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Ceiling Leak and New Toilets

Earlier this year Carey noticed a little spot on our ceiling in our living room. I investigated and couldn't find much of anything - perhaps the stain had always been there and we'd just not really noticed?

At Christmas the stain was a little worse, and so with the help of Rich and Stan we looked around in the bathroom that was directly above. The spot was just over the toilet, and the sink and tub were both bone dry, so that wasn't the likely issue.

I was set to replace the toilets myself but Carey insisted on a plumber. I removed the toilet downstairs to see how difficult it might be, but gave up when I didn't have shims. It's not that hard to install a toilet, but since it only takes 20 minutes it's probably worth paying someone to do it in the upstairs bathrooms.

We bought three of the Kohler Highline High Efficiency toilets in white and an elongated shape. They're 1½ inches taller than our previous toilets - which will be nice for the adults in the house - and include hydraulic lids that can't slam down. They were $1 cheaper at Home Depot, so Lowe's price matched and gave an additional 10% off. Kudos to me for taking pictures of Home Depot's prices (they didn't include the cool lids, either - and I told Lowe's that as well).

The plumber came and found the toilet did have a subtle slow leak around the flange, and so that explains that. He did that and installed all the other toilets in 90 minutes. He originally intended to use something like this but the quick bend in the pipe made seating the gasket tricky or impossible. It strikes me as odd, but we still poop into a hole that's sealed off with wax, and that's the best we've come up with…

Anyway, The toilets work well. It'll be interesting to see how well the new flush mechanism holds up - they no longer use a float ball and instead just have a floating item that rides up a column. You can change the flush duration by how long you keep the handle down.

A woman in Home Depot told us to avoid the "high efficiency" toilets because they lack power, but the one we got is rated 10 on the 1-10 "flush power" scale, so hopefully we're not seeing too many issues there.

P.S. The plumber forgot to take the old toilets. They're not exactly the kinds of things you can set out and say "free" in the hopes that someone will "take" them on the night before trash pickup, are they? What do we we do with 'em?

2 Responses to "Ceiling Leak and New Toilets"

  1. If they were a part of the service that was paid for, then call him and remind him that the service is not finished. Many cities, including Indianapolis, prohibit putting construction debris out with the regular trash.

  2. [...] the plumber came and started the installation of our three new toilets, he left three quarter turn valves from Hodes Co with me to install later [...]