I just had my toilet and toilet collar replaced due to a crack in the tank that was spilling water onto the floor and thus rotting the wood beneath and wall behind it.
So now I’ve got my new toilet in, all snug and tightly in place, and working on drying out the ceiling in the basement below it.
It’s been about 2 weeks and I’ve been keeping an eye on the thing. Today though I noticed quite a bit of water on the floor under the tank again! I am a bit nervous as to how normal this would be.
I’m attributing it to just a severely sweating tank because:
The temperature’s been in the 90’s for 3 days now
I do not have air conditioning of any sort
The bathroom is the coolest room in the house (no windows, tile floor)
Humidity’s been 50%-75% for quite a while now
The tank is indeed sweating - there’s condensation all over it.
I put a bunch of rags on the floor under the tank, to keep the water from pooling and seeping into the floor & wall again.
But I want to be sure that my guess is right that the water is JUST from the dripping sweat.
Does it sound normal to you that under the conditions listed above that my toilet would sweat enough to pool on the floor? What else can I look at to ensure there’s no leakage? As far as I can tell it’s not the water line - the pooling seems to be on the opposite side of the tank from the line in.
Real quickly pop the top off the tank and look for a little hose. The little hose should point down an overflow tube. I’ve seen, many times, the hose pops off and sprays all over the inside of the toilet. If it happens to spray on the lid of the tank, it can run to the edge and drip onto the floor.
Is this water clearly coming from the outside of the tank, or could it be coming from under it?
Assuming it is just sweating, here’s two suggestions.
The first (and hell of a lot easier) would be to get a big box fan and keep it pointed at the tank, that may/should help keep condensation from forming.
The second (and a lot more time consuming) would be to pour hot water into the tank as it’s filling. If you can get the water in the tank warm enough it won’t sweat.
I popped the lid off and the tube is set. I flushed anyway and whaddya know…that mechanism on the left that holds that floating thing (holy crap could I be more ditzy?) is adjusted by a screw, and water spurts up from around it. My cousin who installed the toilet did point out that it’s a shoddy mechanism and had me keep the one from the old toilet to use when this one goes bad.
However, I put the lid back on and flushed a couple times and ran my hand around the seam between the lid and the tank, and absolutely no water was coming out of that seam.
So it seems like sweating is the culprit (which is good. I am not in the mood to buy another toilet).
I’m going to keep the rags down there on the floor and keep them dry. Will consider doing the box fan thing - but I gotta find myself a box fan
Reading that link, especially the bit about the tempering valve, reminds me that sometimes after a strong curry when you next sit on the throne, a certain amount of splatter occasionally occurs. My remedy in the past has been ( if the normal flush fails to remove everything) is to pour hot water into the bowl to remove it. I just can’t believe that hot water (not boiling) could crack the porcelain. Presumably the toilet bowl and washing basin are similiar in manufacture, and really hot water is used in the basin at times.
I know you were referring to the liner, but your page also references a mixer valve to automatically bring warm water into the tank. That seems like a waste of money to me. Unless you’re tank is REALLY close to the water heater (probably within one or two pipe feet) you’d have to flush several times to get the hot water up to the valve.
