Problem with the toilet (no discussion of bodily functions required)

Factual Questions
1

Around six months ago, the toilet in the master bathroom started leaving dark, dirt-like deposits in the bowl. This material is of unknown origin. The other two toilets in the house do not exhibit this behavior, nor do any of the other plumbing fixtures, including the sinks and shower in the same bathroom.

The toilet is an ordinary American Standard “Plebe” commode with a tank. Water is supplied by a short supply hose connected to the faucet below the tank. Inside the tank is an ordinary Fluidmaster toilet kit with flapper, purchased from Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, or similar. The water in our community is very hard which leaves stains on virtually everything, including the inside of the tank. The house was built in 1984 and we have lived here since 2001. We’ve replaced the toilet kit a few times, but we have no reason to think that the commode has ever been replaced since the house was completed.

The black material is black and clumps onto the toilet bowl. It does not flush down the drain, but is easily dislodged by a toilet brush. There is some black material in the bottom of the tank, but not nearly as much as appears in the bowl.

Any idea what this is, where it comes from, and how to get rid of it?

2

Q: How do you get rid of black streaks in a toilet bowl?

A: You have a lime-like mineral build up from the many little holes under the toilet bowl rim where the water flows during flushing. These water paths have left a mineral residue over the years and that residue is now holding moisture where mildew can form. The black is from the mildew, mildew is from the wet mineral deposit and the mineral deposit is from hard water over the years.

The solution is to clean your toilet bowl with a scale or lime removing cleaner. You can use acid, household vinegar, or a household cleaner to remove these deposits. The household cleaners will have some form of acid in them and have a pungent smell … like Lime Away. You can use the acid if you want to be quickly effective or choose a household cleaner like the CLR, Lime Away etc. This is an easy solution.

3

How would one clean out that hardwater mineral buildup from inside all those many little holes and the pathways inside the rim behind those holes? And the whole pathways from the tank to there?

4

Mildew is a good possibility, but let me suggest something else:

Is the stopper black? How about the ball floater (assuming it has one)? Those will eventually break down over time from being exposed to the water in the tank. Minerals in and the pH of the water cause them to break down. It may be a very long time before it happens, but it will happen, and the result is black material in the bowl. It’ll stick to the ceramic, because polymers do that, and depending on how hard the water is, they may bond with the ceramic by mixing with mineral deposits. You say they are easy to remove, so your water is probably not very hard.

If they cannot be completely removed, Lime-Away sprayed in the bowl should get rid of everything. Spray it over all the surfaces not immersed in water, wait about 10 minutes, and scrub.

Replace all the parts that are polymers, or “rubber.” That’ll mostly be the floater and the stopper. You’ll probably pay between $15-35 at Home Depot for replacements, they’ll come with directions, and take about 15 minutes to replace. Shut off the water to the toilet, and flush it to empty the tank. You should not need more than ordinary hand tools to replace them.

As far as cleaning out the little holes: I have had to clear out a toilet when we had extremely hard water, because we had well water-- we had to flush out the little holes about every six months with Lime-Away, or the toilet got too clogged with mineral deposits to work.

Here’s what we did. Do not laugh. This worked.

But a disposable douche bottle. I am not making this up. Empty the vinegar-&-water, or whatever. Rinse. Fill it with Lime-Away, if you think you need it, and stick the business end up the small hole in the toilet bowl on the bottom toward the front. Squeeze. The Lime-Away comes out all the little holes.

Repeat until it flushes clean. Usually took us twice. Then we flushed once with water-- just a regular flush with the handle-- then we filled the douche bottle with a 25% bleach solution, and douched the toilet again.

Before we did this, we had to replace a new toilet after just 2 years, because it got completely limed over. Started doing the every-six-months Lime-Away/bleach douching, and the next toilet lasted until we moved, which was more than 13 years.

If you don’t think you need Lime-Away, don’t worry about that; but a 25% bleach solution will kill mildew. Just keep flushing until the water runs clean.

Somebody is probably going to say “just put the bleach in the tank,” but if you do that, first of all, it’s not good for the polymers in the tank, and second, it won’t be very concentrated. You’ll have to use more, and spend more time. Plus, flushing by squeezing a douche bottle uses a lot more force than the force of gravity if you put the bleach in the tank. I am the voice of experience here.

Throw the douche bottle out. Don’t try to save it for the next time. The chemicals will break it down, and it will probably leak when you try to use it again-- at the least, it will lose its shape, and won’t work right.

Good luck!

5

Get some toilet tank bleach tabs, they last a good month or two and clean out all the insides. Clorox makes them, and there’s some generics out there as well for under $5 for a 2-pack. Yes they can eventually wear out some of the gaskets and rubber flappers, but that takes years of constant use. I’ve had trouble finding them since covid, along with many cleaning products, but maybe a hardware store, or Amazon, or just dumb luck will find them in stock somewhere. The blue 2000 flushes or scrubbing bubbles ones are garbage. Even the half blue half bleach ones are awful. They turn into this goopy sludge and still don’t kill anything.

6

Bleach tabs won’t help with hardwater mineral buildup.

7

I am not joking about the douche bottle.

8

Just don’t leave it around afterward where someone else might use it on themselves.

9

If your black substance is decaying rubber, in addition to the float and stopper, there’s a couple of screws holding the tank half to the bowl half and they usually have rubber washers to seal them. Those rot over time and faster if you use in-tank bleach.

Lastly there’s a conical gasket below the flapper between the bowl and the tank. Replacing all of these parts is DIY-able and you can find them with a search like “toilet brand rebuild kit” but you’re going to want a backup plan for the duration of the repair and if things go wrong.

10

Here’s an update on the loo situation for those still following along. I have pretty much eliminated the idea that the black stuff is coming from decaying components, like washers and stoppers. There is simply so much material that I would notice these parts no longer functioning.

Last week, I went out to find a squeeze bottle. Rather than a feminine douche, I had settled on getting a squeeze bottle for ketchup, etc. On my way to the store, I stopped in for an appointment at the doctor’s. While the nurse was cleaning earwax from my ears – a twice yearly ritual – I noticed she was using a large syringe. “A ha!” said I. So I asked if I could keep the syringe.

Now armed with a large caliber syringe, I headed home. I found some random tubing that I had around the house and, as luck would have it, it fit perfectly on the business end of the syringe. I cut about a foot of tubing, slid it onto the syringe, and cut a point onto the other end. Unfortunately, the point was pretty pointless.

Fortune smiled again when I found that two of the holes on the toilet were large enough for me to thread the tube into. I drew up some lime cleaning solution, inserted the tube into one of the holes, and plunged the plunger on the syringe. Cleaning goodness went into the channel around the rim. I then repeated the process for the other large hole. I did this several times on both sides, varying how much hose I pushed into the rim.

So far, so good. If the black stuff returns, I’ll try the process again. I may also see about how to get a tube into the smaller holes to spread the cleaning joy around a bit more.

11

That’s a pretty ingenious solution, but you make be able to make use of one of those “duck neck” toilet cleaning bottles next time. They have a bent neck to squirt under the rim of the toilet. Refill the bottle with the lime cleaning solution you need and then press the tip of the bottle into the tiny holes under the rim. You can squirt a bit into each hole and get some all around the rim. But hopefully this is the end of it and you won’t have to deal with the problem again.

12

So maybe mildew was the problem, but glad to know a variation on the douche bottle worked.