Toilets... dirty stinking toilets!

[dougga]

Hey, I have a problem with my toilet.

It appears to be slowly leaking at the wax seal under the ceramic base. I have a 1916 wood home that is rather warped at this point by the toilet so there really aren't straight lines and flat surfaces.

I assume this has been going on for years. There's a curious smell in the between-wall spaces under the bathroom that I assume is fecal in nature but doesn't exactly smell like the 'real thing' [or Coke].

The pipes for the toilet are at this point ABS.

I'm thinking I have to rebuild some sort of flat base for it... but what to do with the pipes that are aligned for the current base?

Assistance please?

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Have you removed the toilet yet to see what the condition is? The ABS is relatively new and may be in good enough shape that you don't have to change it. Can you replace some of the floorboards and shim then to proper height? Wax seal would have to be new of course.

[xrongor]

it sounds to me like when someone redid the plumbing they didnt vent the stack through the roof properly and you may simply find an open vent pipe in the wall.... this is somewhat common with do it yourelf plumbers who realize too late they are going to need to put a hole in their roof.

something to look into anyway..

[Terry]

"xrongor" wrote in message news:clbmdh$n99$ [e-mail]...

To dou ga: Or slight leakage of moisture is causing mouldiness? Worst case you might have some rot within the floor which might cause a mouldy/musty smell? BTW there may be enough play in the pipe that to you can pull up the flange up slightly to get it at floor level; and/or also you might be able to use two wax seals, messy but doable, if it is a bit uneven? Putting something hot down toilet it can soften wax seals and then they can leak. Last time we 'did' our toilet, we used, for the first time a sponge rubber seal about $5, instead of wax; so far (about a year) it's working fine. It was easily reusable because we had to remove and reinstall our toilet twice more while otherwise rebuilding our one and only bathroom!' When you gotta go, you gotta go'. Mention this also; the plastic floor flange of our ABS pipe has slots into which heads of the two bolts that hold down the toilet are fitted. Slot on one side of our flange was broken. Fortunately, with an unfinished basement ceiling we can get at the underside of the floor; so we have fitted longer stainless steel bolts up through the plywood flooring and the flange and have used stainless steel washers and nuts on the toilet base. Stainless seems to corrode less than even brass. Any help? xrongor comment about a missing vent is also a good suggestion. Seen that! With apologies for length of this post; our first house did not have sufficient thickness in the wall between kitchen and bathroom to run a three inch vent up to the roof. So at floor level we adapted to one and half inch pipe, actually a ten foot length of heavy galvanized and ran that up and through the roof., it worked fine for over 12 years and AFIK it's still there venting away!

[dougga]

thanks for all the information. I'll investigate the newfangled seals

[dougga]

It's a 1916 house with relatively new ABS pipes. The toilet has been up recently and they look pretty good. Floorboards would be quite a problem... the floors are period tile that would require a great deal of work to reset... but it's possible, certainly.

[Kathy]

try using 2 wax seals