On 2/26/2013 10:01 AM, nestork wrote:
After bolting it down, I decided to let the toilet run to see what would
happen. Thirty minutes, nothing, 45 minutes, nothing, an hour.. bingo -
more water was leaking from the =front= of the toilet.

No, before you start returning porcelain as defective, you need to
investigate the matter conclusively, so that anyone hearing your story
will agree with what you've done and conclude the porcelain is defective
too. What you're doing now is guessing.

If a toilet is leaking at the wax seal, you're going to see water on the
floor after the first flush, not after letting the toilet water run for
an hour.

What you did is not reasonable. Letting cold water run through a toilet
for an hour is going to cause the toilet tank and bowl to get cold, and
atmospheric humidity is going to condense on the cold areas and drip
off. Just because you saw water on the floor after that, there's no
reason to believe there's a leak anywhere, especially if you weren't
looking for condensation forming on the tank and bowl during that hour.

And, any monkey working in the plumbing isle of your local home center
is going to think of that too and will be reluctant to return/refund
anything to you unless you come to him/her with more credible evidence
that there's a problem with the porcelain.

What you should do is set the toilet bowl ITSELF on a pair of 4X4's or
two concrete blocks or anything that will both support the bowl and
allow you to wipe up any water that leaks out of the bowl. Fill the
bowl with water until water just starts to come out the bottom of the
bowl and wipe that water up. Now, leave the bowl sitting with water in
it overnight and see if any more drips out. If there's no further water
leakage out of the bowl, there's nothing wrong with the porcelain.

Now, if this is a tile floor you're installing the toilet bowl on, it
could be that you need TWO wax seals. Note that the plastic insert on a
wax seal is there to prevent wax from squeezing INWARD and getting into
the toilet drain pipe. So, if you need two wax seals, it's best to
waste another two wax seals to check to see if those two plastic inserts
will nest inside one another like paper cups. If so, use two wax seals,
with each one having a plastic insert. If not, use a wax seal without
an insert on the bottom, and one with a plastic insert on top.

Now, when re-installing the toilet, it's actually best to put the bowl
on first and bolt it down to the floor, and then bolt the tank to the
bowl. That's because you simply have more control when you're holding
up a lighter weight like the bowl itself as opposed to the bowl and tank
bolted together.

When I reinstall a toilet bowl, I do it with the toilet seat OFF. That
way I can use a 24" spirit level and a stack of tapered shims to ensure
it goes down horizontally and level. I set a stack of tapered shims
where I can see that the front of the toilet bowl will be and set the
bowl down on the wax seal. Then I put my spirit level on the bowl rim
both this way and that to figure out which nut I have to tighten or if
I need to pull out a shim or push one in further to get the bowl sitting
level and horizontal. I keep on tighting the flange-to-bowl nuts down a
little at a time and sliding shims out a little at a time until the bowl
is down on the floor. That way I ensure the wax seal squeezes out
uniformly around the floor flange.

THEN put the tank on with a new sponge gasket between the bowl and the
tank. When tightening the tank down, DO NOT tighten the tank-to-bowl
bolts so that they're really tight. Doing that doesn't allow for any
thermal expansion or contraction of the porcelain. Better to leave the
bolts snug, but so the tank moves a little when you push or pull on it,
that way the sponge gasket between the tank and bowl isn't fully
compressed, and the tank can contract and expand with changes in
temperature.

the temp swings of a normal house won't expand/contract porcelain to any
great extent, that you can measure. heck, when i fire porcelain in my
kiln to 2300 it doesn't expand very much: just very small fractions of
an inch at those temps.

Then, flush the toilet and watch for water leaking out between the
toilet bowl and the floor. If you don't see any leakage, then there's
no leak; especially on a tile floor where water could leak out from
under the bowl so easily at the grout joints.

I pulled up the toilet and after flipping it on its side, I noticed that
it was very wet up inside under the front of the bowl where the water
gets pushed through from the tank.

Condensation. You need to stand that toilet bowl on a pair of 4X4's or
concrete blocks to conclude anything about leakage through the
porcelain.