Since our toilet has been ghost flushing for the past several months (due to an old flapper) and we had recently had our water meter installed, I thought to myself, now is a jolly good time to bring our one single toilet forward into the world of increased water efficiency!
We had two choices:
1) Replace our old 3.5 gpf toilet completely with a shiny new dual flush toilet. This would cost us 200-500 bones. Canadian! Or
2) Convert our current toilet into a dual flush using a kit. This would cost us $22 to $40.
We opted for choice 2. Mainly because it means less waste in our landfill, and also, it's cheaper! Once the decision was made, what did I do? I made it so.
After some research, I wanted to go with a dual flush kit made by one2flush. However, they seemed to be only available online. The only kit available locally was Hydroright over at both Home Depot and Canadian Tire. It had both good and bad reviews, but I decided our experience would be one of the good exceptions and took my chances with it. I purchased the one with a handle (instead of push buttons) at Canadian Tire for $21.99. Our toilet has the ballcock system, which sources said might interfere with the Hydroright, so I also purchased the Hydroclean ($15) to replace the ballcock fill valve. I was super excited about it because it came with a J-tube that basically circulates the water in your tank, keeping any debris to a minimum with each flush. And it helps save even more water by controlling how much goes into the bowl! Yowza!
Once said things were purchased, my exciting toilet adventure began.
Step 1) Pee. You never know if you're going to hit a snag and not be able to pee for an extended period of time.
Step 2) Shut off water, then flush toilet to empty tank. This is when I discovered that the inside of our tank is lined with Styrofoam, and our previous owners used one of those toxic blue drop in toilet cleaner thingies. With the tank empty, I cleaned it as best as I could, but the Styrofoam made this a bit difficult.
Step 3) Remove old fill valve and ballcock. At this point, I realized that the Hydroclean model I purchased would not fit, and I had to go out and purchase a different one. So I did.
Step 4) Eat lunch. I was hungry. I started watching some television while eating, and got caught up in it.
Step 5) After a few hours, I realized I had to pee again and thought it would be best to get back to toiletting. This is why step 1 is important.
Step 6) Install Hydroclean fill valve. The instructions are pretty straight forward, and the instructional video on their website helped even more, so this step was fairly easy.
Step 7) Remove flapper and handle. Also really easy to do by just looking at it.
Step 8) Install Hydroright. After watching the instructional video online, this, too, was quite easy to do. Badabing! Done!
Step 9) Put tank cover back on. This is where I discovered the inner lip of the cover hits the top of the Hydroclean and won't close properly, so I, unfortunately, had to remove the Hydroclean and put back the old fill valve and ballcock. Good news is, the Hydroright seems to still work with the ballcock. Badabing! Now I'm really done!
Step 10) Turn water back on. So, really, now I'm done. The ghost flushing issue seems to be resolved, and the dual flush systems seems to be working well so far! We'll see how well this plays out a few months from now. The chrome handle isn't as attractive as our old handle, but at least we're saving water.
With having to figure out what each part was and what the instructions meant, this whole process probably took me about an hour. But now that I kind of know the mechanisms of a toilet, if I had to do this again, I could probably do it in 15 minutes.
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