Toilet question

The toilet is leaking again around the base.

h2o

It is something, but probably not condensation. The toilet should be firm so that you could not push it.

The "silicone around the floor" thing bothers me. Maybe it's a personal thing, but I've never sealed the toilet to the floor in any of the toilets I've installed. (Full disclosure: I can count them without taking off my socks.) If the seal fails, I want to know about it pronto, and I don't like the look of silicone or caulk around the toilet base.

I'll let others comment on the $400, but I think you got ripped off. As for trying a new toilet, the shape of the toilet, as seen by the casual user, has little to do with how it sets on the flange -- that's pretty standard, in my limited experience. If that many attempts to set it properly have failed, there may be something fundamentally wrong with the waste piping and/or flange. The gob of silicone looks to me like an attempt to conceal a job that was expected to fail.

If you're feeling adventurous, and there's a backup toilet in the house, you could take up the toilet, clean up the mess you're sure to find, and post a picture and detailed description of the flange and its condition, as well as the surrounding floor, and the experts here can probably talk you through a proper job of re-setting the thing yourself. If the flange and/or floor have serious problems (e.g., the flange wobbles around, slots for the bolts no longer can hold the bolts), all bets are off.

-mike

Or maybe it's just a bad casting on the Kohler Cimarron toilet.

The last one I installed leaked out the front of the bowl about 8" above the floor line.

Three plumbers to install one toilet?
I'm thinking you have a bad bowl.

Cookie, find someone who sells Caroma toilets and get the Caravell 270 or Tasman 270. They are basicly the same but the Tasman has a plastic tank and is less $$$. It is impossible for them to leak from the flange unless you have an earthquake, and then I'm not sure they would.

The way they are designed I think your leaking problems, from the flange area, will be over.

They are easy to keep clean from a design stand point and are dual flush.

Just a suggestion.


The Caroma Sydney comfort height round 270 bowl

toilet

Your situation reminds me of one I had years ago. A neighbor called and said he had set the toilet about 5 times and it still leaked, and asked if I would come over and do it "right". As soon as I removed the tank, I told him the toilet was defective and would always leak, because it had Kohler's marking for a defective casting. When I turned it over, the entire bottom of the toilet was not fused so any water going in the top came out the bottom onto the floor. When he asked what he should do, I told him to take it back to HD and tell them he wanted one that was not defective. Kohler says they destroy ALL toilets that they find to be defective, but HD and other big boxes seem to be able to get them. Something like this could be your problem, because I have had toilets, that the manufacturer "patched" and sent out, start leaking years later when the patch failed.

I sell all the brands, and Toto has the fewest defects.

I don't know how they do it.

I'm sure with Terry on this. Setting a toilet is not rocket science, and after this many times, there has to be something besides installation error. Sure, it can be done wrong, so maybe once I could understand, but not an on going problem. I think we can all understand that a plumbers time on even a super simple task like this is going to cost, but you got jabbed pretty good by that first dude. Good suggestion about the blue paper shop towels. I use them as an alternative to cloth towels or rags in my shop for most things anyway.