Have you ever sat on your toilet and noticed it felt a little loose, or that is rocked just a “tad” bit? Have you ever seen a little water around the base of the toilet and thought, “it was probably from the shower?”
If any of these sound familiar and you just ignored those signs then this is too important to skip. You might look at those as small issues but they could be a much bigger signal to something more important. It could be time to replace your wax ring. You might be asking “What is a wax ring and why should I care?” Now is a good time to go over why its important.
A toilet is a fixture that get’s a large amount of use in any home. Typically they are bolted to your floor with two bolts into a plastic flange. The flange is usually at or above your floor height. If you have added new floors in your home then the flange is probably at floor height. While the bolts are the only items holding your toilet to the floor, there is a wax seal that is just as important. The wax seal is a round piece of wax that seals your toilet to the flange to allow for water and waste to travel from the toilet into the drain and keep the water from leaking onto your floor. Usually a wax seal would last the life of a toilet, but if you ever removed your toilet or it started rocking than you must replace the wax seal.
If your toilet is rocking, or you see any water around the base of your toilet now is a good time to replace the wax seal. The good news is wax seals are pretty cheap…..usually around $5 at any hardware store. I always recommend using the jumbo wax seals….a couple extra dollars for more wax is cheap insurance. You can NOT reuse a seal, don’t attempt it! Once your toilet is reinstalled a good idea is to caulk around the base of the toilet but leave the rear of the toilet bare. If you ever have a seal go bad and water does leak you will see it come out of the rear base of the toilet which will give you plenty of notice that something is wrong. If the entire base is caulked the water only has one way to go and that’s down and through your sub-floor. Once this happens you have made a simple $5 repair into a $500 repair requiring your flooring to be ripped out and replaced.
Here is the after effect of a leaking seal and the water destroying the sub-floor. I spent 6 hours this past weekend helping a friend replace their sub-floor as a result of a wax seal failing. They noticed the toilet was a little loose but didn’t think much of it.