The second day we had an out of town visitor my wife and our friend were out and about the town from about 10am until they came home and stayed downstairs the whole day. We then played cards that night until 10 or 11pm and when I went upstairs to use the bathroom I found my bathroom flooded. Luckily it was just about a couple cups worth of water, but I threw a towel down, called my wife up, and started googling.
My friends suggestion was to call the insurance right away and see what plumber they recommend and if it is going to cost more than my deductible to file a claim. That sounded rather silly for the couple cups worth of water. I found out how to shut off the water to the toilet and emptied the tank. The next few days I didn't have time to work on the toilet, but we had dried it all out that night and put our window fan in there with the bathroom vent on for at least 24 hours to make sure it dried out completely. We found that with a good waste basket placed under the leak we could turn the water valve on long enough to flush the toilet and that helped us make it through the week with the visitor (it was our master bedroom toilet so no inconvenience to them) and when they left on Sunday I had researched what the most likely cause is.
After looking through various schematics of toilets and other advice online I found it most likely to be my filler valve assembly, or the water supply tube. I tried tightening from the outside of the tank, which just seemed to make the leak worse. I looked at the water supply tube and figured it looked alright. I looked up online how much Home Depot and Lowes (conveniently right next to each other and only 1 mile away) and researched the two options for filler valves.
At the same time I made the best of this situation and bought our first tool box from Harbor Freight to use on this project. It was on sale for $50, but with my 20% coupon I got it for $40. The replacement part was around $8 and took around a total of 3 hours, including research and purchasing the parts, to replace. All in all I spent $48, and now have a 105 piece tool box, with no insurance claim on my record.
In-sourcing for the win!
