Pro Handyman Blog

If you have never replaced a toilet before, it can make you a little apprehensive. After all, these are bulky, heavy items, and if you install it incorrectly you may end up with a mess on your hands. So it makes sense to be as prepared as possible.

The moment of truth comes when you are straddling the toilet trying to place the holes in the base over the bolts sticking up from the floor. Once the toilet is resting on the floor and the wax ring has been compressed, many installers will apply a bead of caulking in between the floor and the base of the toilet. Instead of caulking, I like using plaster-of-paris.

I generally mix up a batch of plaster-of-paris and lay it around the footprint of the toilet before the toilet is set on the floor. There is some guesswork if you cant see the footprint from the old location, but you can get a general idea of the location and then slop some around the area. When you set the toilet into the plaster-of-paris, tighten the toilet bolts and use a damp sponge to wipe away the excess. Plaster-of-paris dries white, and so if your toilet is white, the finish will be seamless. It will fill in any voids or gaps in between the floor and the base for a flawless finish.

If one of your toilet tank bolts has corroded and broken, you will likely get a leak in between the tank and the bowl. You will need new bolts and the kit will include washers and nuts.

Turn the water off to the toilet, flush it and disconnect the water supply line. You probably don’t have to disconnect the supply line, but if thinks go wrong you could kink the line, so don’t risk it. Dab any remaining water out of the tank and remove the bolts. You may have to tap on the bottom of them to get them to pop out of the holes. Once the bolts are out, scrape any remnants of the old rubber washers from the bottom of the tank.

The kit will come with a diagram for the order of washers. You want to slide a metal washer on the bolt first, and then the rubber washer. This will apply more bearing pressure against the rubber to stop any leaks. You will want to tighten the nuts enough to stop any leaks, but not so tight that you crack the porcelain. I usually push down on the tank enough to compress the spud gasket and make tightening the nuts easier. You can to this to each side of the tank until everything is tight and leak free.

Reinstall the supply line and turn the water back on. Give it a couple of flushes and check for any leaks.

I was looking at a customer’s toilet yesterday because he was complaining it was running. He said it didn’t run all the time, but when it did run it wouldn’t stop. This was a Kohler low-boy toilet, but that didn’t matter, the problem can happen with all makes and models of toilets. Although the toilet wasn’t running at that moment, he showed me the toilet and removed the lid. The problem was pretty obvious to me, but not so obvious to the customer.

When you install a new toilet flapper, you have to adjust it so that it lifts up high enough to allow enough water into the bowl, but not so high that it gets hung up on something (there are flappers that allow you to rotate a dial on the flapper for this). The chain that connects the handle to the flapper is the problem.

Once you adjust the flapper, there will be a length of chain hanging down. If the chain is long enough, it can drop in between the flapper and the flush valve (this is where the flapper rests. This creates a small gap for water to run through, and this was the case for this particular customer. To fix this, you can either trim the chain with wire cutters, or loop it back over the fastener where it connects to the handle. This is a 1 minute fix that will save lots of water.

Unclogging your toilet can be messy. Most people think of nasty toilet augers, or at the very least a plunger, and how dirty their hands will get. Well before you start putting on the gloves, you might try the old bucket trick.

A five gallon bucket works well because it can hold plenty of water. If all you have is a small household bucket, give it a shot. I usually fill the 5-gallon bucket about half full and hold it at waist level. The higher you hold it, the more force the water will exert into the bowl. Also, this works best if the water in the bowl is at a low level. If the water is near the rim of the bowl, don’t do it. Ideally, you want as little water remaining in the toilet bowl as possible.

The trick here is to dump a large volume of water into the trap of the toilet. This will hopefully push the clog through the trap and into the drain to the sewer. The higher you hold the bucket, the more force you get, but also the less accurate you will be. If it works, you will see the level in the bowl rise and then everything will go down the drain. Use your best judgment, if you see the level in the bowl approaching the rim, stop pouring.

You want a sudden rush of water to enter the trap, so don’t gently pour it. Dump the water accurately into the trap and cross your fingers. If it doesn’t work, you can put on the gloves and use the plunger or snake.

We are a North Las Vegas handyman service doing a variety of repairs throughout the Las Vegas valley. The other day a customer was having a problem with a toilet that continuously ran empty. He would flush the toilet and everything would operate normally. When he returned several hours later, the bowl would have no water in it. He figured he had a leak and started to replace parts in the tank.

Replacing toilet tank parts, such as the fill valve and flapper, are fine but that won’t help the problem of the toilet bowl running dry. Toilet tank parts have to do with the water in the tank, either starting or stopping the flow of water or refilling the tank. Changing the tank parts won’t have any bearing on the bowl holding water.

Although there are instances of a blocked vent actually siphoning water from the toilet bowl, in this case the toilet bowl actually had a crack in the bottom of it. Once the customer flushed the toilet and it stopped refilling, everything seemed normal. Slowly the water would drain out of the crack and into the drain…it didn’t even leak on the floor as the crack was right over the drain. The fix here was to replace the toilet bowl. We were able to line up the bolt pattern and re-use the tank on top of the new bowl.

