I’m currently thinking no caulk is best because it allows you to notice if the wax ring is leaking. In fact, this is exactly what happened to me recently. I flushed and noticed water coming out from the sides of the toilet.
What do the fedinauts think?
From the article:
However, leaks are usually noticed from the floor below the toilet when looking up. Leaks under the tub are often found in the same way. In apartments, it is common for the tenant below to be the one who first notices a problem. So this argument for not caulking is somewhat flawed.
This seems like a terrible reason to caulk. The first obvious major flaw with this thinking is that it assumes you have a lower floor??? I only have 1 floor and then it’s concrete below. I can’t notice it from the bottom. Also, if you’re in an apartment, wouldn’t it still be better for the owner to notice the leak from the toilet, instead of waiting for it to get so bad the the person from the bottom notices??
Caulk prevents water from seeping under the toilet.
OK. This I guess makes sense, for certain people, I guess. If your shower or sink is right next to your toilet, I could see water from the outside going in. But in my case, my toilet is not near sinks or showers. So I’m a lot more worried about water from the inside going out.
Caulking around the toilet is good for pest prevention
I guess I can understand this point. Small bugs could hide under the toilet.
Caulk looks better
Disagree.
and helps prevent unpleasant odors
Why would there be odors? The wax ring and the toilet should be making a good seal, no? If there are odors, doesn’t that mean the seal is failing? Wouldn’t that be a sign you should investigate further? Not hide the issue?
Plumbing codes require caulking a toilet to the floor
Because I said so isn’t a good reason…
Pro caulk:
- could prevent bugs from hiding under the toilet
- could prevent water from going under the toilet
Con caulk:
- hides wax ring failures
- hides poor installation
Seems like the cons carry waaaayyy more weight than the pros.
Well even that’s not untypical. The standard way to do this is to just have a 110mm sewer pipe sticking from the floor. You then cut it to a floor level and install the toilet on top of it. The difference is that in the US they use this “wax seal” which is a complete mystery for me. Here we just take an adapter that’s pushed to the inside of the sewer pipe and then the toilet is lowered on top of that one. Water would need to climb uphill past the seals in order to leak.
A few years ago I replaced all of the toilets and my house simply because they were blue and 40 years old and just kinda crappy.
I live in America and I use a rubber seal since if you need to remove and reposition the toilet you can reuse the rubber seal instead of having to clean potentially poop and other bacteria laden wax out of a hole and replace it with another wax donut.
The waxed donuts were three to five dollars a piece and the rubber seals were ten.