Royal Doulton Toilet Pan

[chrisjshaw]

Hi Folks. My toilet pan has an outlet pipe which can be set to any angle when viewed from above; this is achieved with a two part pan construction to allow rota tion. The seal between the two parts is starting to leak and I am hoping fo r some advice on the type of sealant to use to fix the problem before I tak e it apart!

The pan was made by Royal Doulton and was probably installed at new build i n the late 1940s; as far as I can tell from the outside, its a putty or cem ent type sealing material. I have wondered about just raking out the joint from outside the bowl and squeezing some silicone in, but this would not be how it was intended to seal.

All suggestions appreciated.

Chris

[newshound]

All depends on how much access you have, and how much effort you are prepared to put in. Taking it out, disassembling, cleaning thoroughly, and reassembling would be the Rolls Royce solution which would probably give you another 75 years or more. No reason not to reassemble with silicone which provides a little flexibility if the two sides move.

But raking out and replacing with silicone might well provide an easy fix, especially if the leak is slight. The problem is, can you rake deep enough for the silicone to "key" into the joint. Also, is the failure in the putty (possibly plumbers' "mait") gradually spreading round the joint.

If the geometry is favourable, and it is not particularly visible, I've got away in the past by wrapping slightly leaky joints with white pvc (electrician's) tape, applied under some tension. I've never actually done this on a soil pipe, but I have done it for various dirty sink wastes. I've also done this where I had to join "old size" and "new size" plastic waste pipes telescoped together rather than employ a bulky adaptor.

If it is not visible at all, some of the adhesive tapes sold for repairing greenhouses and the like are very effective. These include fairly thick aluminium foil, stickly backed, or the coarse fabric heavily impregnated with sticky, smelly goo (Denso tape or similar).

[Graham.]

Not had much luck with PVC tape with pipework. Much better results with self amalgamating tape