Finicky Flusher

I have 2 American Standard Cadet elongated right heights about 5 yrs old. One flushes fine (except w/large load) the other flushes fine 3-4 times then just swirls the water and level never drops 3-4 times I switched the tanks between the two, bad bowl still bad. I switched the entire toilets between bathrooms, bad bowl still bad. I can pour 10 cups of water in the bowl and it flushes fast and strong. I cleaned the holes in bowl w/coat hanger and poured a gallon of muriatic acid through the tank hole and let it sit in the bowl for an hour. Test it, flushes great, hey honey its fixed! She tries it, won't even lower water level in an empty bowl. A few times flushes fine, then nothing. Time for a sledge hammer?

You can try a closet auger and try to clear the trapway.

Those Cadets from five years ago were not very good to start with.
I'm impressed that you are spending so much time on junk.

The were a bad design when new, and were never intended to be anything else.

Right, time for the sledge hammer. Its probably too late for my situation but are there any repercussions for a company with defective designs like that?

skimmy said:

are there any repercussions for a company with defective designs like that?

Click to expand...

Well, professionals won't touch them, so they're out of the professionally installed upgrade market entirely. But I bet that's a small part of the overall market.

Big boxes will carry them and DIYers will keep buying them cuz they're cheap, and often neither know when the functioning of the units is right or wrong -- barring total failure -- so many bad ones slip through.

I would certainly encourage anyone with a bad toilet to let the retailer and manufacturer know -- return it, create a hassle for the mfg and retailer. But I think it would take builders doing a lot of returns on batches of bad toilets to really get an outfit like AS to shape up.

Unfortunately, the toilet seemed to work OK for a couple years before it showed it's true colors so the box and receipt were long gone. I'll send some feedback to AS though. Hopefully, review sites and forums like this can make others aware of bad manufacturers. I googled to see if anyone was calling out those models as defective but didn't find anything. Still curious how it can flush perfectly several times and then no flush at all.

Save the effort notifying them of their crappy products. They know it, it's their intent. The have outsourced to third world countries and have limited quality control because they know they will sell their garbage. Toto does make their toilets in several countries also, but the difference is Toto has strict quality controls so that their products are always top quality. The Asians and other foreign countries are quite capable of producing high quality products, but unless the parent company oversees the quality control, it doesn't happen. Same can be said for Made in America products. Unless high quality is insisted upon, the bottom line usually wins. Sadly, some of the worst offenders are well known brand names that earned a good reputation in the "old days" and they are just living off it. Many people think that clogs, plunging, double flushing, etc. are just the price of conservation when in reality, a well designed toilet will perform quite well within low flow guidelines. It is true you do have to pay a bit more for this quality, but most of us believe that buying quality pays in the long run.

Still curious how it can flush perfectly several times and then no flush at all.

Click to expand...

More than likely, there is something in the trapway, that occasionally will catch on things.

If you can auger to trouble out, fine.
Sometimes, the sharp bends of the trapway prevent that.

I had one like that too. It worked fine when new, and then one day it was useless. I never did figure out what happened. I augered it from both ends, and never found the problem.

So even though I know better, I will sometimes go through the same thing. I will put in junk, use it for a while, and then write about it.
I don't leave them in long though.

I don't think its the trap because it will flush great every time if I pour just 10 cups of water directly in the bowl and all test flushes are water only so nothing to get caught sometimes. If the model is a bad design why does the other one flush fine every time? Two bowls purchased at the same time (same lot?), one works in ether bathroom with ether tank, the other has trouble in ether bathroom with ether tank. Seems the water is not moving from the tank input to the bowl fast enough but why one flush perfect, the next no suction, next one perfect, then nothing, then perfect, etc. Its not that I'm against getting a better quality product but I've done that with other things and it didn't solve the problem because I was doing something wrong.

American Standard can vary greatly between individual parts.
They are hand made from clay.

I don't know if you had art in school, but clay can sag as it dries.
It's not uncommon for differences during the production process.

The fact that one bowl is giving you problems, then I would just replace the bowl.

Except that you may not be able to find the matching bowl to the tank that you currently have.
We're talking about a $80 toilet, right?
You will spend more time looking for a replacement bowl from American Standard, then you would if you just replaced tank and bowl.

I sell and replace about three thousand toilets a year.
None of those in the $80 range.
I replace a lot of builder $80 toilets.
What I replace with, runs about $240 and up.
And those work!

More than likely, there is something in the trapway, that occasionally will catch on things.
If you can auger or plunge it out, fine.

Click to expand...

toilet

Toilets do NOT work fine for a few years and then suddenly decide to change. They either work fine from the start and stay that way for decades, or they do not work from the start and never get any better. SOMETHING caused it, but without seeing the toilet we cannot tell you what that was.

Pouring water in a toilet doesn't prove anything except that the drain line isn't plugged. Flush 40 squares of toilet paper back to back. If it won't take it, probably something in the trap.

toilet

Pouring 5 gallons of water into a 1.6 gpf toilet, definitely does not tell you whether the toilet is flushing properly or not when flushed normally. It will tell you that the line is open, and that the toilet SHOULD flush properly, but not why it doesn't.

An old plumber around here used to wad up paper towels.
If he could get paper towels through, he was happy.

Here is what I found when I took out this bowl.
Someone had flushed a measuring cup down the toilet.
The homeowner thought the plug was in his main line, but as you can see, the plug was in the trapway of the bowl.

That is one strange recipe, asking for 2 cups of . . .