When the water on the floor is coming from the tank, not from under the toilet
Location: Old Town Mukilteo, WA
Service: Toilet rebuild, tank-to-bowl connection
Technicians: Connor & Logan
At the end of December, a homeowner in Old Town Mukilteo called about a leaking toilet. It was not a flood, just water where water should not be, and it came back after every flush. Connor and Logan took the call, and the first thing they noticed was that the tank moved under a hand.
What We Did
A two-piece toilet is a tank bolted onto a bowl, with a thick rubber gasket between them sealing the passage the flush travels through. The bolts that clamp the tank down are what hold that seal tight. When they loosen or the gasket hardens, water weeps out at the joint on every flush, runs down the back of the bowl and collects on the floor, where it looks exactly like a failed wax ring.
Connor and Logan confirmed the source before touching anything, because a tank-to-bowl leak and a wax-ring leak are two different repairs. This one was the tank.
The porcelain itself was fine, so the fix was a new tank-to-bowl kit: a fresh gasket, new bolts and washers, the tank drained and lifted, the old hardware out, the new set tightened evenly so the tank sits square and no longer rocks. Then they flushed it five times in a row and checked for leaks by eye and by hand. No water, no movement. The toilet the house already had went back to work.
Why It Matters
- A tank that moves is the tell. If you can rock the tank by hand, the bolts have loosened and the gasket is holding the seal alone. Call then, before the gasket gives up as well.
- A tank-to-bowl leak imitates a wax-ring leak. Both leave water at the base of the toilet. Pulling the toilet to reset the wax seal when the tank is the real problem costs more and fixes nothing.
- Sound porcelain is worth keeping. A tank-to-bowl rebuild costs well under what a new toilet installed would, and this house already had a solid 1.6-gallon-per-flush fixture with nothing wrong with the bowl. Our toilet repair page explains where the line between rebuilding and replacing falls.
- Winter leaks do not wait for spring. A slow leak around a toilet soaks the floor a little more every day, and older subfloors forgive less.
Why Old Town Mukilteo
Old Town is the original Mukilteo, the grid of streets that climbs from the ferry terminal and the waterfront, and much of its housing went up between the 1940s and the 1960s. Many of those homes still run on fixtures installed a generation ago, and most are perfectly serviceable as long as someone rebuilds the wearing parts instead of tearing the fixture out. Our shop is on 5th Street, a few blocks away, which is one reason a small leak in Old Town tends to get fixed in a single visit.
A toilet that rocks or weeps? Call and tell us where the water is showing up. Half the time we can tell you whether it is the tank or the floor before we arrive. Related: toilet repair and replacement · toilet questions, answered · plumbing in Mukilteo