In the 2008 film
Gran Torino, there was a scene wherein Clint Eastwood said that any man "worth his salt can do half the household chores with just... WD-40, vise grips, and a roll of duct tape." What he meant was that a man "worth his salt" would understand the basic principle underlying common handyman tasks and thus would be able to improvise accordingly. Yesterday, I replaced the insides of an aging toilet tank with spanking new fittings, including, of course, the central stem and its flapper, as pictured on the right. Soon after, I realized that the flapper would not seem to stay up long enough to get a good, proper flush. I could still get a proper flush if I held down the flush lever long enough, but I knew that ideally, for a system working perfectly, I only needed to press the lever once, and the flapper would take care of the rest. Since I think of myself as a man "worth my salt", I immediately thought I knew what the problem was, the chain that pulled up the flapper was probably too long and loose, and therefore it wasn't pulling up the flapper far enough for it to stay open. But after adjusting the chain and making sure that it would pull the flapper as far up as it could go, I found that the flapper still would not stay up and would clamp shut as soon as I let go of the lever.
I went to YouTube for answers. (See, it isn't true that men refuse to ask for directions. We do ask for help, as long as the source is not a living, breathing person and we can still feel that it was our own "research" that came up with the answer.) Anyway, what I discovered on YouTube absolutely...
...blew. my. mind.
Okay so apparently, these flappers that are so commonplace that we take them for granted are actually works of high science. Seriously. Turns out that the flapper stays up while the cone shaped thing is still filled with water. The water serves as a weight to hold the flapper in an upright position. As the tank empties of water as we flush, eventually that hole at the bottom of the cone is no longer covered by water and the water inside the cone flows out also. Once the cone is empty, then there is no longer any weight to hold the flapper in position and it clamps back down.
Wow. Who knew?
And get this, that's only half the story. There's more good stuff.
Think back to when you were a child and first learned to punch a hole in a can to pour the contents out. To get a good flow it's not enough to have one hole right? You need to punch a second hole to get a good flow going. The reason is because to get a good flow going, air has to flow into the can, and if you only have one hole, that single hole cannot accomplish the dual tasks of letting fluid out and letting air in. Anyway, the reason is not even important. We just have to remember the principle we learned with those cans and understand that it applies to our flapper cone as well. To get water flowing out smoothly, that one hole at the bottom is not enough. We need a...
...second hole!
sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit... (said in a low and awed tone).
And all this time I thought the small hole was just there for decorative purposes. And if your mind isn't totally blown by now, there's even more! That second hole begins to serve its function of allowing water inside the cone to flow out of the first hole when, and only when, it itself is no longer submerged in water. So on some of the newer flappers you can even control when the second hole becomes exposed. In so doing you decide when it begins to serve its function of allowing water to flow out of the first hole. Controlling when water flows out of the cone allows you to control when the cone empties, because in controlling when it empties you also control when the flapper drops back down. I want to know who the people are who sit around thinking up these things! They are geniuses whose names need to be in science textbooks that are used in our high school classes.
So to keep water inside the cone for as long as possible, you need to
move the small hole to a lower position, say from (1) to (2). This way,
water in the tank will have to have dropped to a lower level before the
small hole is exposed and it begins to let water inside the cone flow
out. The flapper stays up much longer because only when the flapper cone
is finally empty of water does it clamp back down.
As a last word, all this doesn't mean that adjusting the chain is unnecessary. You still need to adjust the chain so that it pulls the flapper up to the correct starting position whenever someone flushes. However, whether the flapper will stay up, and how long it will stay up, is not related to the chain at all.
whoa!
