Another eye-opening bodge job.

[A.Lee]

I got a call today from a customer, "will you go to XX to see why their toilet is leaking"

Anyway, I went round this evening, to see a towel on the floor, under the outlet pipe. "It only leaks when we flush" Ok, I don my gloves and get down to have a look. Yep, it is dripping from around the outlet, and it's clear to see why - whoever had put it in (it looks a fairly new bathroom fitting), instead of using a rubber seal and joint, from the toilet to the soil pipe, had just butted the toilet outlet to the soil pipe, and siliconed around it

- around an inch wide silicone seal!

I just cannot understand why someone would do that - the bathroom looked very nice, and rather expensive, yet instead of spending £5 on a rubber joint, they used £1 of silicone. At least it is more income for me if I get the job to replace it. Alan.

[stevelup]

It's unlikely to have been about money... I expect that it got to the last minute before the fitter realised the rubber bit was missing so he bodged it rather than going out to buy one. They normally come with the cistern kits (at least they have done on the last two I bought) - so I'm guessing he was expecting there to be one.

Steve

[Stuart B]

Are you thinking he means the rubber doughnut under the cistern where it connects to the pan ? I think OP means where the toilet pan outlet meets the soil pipe at or near floor level . I could be wrong tho' Stuart .

[Geoff Berrow]

Message-ID: from stevelup contained the following:

We came across one like that in our new house. We couldn't understand why the skirting was cut away til we realised that there used to be a door way that had been blocked up. As the fitted carpet went into the doorway the skirting had been cut to fit on top of the carpet rather than refit the carpet to the new skirting,

[terry]

Here we normally use a wax seal between base of toilet and the soil pipe flange. But the last time we had our toilet up/off the soil pipe we found (Less than $5 Canadian IIRC) and used a spongy rubber doughnut designed for the purpose instead; which seems to have worked fine for last few years. See PS. We often kept a spare wax seal in the bathroom vanity; for those occasions, usually late at night on a long holiday weekend when the stores won't be open until the following Tuesday morning and it becomes necessary to lift the toilet. With only one toilet in the house having the loo working again even at 2.00AM beats using a bucket! Or .................... BTW anybody remember the 'Guzunder'? i.e. "Goes under the bed"! :-) PS. We also found that the slotted locations in the plastic soil pipe flange into which the toilet bolts normally fit were broken (possibly over-tightened some time?). So we installed longer stainless steel bolts right through the flooring and the pipe flange. We could dot his because we have an unfinished basement area below. Stainless bolts were available and should make it easier to remove if/ever/when it is necessary to once again lift the toilet.