We’re going to tell you how to fix a running toilet by replacing the fill valve. The 400H replaces a variety of different fill valves, which you can see on the side of the box. Again, this is the 400H-002. When you open the box, there are only a few items in there. It’s just the fill valve, the instructions, and then some additional parts, which we’re going to show you how to use a little bit later in the video.
These 400 series fill valves have been around since the 1950s, so they’ve been around for a long time. First step is to turn the water off with the shut off valve.
If you have an old shut off valve, I highly recommend the SharkBite fittings. They’re great. Simply just slide onto a piece of copper pipe.
You have to prep the pipe a little bit before you do this. We also have an excellent video that shows you how to use these. Just so you know, the SharkBite fitting will spin on the copper. The next step is to flush the toilet and to remove the toilet tank lid to see how much water is left in there. Pull down on the lever of the toilet tank until most of the water is removed from the tank.
And then you can use a sponge or a cloth to remove the excess water from the tank. This only takes a minute or two. Super easy. Then remove the water supply line that’s connected to the old fill valve, and it’s good to have a bucket for this.
Remove the nut from the old fill valve, and then take off the hose and remove the fill valve from the old toilet tank.
Inspect the gasket on the new fill valve. It’s usually in the right position, but just double check that that’s the case. And then insert the 400H down into the tank and dry fit that hose—that’s going to be important. We need to measure the height from the top of the flush valve to the top blue cap of the fill valve. That needs to be three inches.
So that’s going to be a really important component to this installation. The other thing is, the top of the flush valve needs to be one inch below the tank lever location. We’re going to unscrew the fill valve. We’re going to make it higher so that when we go to dry fit it, we have the three inches between the top of the flush valve and the top of the blue cap there. Now, this little clamp goes on top of the flush valve, and we’re going to cut our rubber hose to the right size so that it won’t be interfering with the bottom of the tank top.
So again, we’re just putting that hose over into the slot of that little clamp. And we’re just dry fitting it. Now, this nut is for the new fill valve. We’re going to put that on like so. You want to make sure that this is tight because you don’t need any other tools to tighten the fill valve.
And then we’re going to add the supply line to the bottom of the fill valve. Again, we’re just going to be hand-tightening all of these parts. You shouldn’t need any type of tool. Then, were going to turn the water on, and we’re going to let the water rise and see how high it goes to the top of the flush valve pipe.
Now, in this case, there’s a little knob for both the bowl water and the toilet tank water.
We want to make sure that the water height is about ½ inch from the top of this pipe. So you can make a mark on that. And then you can turn the little lever to adjust the height. So in this case, if you’re turning it clockwise, you’re going to raise the height in the toilet tank. You just want to flush it one more time and let the water rise back up to ensure that it’s about ½ inch below the top of that pipe.
Now, we’re going to check the water in the bowl. Make a mark on the inside of the bowl with a pencil. The pencil mark should be just above the water line. Then pour one gallon of water into the toilet bowl, but be careful. Don’t do this too quickly or it’ll flush the toilet, which isn’t good.
So you want to pour the one gallon of water in slowly until it fills the bowl. Now, flush the toilet and see where it refills in the bowl. If the water line is above your pencil mark, there’s too much water in the bowl. If it’s below that mark, there’s too little. And you can adjust the height of the water in the bowl with this blue knob that’s attached to the 400H.
It should only take ten to fifteen minutes to install this new 400H fill valve, and it’ll make your toilet run a lot quieter and have a more powerful flush. All the supplies that we used for this tutorial are down in the description.
And if you have any questions about Fluidmaster’s 400H, feel free to ask. I’m happy to help you out. I’ve been using Fluidmaster products for years now, and they definitely help you make your project much, much easier.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you in the next one..
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