Replacing A Flapper On Kohler Ingenium Flushing System Toilets

While Kohler Ingenium may sound fancy it really is nothing special, in fact it is one of the few regular toilets Kohler made. Replacing the flapper is an easy task that you can do in just minutes. A toilet with a bad flapper can often leak 200 gallons of water down the drain without any sign of leakage.

The Kohler Ingenium is Kohler’s fancy wording for a completely normal flushing system that uses a regular sized flapper and a float to suspend the flapper allowing it to close when 1.6 gallons of water has been delivered from the tank to the bowl. The flapper you will find can either be a hard plastic with a softer rubber seal on the underside or, a molded rubber flapper. In either case the flapper is secured in place by snapping the plastic flapper hinges in place over two hooks on the flush valve or, with the molded rubber flapper placing the hinge loops over the two hooks on the flush valve. The chain then runs up to the flush lever where it is held in place with a clip. The float on the chain is adjustable with a lock on the top and bottom of the float. The height of the float on the chain controls the closing of the flapper, by holding it open until the water level in the tank allows the flapper to close. I commonly flush the toilet then mark the tank at the water level where the flapper closes. This allows me to adjust the new flapper to match the original setting. Of course if there are flushing issues such as a poor flush I would add water to the flush or, if there was a double flush I would take water away from the flush.

The Kohler Ingenium Flushing System is used on many Kohler toilets such as the Folio, Couture, Wellworth, Highline, Memoirs, Serif, Devonshire, Pinoir, Kathryn, Leighton, and Portrait toilet models depending on when they were manufactured. Kohler has been upgrading the flush system used on some of these models.

Flapper Replacement Options

The options for the replacement of either the hard plastic flapper (Kohler P/N 1006958) or the molded rubber flapper (Kohler P/N 85160) is now limited to Kohler P/N 85160 when it comes to OEM parts. Korky has two options, which can be used as replacement flappers on the Kohler Ingenium flushing system toilets.

• The Korky P/N 2004BP flapper with its adjustable float is a close match that works well in many cases. To use the 2004BP flapper you must cut off the ring and use only the hinge loops to hold the flapper in place. If you use both the ring and the hinge loops the flapper will not stay open and you will have to hold the handle to allow the toilet to flush. You must also slide the float up or down the chain until the proper amount of water is used to flush the toilet.

• The Korky P/N 16BP flapper is the one I prefer best in this application. The Korky 16BP has a hard plastic cone on the underside of the flap with holes in the bottom and on the side of the cone. This hard plastic cone rotates and the positioning of the hole on the side of the cone controls the rate at which the cone fills with water and allows the flapper to close. When it is positioned to the side it closes slower and when it is positioned to the front it closes faster. My reason for liking the Korky 16BP over the 2004BP is that the float tends to ad buoyancy to the flapper and in my opinion the Korky 16BP closes harder and seals better.

A common problem that many toilets using the Ingenium Flushing System have is the rubber gasket under the flush valve deteriorates. The gasket probably from a reaction with chemicals used to sanitize the water ripples and in some cases may raise enough that it prevents the flapper from sealing properly against the flush valve. This may allow water to leak slowly into the bowl causing what we plumbers refer to as a “Ghost Flush” where the fill valve turns on periodically to refill the tank without anyone using the toilet. In many cases the rippling of the flush valves rubber gasket can be trimmed away with a razor knife allowing the flapper to close and seal properly. In the worst cases the gasket may need to be replaced. Replacing the gasket is a much larger job that requires the tank to be removed from the bowl and the replacement of other parts as well.

Replacing the flapper on your Kohler Toilet with the Ingenium Flushing System is a quick and easy task that can often save 200 gallons of water per day when your toilet has a leaking flapper.