Toilet & Faucet Replacement in Cave Creek & Carefree, AZ

The Town of Cave Creek's rate study, presented to the Town Council in November 2025, says: “A new rate tier (0 – 4,000 gallons) has been developed in recognition of low volume water users for both the Cave Creek water and Desert Hills” systems. The local paper reported that the new rates would take effect in February 2026, with the top tier moved down from above 50,000 gallons a month to above 40,000 gallons a month, and a Town official explaining that “Conservation is built into these rates.” Mayor Robert Morris has since said further rate increases are expected.

The EPA's Fix a Leak Week guidance says that if you can hear water moving in a toilet when no one has flushed, “you have a running toilet that could be wasting 200 gallons of water or more every day!” Over a 30-day month, that is about 6,000 gallons: one toilet alone can use up the whole new lowest tier and then some, before anyone in the house has showered or run a load of laundry.

When the Carefree Water Company set out to help customers chase down high water use, it did not write about gallons. It wrote about two components. The first: “The water level float in the water tank has not been adjusted correctly; water overflows constantly into the overflow tube and is wasted.” The second: “The rubber stopper at the bottom of the tank does not seal properly and allows water to seep from the tank and down the drain.” Those are the fill valve and the flapper, and they are the whole population of suspects in a tank that will not settle.

They are also distinguishable by eye, which is the useful part. Lift the lid and look at the plastic tube standing in the middle of the tank. Water running over the rim of that tube, steadily, with nobody in the bathroom, is the float set too high and the fill valve feeding straight past it. A tube that is dry while the tank still wakes up and refills every so often is the stopper at the bottom letting water down into the bowl instead. One is constant and silent, the other is intermittent and audible, and the part that goes in is different in each case.

If the toilet is beyond repair, the room decides which model to replace it with before any catalog does. Cave Creek's own plumbing inspection checklist asks for “a minimum 21” clear space in front and 15” measured from the centerline of toilets to the finished wall on either side.” Those two figures rule out a long elongated bowl in a compact guest bath, and they rule out a toilet set too close to a vanity, and in a house where the wall was framed decades ago there is no moving either number. A tape measure goes on the floor, the clearance is written down, and the models that fit it are the models that get quoted.