Well, is there anything worse than a leaking toilet bowl or a leaking toilet base? In my
opinion, no. Especially because when you flush it, there’s probably you-know-what in it,
and it’s disgusting. So in this video, I’m going to show you several tips on how to fix
a leaking toilet bowl or base. We’re going to go over the different kinds of flanges
that you can use, how to install the wax ring, and several other tips that will help you
out with this process. It’s going to save you a ton of money. And in the end, you’re
going to be well-informed; you’re going to be able to make the right decision when
it comes to doing this project. So let’s dive into it right now.
Let’s cut to the chase. If your toilet bowl or toilet base is leaking, it’s probably
because of three things. Number one: your wax ring has gone bad. Number two: your closet
flange is messed up in some way, shape, or form. Or number three: your toilet bowl is
actually cracked, and it needs to be replaced—that’s actually the worst case scenario in my opinion.
The first two, we can fix easily; it’s not a problem. And what I really want to go to
first is your closet flange. So I put together a lot of different closet
flanges here in setups that you might want to consider. The first closet flange is if
you’re putting in a new waste stack. This is for a PVC waste stack. Just make sure you
get the right size closet flange that corresponds to the waste pipe you’re using. And it’s
got a metal closet flange around it. This one’s a little bit different; it’s offset
a little bit. So if you need to move your toilet a little bit farther away from the
wall, you can use this one. So I wanted to make sure you knew that this was an option.
This flange is actually a 4” gasketed closet flange. So this is the gasket right here.
This is made by Sioux Chief. , and you can buy this at Home Depot or your local hardware
store. This is meant for if you’ve got a large pipe that’s made out of cast iron.
You can slide this down into the cast iron pipe, and then you can affix this to your
finished floor. This is just a plain ring that you can get at the local home stores.
So if this is the only thing that you need to replace, you do have the option of getting
this. Now I wanted to give you one tidbit: I don’t like steel. Actually the last few
that I showed you that had steel in them, I just don’t like them because they’re
going to rust out. And over time, they’re going to corrode. This is a toilet flange
repair ring. So what you can do is you basically break off the old ring, and then you put this
around your existing pipe. And it is fast; it’s easy. Makes it so much more affordable
to replace the ring than this top portion of your pipe. So these also exist in home
stores. This is what’s called a closet flange spacer. This one’s made by Oatey. This is
about ½” thick spacer. And this is meant to go on top of the closet flange that is
recessed or down below or even even with your finish floor. So you can use this spacer to
raise up the closet flange—I’ll show you how to do that today. Now this is a ¾”
spacer by Sioux Chief, and you can use it to do the exact same thing, that is, raise
up the closet flange. It’s called raiser ring. These are a few bucks. They’re also
called closet flange spacer rings, and they’re really easy to use. And we’ll get into that
shortly. Before you remove your toilet, make sure to
get the rough-in measurement. The rough-in measurement is the distance from the wall—not
the baseboard, but the wall—to the closet flange bolt. Now this is a new installation;
the toilet hasn’t been installed yet. Although our closet flange is flush with the floor,
again, I’ll tell you more about that in a second. So what you would do is measure
from the wall to where your bolts are in the closet flange. They’re usually 12”; that’s
the most common measurement. Just make sure you note that before you take the toilet off
and buy a new toilet. You need to know the rough-in measurement.
If you have trouble removing your closet flange bolts, you do not have to break the toilet
to get it off the floor. You can either use a mini hacksaw to cut below the closet flange
nuts, or you can use an oscillating multi-tool like this one here. This is the Fein MultiMaster.
Just use a metal blade or attachment. What you do is you slide this under the nut, and
you cut the bolt off underneath the nut, then you can remove the toilet. So you can use
an oscillating multi-tool to do this, or you can use a little mini hacksaw. You don’t
have to break the toilet. Another big tip I have for you is to use Oatey
LiquiLock. You can find this in home stores. Plunge all the water out of your bowl, and
then pour this into it. And what will happen is the water will congeal; it becomes a gel.
