dando wrote:

Replacing flooring in my bathroom, so eventually I will have to make this
choice.

As I see it, the pros to caulking are extra assurance of sealing in sewer
gases, and cleanliness around the floor (if junior goes hog wild with the
pee pee for instance, it doesn't find a nice hard to reach home under the
toilet.) Yuck.

Negative is if the toilet leaks under the base, how would you know it?
Yuck.

So could a solution in my case, assuming the floor is level, be to drill a
hole in the subfloor somewhere in the area that will be covered by the
toilet, so that any leak will be noticed dripping into the brickfloored old
cellar? (I could even use a hole with a rubber stopper that I could
remember to check periodically?

What do you think?

More toilet and subfloor questions to follow no doubt.

Thanks all.

Nay, you never know where the leak is going to be around a wax
ring, but you DO want to know that it is leaking IMMEDIATELY! If
you caulk around the toilet base, it could be months before you
notice it. By then, the damage is done.

--
Robert Allison
Georgetown, TX