Need to learn the working principle of toilet flush, resources?

What's going wrong? Your toilet is running all the time?

There are simple fixes for this. There's a gasket and a flapper, where they meet is probably the problem. They degrade over time. They make gaskets that slip over the old place, if you can't easily swap it out.

You don't have to understand the flush at all to fix toilet issues.

If it's leaking, like onto the floor, you have a different problem (tank gasket leaking, or wax ring leaking)

If it's something else, just let us know what's happening

I've tried to do this myself before, I think I even replaced a flush myself once. What I learned in the process was that if I only have to do this every 5yrs or whatever and I don't have the tools or knowledge to do it myself, working out how to do it is far more expensive than just paying a guy to do it. I think the last time it cost about 50 pounds (UK).

If you know the exact mechanism, you will find someone on Youtube giving a demo that you may be able to follow. However I often find there is some key difference you won't have thought of or don't have the tool to deal with. Hence I don't think robots will be replacing good plumbers any time soon.

Plumbing os far more cool than most people appreciate.

The key part is hidden, it is called the "trap".

a pool of water is held in the pipe in such a way that gasses from further down cannot travel back up the pipe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_(plumbing)

The "flush" we see is a nifty siphon / balance effect. If the toilet tank is dry, you can still flush by pouring a gallon or so of water into the bowl direct, manually taking the place of the tank and clever lever release valve.

It is all about gravity and displacement.

Tell us more about your situation so we can know what you really want to know.

You need to be more explicit about what you don't understand.

With a toilet flush the design objective is the following:

* There is a cistern full of water;

* You press a button;

* The entire cistern flushes the toilet, even if you release the button;

* After the flush, the cistern re-fills.

There are multiple mechanisms to accomplish this, but usually you would simply buy a mechanism and fit it according to its design.

So ... what don't you understand?

(Noted: I'm not a plumber, I'm not an expert, I'm just trying to understand your question)

Flushing is displacing the content of the bowl down the drain. This is usually done by releasing a volume of water at once, which is a rate of flow higher than what your water line allows, hence you have to store a volume of water somewhere in order to release it at once (flushing).

You can, for example, fill a bucket of water then releasing that water into the bowl to flush its content, but more practically, that water is stored in the cistern/tank that comes with the toilet or that you can purchase separately.

Your water pipe supplies that cistern with water, but there must be a way to stop the water when the cistern/tank fills up or it would overflow and flood your bathroom.

So, you need to control the process of water filling up your cistern and, in order to control something, you must first measure it. In other words, there must be a way to know the level of water in the cistern to prevent it from overflowing. This is usually done with a floater inside the cistern, which floats on the water surface.

Now that there's a way to know the water level, there must be a way to act upon that information and stop the inflow of water when the water gets to a certain level, or as we have it now, when the floater gets to a certain level.

This is usually done with a coupling mechanism that ties the floater to a sort of valve. The water level rises, the floater rises with it, and this force closes the valve that's letting the water in the cistern/tank. The water then stops. You have a full cistern/tank.

Now there must be a mechanism to release that water all at once from a hole at the bottom of the cistern/tank. This is what happens when you "flush" by pressing on a button or pulling down a lever or something. The water goes down all at once and the cistern empties. The water level goes down, the floater goes down with it, and there is no force closing the inflow anymore given that the floater is down, so the cistern starts filling up again...

But, you have a hole down there... Which means that something needed to be closed down there in order for the cistern to fill in the first place and you need it now to fill it again... This is a "flapper". This is usually a membrane of sort that closes the hole in the cistern at rest, but that gets "lifted" when you action a the "flushing" lever or press the button in order to let the water into the bowl.

So, water goes in, floater rises and reaches a certain level, that water pushing the floater is a force that closes the inflow, and the tank is full. You pull down a lever or push a button to flush, the flapper is moved and reveals a hole down the cistern from where the water goes out all at once. The water level goes down and so does the floater, there's no force closing the inflow and the cistern starts filling up again.

Happy to answer questions.

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