You won’t leak any water on your finish floor. Toilet water is disgusting. You can
use this to prevent any drips of toilet water on your floor, in your bathroom, or throughout
your home. So just Oatey LiquiLock. Like I said, the number one problem for leaking
toilet bowls or bases is the wax ring. If your toilet is really old, and you’ve never
replaced the wax ring—let’s say it’s 10, 15, 20, 30 years old, and you’ve never
replaced the wax ring—if it starts to leak underneath the base, chances are you just
need to go the store and buy a $5/$6/$7 dollar wax ring. They come in different varieties.
This is a reinforced XL wax bowl ring kit. Now it actually has a horn on it—let me
show you. So this is the horn here; it’s a little plastic horn. I don’t necessarily
recommend this because this restricts the flow when you flush the toilet, and that’s
not necessarily a great thing. If you can find a reinforced XL wax ring without the
horn on it, that’s the way to go. This is just a standard wax ring right here, and you
can buy these at any home store. And there’s no plastic horn around it. And this is the
one that I would use. I would prefer to have one that’s a little bit thicker or taller.
So anyhow, these are two different kinds of wax rings that you have. If all you have to
do is replace the wax ring, my recommendation is to peel it off from this plastic case here
and then put it on top of your closet flange. That’s the way I like to do it. Then you
can line up your closet flange bolts with your rough-in dimension, and then sit the
toilet bowl on top of this wax ring. The second reason why toilets leak is this
one—and this is a secret that my plumbers shared with me a long time ago. Charlie Henderson
is his name; he’s here in Pittsburgh. And that is: to make sure that your closet flange
is at least ¼” above the finish floor. I’m going to repeat that. Your closet flange
should be about ¼” above the finished floor. So if you have a tiled floor like we have
here, the best thing that you could do is make sure that the closet flange sits right
on top of that floor. So what do you do though if your closet flange
is even with the floor or a little bit below it? If your closet flange is below the finish
floor, the best thing you can do is to use these closet flange spacer rings. You can
just stack them right on top of the existing closet flange. Of course if your flange is
dirty or it has wax on it, you want to clean it off as much as you can. And then what you’re
going to do is put a bead of silicone sealant right here on the closet flange and on the
bottom of the extender ring. You’re going to sandwich them together like so.
Here’s the silicone sealant that I would recommend you use—or something like it.
This is GE in white. It’s 100% silicone and has a 10-year mold free product protection.
And so what you would do, again, is just put your silicone sealant on the existing closet
flange, on the bottom of the closet flange spacer ring or extension ring, sandwich them
together, and then you would attach it using either decking screws, stainless steel screws,
or if you got cement board underneath your tile, I would recommend that you use the alkali
resistant screws that you use to fix that cement board to the subfloor. So that’s
how you would do that. If you are going to be using one of these
rings, I recommend that you get an extra toilet closet flange bolt set, and you get them extra
long. So in this case, this is a 5/16” x 3 ½” brass bolt set. You can see they’re
really, really long. And the reason why you want that to be the case is when you put this
flange on top of here, it’s going to effectively reduce the height of your bolt. So you want
the bolt to go up through both flanges and up through the toilet bowl itself. And you
can always cut these off with a mini hacksaw or an oscillating multi-tool. So always get
extra long closet flange bolts because usually when you get a toilet or a wax ring, the closet
flange bolts are pretty small. I think these are only 2 ½” or 2” bolts. So you want
to get extra long ones. By the way, I have another video that shows
you how to install these rings, and you can watch it right here.
Well that’s it. That’s how you fix a leaking toilet bowl or a leaking toilet base. If you’ve
got a question, ask it down below in the comments either here on YouTube or back on over at
HomeRepairTutor.com, which is home base for me. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel
because we come out with a new do-it-yourself home improvement video every single week.
So click the subscribe button to subscribe to our channel. And guess what, we also have
a free DIY bathroom remodeling video series back on over at HomeRepairTutor.com. So if
you go to HomeRepairTutor.com, you can check that out for yourself. It’s pretty awesome.
We show you how to demo a bathroom, install a new bathtub, begin the cement board installation,
we go over different materials. It’s phenomenal. I know that you would like it. So you can
check that out back on over at Home Repair Tutor.
So that’s it for this week. Again if you’ve got a question, ask it down below. I can totally
identify with you. If you’ve got a leaking toilet bowl, it’s very frustrating. I’d
be more than happy to try and help you out that.
Take care, have a great day, I’ll talk to you soon.