Home Improvement

I'll take pics later, full basement

Came home, house smelled bad. Go into bathroom and open lid, smells way worse. Piss into water and now the smell is bad. Flush toilet smell starts fading.

Totally not the sink. Do you want pics of the toilet pipes?

Maybe someone left you an upper decker. (Shit in the tank of your toilet)

Noodleface said:

Came home, house smelled bad. Go into bathroom and open lid, smells way worse. Piss into water and now the smell is bad. Flush toilet smell starts fading.

Totally not the sink. Do you want pics of the toilet pipes?

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Yeah, easy cheap thing to try then is lift the toilet and put in a new wax seal.

Question - is your bathroom tiled? Sometimes, standard wax seals are not adequate for tiled floors. They have extra thick ones, or you can use two.

It has begun!

lurkingdirk said:

Yeah, easy cheap thing to try then is lift the toilet and put in a new wax seal.

Question - is your bathroom tiled? Sometimes, standard wax seals are not adequate for tiled floors. They have extra thick ones, or you can use two.

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It is tiled. How hard is this?

Noodleface said:

It is tiled. How hard is this?

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Not hard, unscrew some bolts, take the back tank off, lean the toilet over, replace wax ring, put toilet back, redo caulk, redo bolts, done. This is harder if you don't have a water shutoff right at the toilet though.

Hatorade said:

Not hard, unscrew some bolts, take the back tank off, lean the toilet over, replace wax ring, put toilet back, redo caulk, redo bolts, done. This is harder if you don't have a water shutoff right at the toilet though.

Click to expand...

Yeah, what he said. You can do this, there are just a couple things to remember:
1. turn the water off at the toilet if there is a shutoff there. Often, older shut off valves will start dripping when you touch them. Put a container to collect it while you work and check if for a few days when you're done hooking it back up and turn it on. It'll drip a day or two before fixing itself.
2. if you don't have a shutoff valve at the toilet, turn off the whole house and have a couple bath towels to wrap there to collect the bits of water that come out.
3. Make sure to scrape out all the old wax, both from the part in the floor and the bottom of the toilet. Somewhere in there there is almost certainly a rubber gasket, that has to come out, too. If it's from the 60s or earlier, there may not be a rubber gasket, just wax.
4. when reinstalling, don't over-tighten the nuts. Keep two things in mind: a. this has to hold your fat ass, so it needs to be tight, and b. It's made of porcelain and you can crush it. Tighten it until you think it is good, then see if you can make it twist a bit with strong pushes from your knee. If you can, go tighter.

That's all there is to it. As you said it's tiled, I'd get the thicker wax ring. You should feel some resistance as you push the toilet down into it. It should be a little work pushing to get it seated back down into place.

Toilets are the one thing i consistently fuck up. Heed the warnings

That Sani Seal he plugged looked like a damn good upgrade to a wax ring. (In the above vid)
If you have a history of leaks or water on the floor in that area check the sub floor for rotting. You could have major issues if it is starting to rot and have to replace the floor or joists.

The house was completely remodeled 100% 4 years ago, down to the studs. No water on the floor or in the basement. Whatever is wrong definitely sounds like the above fix to me considering what I smell