Neil.Steiner
Member
Question:
With my toilet sitting on the flange, without a wax ring in place, I've found that I can place two 1/16" metal washers at 1 o'clock, and one 1/16" metal washer at 3 o'clock to eliminate all wobbliness. I think the washers are zinc or something, but I realize I should replace them with plastic. My question is whether the localized pressure of the washers on the base could lead to the base cracking.
On this site it looks like people use shims all the time, but I wanted to solicit your thoughts first. It occurs to me that if I only have to place shims in two places that are fairly close to each other, the rest of the base must be contacting the floor almost everywhere else, so perhaps there wouldn't be that much pressure where the washers are.
Background:
I took my first stint at replacing a wax ring on a toilet that use to rock just barely front to back. (The old wax ring had long since disintegrated.) From things that I read, I thought that the rocking might go away when I replaced the wax ring, but it did not. So I removed the new wax ring to identify what I thought might be a bad flange.
Upon inspection, the flange looked great to my untrained eye. The only issue was that the closet bolts had bent the flange upward a little. Thinking the flange was metal, I marveled at the force necessary to do that, but I now believe the flange to be some kind of plastic. (It doesn't sound like metal when I tap it with metal.)
With my toilet sitting on the flange, without a wax ring in place, I've found that I can place two 1/16" metal washers at 1 o'clock, and one 1/16" metal washer at 3 o'clock to eliminate all wobbliness. I think the washers are zinc or something, but I realize I should replace them with plastic. My question is whether the localized pressure of the washers on the base could lead to the base cracking.
On this site it looks like people use shims all the time, but I wanted to solicit your thoughts first. It occurs to me that if I only have to place shims in two places that are fairly close to each other, the rest of the base must be contacting the floor almost everywhere else, so perhaps there wouldn't be that much pressure where the washers are.
Background:
I took my first stint at replacing a wax ring on a toilet that use to rock just barely front to back. (The old wax ring had long since disintegrated.) From things that I read, I thought that the rocking might go away when I replaced the wax ring, but it did not. So I removed the new wax ring to identify what I thought might be a bad flange.
Upon inspection, the flange looked great to my untrained eye. The only issue was that the closet bolts had bent the flange upward a little. Thinking the flange was metal, I marveled at the force necessary to do that, but I now believe the flange to be some kind of plastic. (It doesn't sound like metal when I tap it with metal.)