The toilet cistern has a Fluidmaster bottom inlet float valve I fitted about 13 years ago which has been fine until this week. Now when I flush the valve goes: fill-stop-fill-stop-fill..... with a frequency of about
1Hz. Any ideas what's causing it? We're in a hard water area so could it be lime-scale build up? Is it curable or must I replace it?
Some of them you can take the cap off the valve and clean the sealing diaphragm inside (just rubbing it between your fingers usually does it).
If the cap comes off, it normally requires pushing while rotating a bit anti clockwise - it is a bayonet style fitting.
(turn the water off first, unless you like wet ceilings and everything else!)
I had a Fluidmaster fail a couple of weeks ago. It wouldn't turn off when the cistern was full. I tried removing the valve and cleaning it, and soaking what I could see of the valve and Fluidmaster body in scale remover for an hour. It made no difference and the Fluidmaster had to be replaced.
We are also in a hard water area. The Fluidmaster was about 9 years old.
I meant to add that you don't have to unscrew the Fluidmaster from the cistern to replace it. The plumber just pulled the body and float off the screwed-in part. He then disassembled the new one and pushed the new body and float over the screwed-in bit to the same level as the one he'd removed.
Often with something of this age and relatively cheap it's less frustrating to just buy new and replace.
Last year I replaced the 20 year old flushing mechanism in a friend's house which involved a 15 mile round trip to Screwfix. I had the foresight to also buy the connecting kit to join the cistern to the pan which turned out to be the correct decision as the old doughnut was misshapen and the metal bracket had rusted.
What I didn't do was to replace the inlet valve (probably also 20 years old) at the same time which, 9 months on, I'm told is now intermittently and not stopping the fill. Not to serious at the moment as an additional flush will correct the problem. It's another 5 minute job for me when I visit later this year :)
Thanks for all the replies. I've found the installation instructions which also includes troubleshooting advice, so I'll give it a good coat of looking at :)
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