Call for Help, My Toilet Bowl Is Leaking!

Brian, I need your help!

I received a call from Don, one of my students. He had water leaking from one of the toilets in his house. He needed a little TLC. I’ll let Don tell the story.

“Several months ago, one of my bathroom toilets began having an accumulation of about one or two tablespoons of water on the floor next to the base of the toilet. Since it was so little water, and I was having trouble locating a matching green toilet in case it cracked while replacing the wax ring, I never got around to replacing  the wax ring,  which a neighbor had recommended. Then, with no intervention on my part, the water accumulation stopped!  I wasn’t comfortable forgetting about it completely, since it didn’t seem possible that the toilet fixed itself.  So I contacted Brian and asked him if it was okay to do nothing, unless the leak returns,  or was I asking for trouble that I was not aware of. After trying to diagnose the problem from my answers to several questions, Brian said, “I’ll be in the area where you live tomorrow.  Let me just stop by and look at it.”  After  Brian looked at it, he quickly noticed that there was a very slow leak from the tank onto the hose. He quickly tightened the nut and the leak disappeared completely after that. I was extremely grateful to Brian that I did not unnecessarily change the wax ring, risking the old toilet cracking, and that the leak stopped with a two minute tightening a nut next to the tank.  However, I still don’t understand why the water accumulation originally was alongside the toilet rather than under the tank, but more importantly I saved a lot of time and money with Brian’s help. ” 

– Don

If you need to find out the present condition of your home, schedule a Periodic Home Inspection with us.