Is It Time to Replace Your Cracked Toilet?

The Scenario: When to replace your cracked toilet

Isn’t it annoying when you step into the bathroom and your foot is suddenly soaked in a puddle of water? Tracing back the source, you realise all that water is coming from the base of your toilet. If this is the case, then you may have a leaky toilet.

Though in some cases the porcelain may be compromised, this is not bound to happen without you being aware of cracks on your toilet. You’d have to hit the toilet really hard to leave a crack.

The Leak

Generally speaking, the leak may be caused by a compromised wax ring. This happens when a toilet is loosely bolted to the floor, causing it to rock a little while a person sits on the toilet. Overtime, this gentle rocking motion will rock the wax ring loose. Not to worry though, because this is something that you can easily fix.

Step 1 – Taking out the Toilet

Cut off the water supply to the toilet and deplete the stored water inside the tank by flushing it. Once empty, disconnect the water supply and loosen the bolts that hold the toilet to the floor. Once the bolts have been loosened, simply lift up the toilet and you’ll see a drain pipe. You should see the old wax ring on the floor, and you can remove this with a scraping tool.

Step 2 – Putting the Toilet Back

I am going to safely assume that you bought a new wax ring prior to doing your leaky toilet repair. A new ring should not cost you more than $3.00. Put the new ring in place and put the toilet back in. Push down on the toilet real hard to make sure that the wax ring is completely seated and bolt it back into place tightly to make sure that it won’t rock. Don’t tighten the bolt too much since this could cause your porcelain to crack.

A leaky toilet repair is very easy to do once you know the operating principles of a toilet. This is just the basic toilet repair that one can do which is very cheap to maintain and easy to do. Also, keep in mind that when working with toilets, always make sure to wear gloves. If the toilet still leaks, give us a call. We’d be happy to help.