Hopefully what I'm going to explains make sense, if not I'll draw a diagram or something. At our student house, we've got 3 bathrooms, one per floor. My bathroom (the main/middle floor one) is apparently having issues. The managers came in at the beginning of the summer for turnover and cleaning, as they usually do. They did up the bathroom, and noticed some mould forming around the base of the toilet, and speculated that "the leak problem is back" (something they seem to know about?). Because they now believe it's a recurring problem, they considered renovating that bathroom if it's going to be a structural issue. It's been probably 6 weeks now and nothing's happened; I haven't asked because I wasn't that concerned. The thing is, my friend came to visit and slept in the basement. I haven't been down there in probably a month to be honest. She noticed that there's a large wet patch on the ceiling, right below the main floor bathroom. She told me this after I showered, when she also noted it wasn't the shower, so it must be the toilet. Anyway, a while back I accidentally dropped the lid to the tank of the toilet... well, it slid off the top of the tank onto the seat, but landed in such a way that it knocked a small chunk out of the "bridge" area between the seat and the tank. The damage looks purely cosmetic, there's no other visible damage or propagating cracks... the managers saw this and thought nothing much of it (besides to caulk it to stop someone from hurting themselves on the jagged edges). So, what I'm actually asking is do you think the lid incident would have caused some sort of significant impact on the supposed water damage issue? They've already been called yesterday and we're waiting to hear back from them, but I kind of want to know where I stand before they come in. I feel like I should offer to offset the cost or something if this ends up being my fault. I feel like I'm not really to blame if this was ongoing before, but I'm not sure. Maybe someone has some more experience in this area?
Difficult to tell - can you check if there's any water on the floor around said toilet when it's idle, or if anything drips during the flushing cycle (one trick is to put paper towels on dry floor, if there's any water drips they will be easy to see on paper)? Or it's the wax seal at the base of the toilet and it leaks just a little bit every time it's used. Yes, yummy... More than likely it's the caulking around the shower or a really poorly built one that`s gone past its expiry date . Either way if there's a large wet spot on the ceiling below, a patch of drywall will have to be removed and repaired and it will be a good way to see what's happening, check for leaks, etc... Floor may need repair as well if it's been leaking for a while. Definitely a `can of worms`moment awaiting the repair crew. Good luck.
Nah. The way the toilet works, the water goes out through the bottom of the bowl, makes a loop, and drops straight down. There's no waste water going anywhere near the top of the bowl (where the bowl meets the tank). And if the tank itself were leaking, that would be pretty obvious (you'd see water spilling out at the bottom of the tank, between the tank and the bowl.) So the leak is likely where the waste water is coming out of the bowl and connecting to the plumbing pipe -- the wax seal, as awesomeyodais said. This happens for a variety of reasons, but the only way to fix it is to completely remove the toilet from the floor and reset it. It can also be caused by faulty plumbing of the pipe that attaches to the toilet waste outlet in the first place. But it's pretty much impossible that what you did broke it.
I watched carefully and noticed that water peeks out below the base of the toilet as it's flushing... coincidentally right by where the damage was done (or rather below it, not a contact point), which doesn't help my nerves any. So somewhere along the line of the water draining, there's a leak in the piping or something that's causing it to pool around the floor, but quickly drain back out, just not through a pipe but rather straight into the floor/ceiling? Still no evidence of anything on the shower either, but I suppose it could be too. But yeah, they thought even before that there might be some structural damage, and specifically if it was a recurring problem (it happened last year for the first time) that it'd probably be bad. Those workers will have a fun time dealing with that... oh well. I guess it's just fortunate we've got managers who will actually take care of it. Phew. Good to hear.
Yep I agree with the guys here...its probably the wax seal. If they aren't installed right in the first place, they'll start leaking. They also tend to dry out (and leak) if they're really old. As Chip said, could also be faulty (or poorly installed) plumbing Not really a big deal to fix if its just the seal (I've done it in the past). Cutting out/replacing bad/damaged drywall on the ceiling below is more work...
I had a faulty wax seal on the toilet at my house one time. This really does sound like what is causing your problem. If your house is old it might be the plumbing too.
