OK, so I call my wife two nights ago from my bike trip. She’s just arrived home from several days taking care of putting her mother into a nursing home, and in no mood for fun and games. About 5 minutes after getting home she discovers that the downstairs toilet’s been leaking, apparently for some time. Not a happy camper, to say the least.
Called again and she’d calmed down quite a bit. Though the water flooded the bathroom and seeped into a couple of adjacent areas, it wasn’t as bad as she first thought. And, in her judgment, it had probably only been leaking for a few hours, based on the amout of water leaking from the (as it turned out) crack in the side of the toilet tank.
How common is this? The toilet is an Eljer (harvest gold), original with the house in 1976. Nothing should have stressed the toilet, though I did change out the fill valve about a week earlier. (I understand the crack is on the opposite end from the valve.)
Any recommendations for a new toilet? She would want something reasonably quiet, so probably not a pressure tank model.
Replies
I did change out the fill valve about a week earlier
...whoops.........cause and effect?
Gerber Viper or Avalanche
I took the tank out today and got a good look at it. The split starts at the top, about 3 inches from the back, and continues down the side towards the back corner. It appears to end just under the bottom edge.
From the look of it the split originated at the top and propagated downward. The crack is about 1/16" wide at the top, with a little bit of displacement in/out, suggesting that there was a fair amount of stress in the ceramic. It's vaguely possible that some time in the past the top edge was dinged with the tank lid, but clearly stress was the main culprit.
A big PITA in the whole thing is that the shutoff valve was bad, so couldn't remove the toilet until that was replaced. Kept a bucket under the crack to catch the drips. Replaced the valve yesterday but had to redo it today because of a sloooow leak (not even enough to drip). Yesterday I used pipe compound but today I used Teflon tape -- seems to be OK now.
We always use a triple wrape of teflon tape and teflon joint compound.
Learned that from a couple of master plumbers and pipe fitters.
check Toto toilets
Well, we already got (and installed) an American Standard Cadet 3. Other than the worthless toilet seat they included it's worked out fine, though it is rather startling how short the flush cycle is.
Kohler has padded and self closing toilet seat. However, it seems to be made perfectly just for Kohler. The seat snaps on and off, for easy cleaning I guess, but it may come off by itself. You'll see what I mean. I think the fault is their seat bolt washers are little too big to fit tightly to other brands and tightening the bolts misshapes the part that seat cliips into. Otherwise, it is high quality. It is available only from Kohler, however.
I forget what the brand was we got (one of the Bemis brands), but it has the removable gizmos. Seems like most of the better-than-bottom-end (so to speak) seats have this now.
The bolts were a bit too narrow, actually, but I filled the bolt holes with silicone to help keep the bolts centered -- a problem with many seats. The washers were fine, size-wise.
Biggest problem is that the color ("bone") is just a barely perceptable shade lighter than the toilet. Would look better if it were darker rather than lighter.