I have done it and I went to a Community College.

Sounds like a plan. @johnpowell See the tag? I’m no handyman. Want me to solve your complex medical problem, sure. Change a light bulb, not so much. ;-)

If you buy me a bus ticket I can hook you up. But you have to check my prostate. I’m old. Really, the directions are pretty easy. If we need too we can use iChat AV to walk you through it.

If you put chlorine type blue pills in the toilet tank the rubber flapper often shrinks up and does not seal. You can easily tell what is the problem.
Turn off the water to the tank and flush. Unhook the flapper and look at it. Is it supple and flat? You might have the kind with a soft ball. In that case is it supple and round like a healthy prostate? The rubber flapper is replaceable with virtually no effort. It just unhooks from the tower. Removing a prostate is a little more complicated.

So, @shilolo, to recap, you will need an examination glove, a tube of lubricant…

If the flapper( the rubber thing that comes up when you flush and slowly floats down during the flush) stops leaking when you push on the top of it, it is usually fixed with just a flapper replacement. Home Depot or Lowes has just the flapper for about $5ish. If you chose to only replace the flapper, turn off the water to the toilet, remove the old one,check the plastic lip/seat that it is supposed to seal to(sometimes the old flapper “melts” onto the seat), install the new one and adjust the chain to the right length. Flapper replacement is pretty staightforward, the package comes with instructions.

The plastic lip/seat replacment is a little more involved. It involves removing the tank and unscrewing a large nut that is on the bottom of the tank and installing a whole new assembly, including the 1” overflow tube the flapper attaches to. HD and Lowes has these kits also,$20ish like was said earlier. If you want to change out all the guts of your toilet with these kits, it will take an inexperienced person 1 to 2+ hours, if you follow the directions carefully. I have had good luck with the Fluidmaster brand, Model 400A valve kit

If just replacing the flapper doesn’t fix the problem and you think your skills are suspect, a competent plumber shoud be able to give a phone quote. It should take a good plumber less than an hour to install the complete rebuild kit(flapper, valve, handle,flapper seat, tank to bowl bolts). Try the flapper replacement yourself first. IF that’s all it needs, they will still charge a trip fee,usually, for a $5 part.