It’s disconcerting to flush a toilet and hear odd noises coming from it, especially if you have no idea what may be causing those noises. What’s even more annoying is to hear random noises coming from your toilet at night when you’re trying to sleep. There are reasons your toilet is making noises.
Here are some of the common noises you may hear and what may be causing them. If you’re located in central Florida areas like Lakeland, Plant City, or Winter Haven, then the pros at True Plumbers & AC can help you assess and fix the situation.
Your Toilet Is Flushing on Its Own
When your toilet flushes on its own, commonly known as “ghost flushing,” you may be wondering why it’s happening. It’s usually linked to a bad flapper in your toilet tank, meaning that the water in the tank is slowly leaking out. When the water gets to a particular level, the fill valve comes on and the toilet seems to flush all by itself.
That slow leak runs up a water bill quietly, so it is worth fixing even though nothing looks wrong. Mineral scale is what usually ruins a flapper, which is part of why cleaning the toilet tank is worth doing, and hard water is the reason it keeps coming back. A whole home water softener slows that down across every fixture in the house. Replacing the flapper is a small job, and a toilet repair visit handles it along with anything else in the tank.
What a Gurgling Noise Could Indicate
A gurgling noise is more difficult to pinpoint as it could be linked to a few different things. It could be traced back to a sewer drain issue, toilet blockage, or other blockages. If there’s gurgling, it’s recommended to try and use a different toilet in your home until the problem can be resolved. If you hear gurgling from multiple drains, then your main plumbing line may have a blockage.
Gurgling is air being pulled through standing water, so it means something downstream is restricted. If the tub fills when you flush, read what it means when water backs up into the bathtub; if the shower is where it shows up, water coming up from the shower drain covers the same signal. A single slow fixture is usually a job for drain cleaning, while the whole house acting up at once means sewer backup repair, or a saturated septic drain field if you are not on city sewer.
If you hear gurgling when you flush, call True Plumbers & AC to address the issue before it gets worse. Overnight and on weekends we run emergency plumbing calls.
You Hear Dripping Noises Coming from Your Toilet
If your toilet is dripping, then you more than likely have a leak somewhere within the toilet. Check for water on the floor to see if it’s an exterior leak. If your toilet is cracked in any way, don’t use it until you can get someone from True Plumbers & AC to come check it out and repair it.
If you don’t see water on the floor, then the toilet is leaking from somewhere inside, most likely the flapper. If your flapper is damaged, then water will leak from the tank into the toilet bowl until it’s fixed.
A wet floor around the base is different, and it is worth taking seriously. It can be a failed wax ring, a cracked bowl, or a supply line, and if the water is coming from somewhere you cannot see, the signs you may have a water leak are worth reading before it reaches the subfloor. Leak detection equipment finds it without opening the floor to look.
The Toilet Won’t Stop Running
After you flush a toilet, it should make a running noise for about 30 seconds or so as the water from the tank drains down to refill the bowl. If it keeps running, then there’s more than likely some kind of leak between the tank and the bowl. This could be attributed to a flapper, a refill valve, or another part. A trained plumber can look at this and quickly assess which part needs to be replaced.
Flushing Results in a Whistle or Squeal Noise
If you’re hearing a whistle or squeal when you flush, then this could be attributed to a faulty valve or another issue. This is a part that we can repair easily and assess while we’re there to see if there are any other contributing factors to this. It can also happen with older toilets which use a slightly different system. We can help you with upgrading to newer toilets or newer parts to help this noise go away. If you are replacing rather than repairing, our guide to the types of toilets and which one to buy covers the options.
Is your toilet making an odd noise? Call us to help.
One last thing worth ruling out before you call: a toilet that gurgles or fills instead of flushing down is usually a blockage rather than a bad part, and when I flush my toilet it fills up with water walks through how to tell the difference.
If your toilet is noisy and you’re anywhere in central Florida, we can help. Give us a call at (863) 667-6364 so we can come out and assess the situation.