Toilet leaks can have many causes. Its pretty common that there will all of a sudden be water on the floor around the toilet. What caused it? That is for you to find out. I would start out looking at the valve on the wall and follow it up to the tank. Look carefully as water can leak very slowly. Grab some toilet paper and touch the parts with it. Toilet paper will turn wet with the slightest amount of water and so it is a good test to find the leak.

If everything appears dry at the valve and supply line, move to where the tank connects to the bowl. This is a leak prone area where either the tank bolts corrode and break, or someone leans back on the toilet and cracks the tank. Flush the toilet and check for leaks. It may be that you need to remove the toilet tank and replace the spud and bolts and washers.

If all of this appears to be water tight, you probably have to replace the wax ring and bolts. The wax ring is found underneath the toilet bowl and so you need to disconnect the water supply and physically remove the toilet from the floor. Here is an article on how to replace a toilet wax ring and bolts.

Jiggling the toilet handle is a nuisance. You flush the toilet and it continues to run and run. There are several possible reasons for this but one I’ve run into often is that the chain is getting hung up in the flapper. Sure, you could replace the flapper. It’s cheap and easy and will probably fix the problem. But before you spend your $3.00 on that, do a little troubleshooting first.

A toilet flapper is a fickle thing. On a flimsy flapper, sometimes it gets pulled off to the side when flushed and the ear becomes elongated. This will allow it not to seat properly to stop the water from entering the bowl. A new flapper will cure this.

When you troubleshoot the problem, watch what happens to the chain that connects the toilet handle to the flapper. In many cases, there is a length of unused chain that just hangs down. This section is so long that it actually impedes the operation of the flapper by wedging itself in between the flapper and the seat where it rests. This allows water to continually pass from the tank to the bowl. When the water in the bowl gets too low, the tank refills and you hear the sound of running water. You can take this long section of chain and either cut it short so that it won’t interfere with the flapper, or clip the free end where it connects to the handle.

A loose toilet seat can be very frustrating. Sometimes they are leaning off to the side of the toilet bowl, and it looks like it is hanging on by a thread. There are a couple of reasons for this, but each is an easy fix.

Toilet seats are hinged at the rear and connect to the toilet bowl by some long plastic bolts. These bolts connect to hinges and the hinges have small screws that attach the toilet seat to the hinge. You can check to make sure these small screws are tight and that the seat is secure to the hinge, but that isn’t likely the problem.

Typically, the problem is with the toilet seat bolts. The nut that threads onto these plastic bolts has probably become loose and simply needs tightening. You will need to reach under the rear of the bowl to tighten this nut. I would recommend rubber gloves as this is a dirty area to work around. You can pry the cap off of the cover that conceals the bolt from the top and place a standard screw driver into the groove and then either turn the nut by hand or hold the nut still and turn the bolt with the screwdriver.

There are some toilets seats that secure to the bowl by rotating the mechanisms at the rear of the seat. These are intended to make removing the seat easy, for cleaning, but can quickly cause a seat to become loose. They usually rotate 90-degrees to one side to remove the seat, and when pushed inline will hold the seat secure.

 I had a customer call about his toilet not flushing, He had enough common sense to remove the lid to the tank and look inside. He found the chain was disconnected and he couldn’t get it to reconnect to the toilet flapper. Folks, with something like this, if the hook on the chain won’t connect to the flapper, don’t screw around with it. Just go buy a new flapper with chain. The customer was talking about using duct tape to hold it together (in the water mind you).

The toilet flapper and chain are purchased as one unit. Buy one and throw it in. The old flapper is connected to some ears on the flush valve overflow tube. Lift the flapper off of these ears and set the new one in it’s place. Make sure the seat that the flapper will rest against is nice and smooth. If it is pitted it will allow water to pass from the tank to the bowl and the toilet will flush intermittently and drive you crazy.

All that is left is to lengthen or shorten the chain so that when you push the toilet handle, the flapper lifts and allows the toilet tank water to rush into the bowl.

Sooner or later, your toilet paper holder will become loose. It is an easy fix if you have the right tools.

A toilet paper holder is basically two metal arms that attach to the wall via some metal brackets. The metal brackets attach to the wall and the toilet paper holder arms secure under a lip on each bracket with a tiny setscrew. Either the setscrew has become loose at the bracket, or the bracket has become loose at the wall.

Start with the easy stuff first. Use a tiny standard screwdriver and give the setscrew a few turns. If this tightens everything up, you are done. If the setscrew becomes tight or is already tight, you will need to unscrew it and remove the arm because the bracket is loose at the wall.

This is very common because the brackets rarely seem to go into a wall stud, combined with the fact that the toilet paper holders take a lot of abuse. Use a larger wall anchor and screw and secure the bracket back into the wall. For a lot of holding power, use an EZ anchor. These have very large threads that give superior holding strength in the wall.

Once the anchor is in, screw the bracket to the anchor and finally the setscrew under the bracket.