Running toilet cost calculator

The most expensive fault in the house

A running toilet wastes more water than any other common household fault, and it is the one people put off longest, because nothing is visibly wrong. There is no puddle and no damage — just a faint noise that becomes background after a week.

The volumes are the reason it matters. A toilet that runs continuously can lose more water in a day than a family uses, and it does it silently until the bill arrives a quarter later.

How to tell if yours is running

• Listen with the bathroom door shut and the house quiet — a faint hiss is the giveaway
• Look for a constant ripple on the surface of the bowl water
• Put a few drops of food coloring in the toilet tank and wait twenty minutes without flushing — color appearing in the bowl means water is passing through

Getting a real number instead of a guess

The presets above are a rough guide and nothing more. If you want a figure you can trust, read your water meter, leave the house for an hour with nothing else running, and read it again. The difference is your leak rate for that hour — multiply by 24 and enter it above.

That measurement is also the thing worth showing a plumber, because it turns a vague complaint into a number.

Why the bill lags the problem

Water is usually billed quarterly, so a leak that starts in January may not show up as an unusual bill until April, by which point it has been running for three months. The cost figure above is what it is accruing right now, not what you have been charged so far.