You know that soft hiss that means the toilet has been running for three days? Mine did that, and I ignored it until the water bill arrived. A running toilet can waste a couple hundred gallons a day. The fix took me ten minutes and cost under ten dollars.

Why toilets run

Usually the flapper at the bottom of the tank is not sealing. Water keeps leaking into the bowl, so the tank refills constantly. Sometimes it is just the chain getting tangled or too tight.

How to fix it

1. Take the lid off the tank and watch what is happening.
2. If the chain is too tight or caught, adjust it so the flapper drops fully.
3. If the flapper looks warped or cracked, replace it with a matching one.
4. If water is overflowing the tube, adjust the float so the fill level sits below it.

I swapped the flapper and that was the whole job. The hiss stopped, and the bowl stopped running itself every twenty minutes.

How to test the flapper

Put a few drops of food coloring in the tank and wait fifteen minutes. If the color shows up in the bowl without flushing, the flapper is leaking and needs replacing.

Now I check my toilets with that coloring trick twice a year. It is the cheapest water-bill insurance I know.