Why Risk Your Family's Health?

[BlueFly 0]

I had a bad experience recently with my toilet bowl installation.

To cut a long story short, you need to ensure your plumber applies silicone sealant to the pan collar before he sets down the toilet bowl onto the sewage pipe.

When I asked my plumber why he didn't apply silicone sealant to the pan collar, he shocked me when he replied "no one does that!"

Consequently, my toilet smelled.

I learnt an important lesson and felt I should share it with forumers. Recall how SARS was reported to have spread in HK from one floor to adjoining floors below through the sewage pipe?

The (long) story of how the problem was solved for my smelly toilet has been detailed on my blog.

Edited April 18, 2008 by BlueFly

[BlueFly 0]

A friend pm'ed me asking why apply silicone sealant when the plumber already used white cement to seal the toilet bowl to the floor?

Well, the silicone sealant is applied to the pan collar -- the piece that is connected to the sewage pipe hole. If the pan collar is not sealed, foul air (and soil too) will seep into yr toilet bowl chamber due to the air presure at work.

Like others, I did not ask my plumber to seal the pan collar when he first installed the bowl. After installation, my toilet smelled badly, particularly when someone on higher floors flushed the toilet.

My toilet was a 1-piece design, and had 2 rectangular holes at the back of the toilet bowl. Hence I could detect the foul smell. More importantly, I realized the risk I was putting my family to, breathing in bad air, particularly bacteria and viruses from sick neighbors upstairs after they had flushed the toilet.

If not for the toilet design I had chosen, I would not have detected the foul smell, and the problem probably would only surface several years later.

You don't get any foul smell if your toilet bowl has no openings and is fully sealed by the white cement onto the floor. But over time the cement will develop tiny cracks, that is when you begin to detect foul smell from the toilet bowl area. That happened to my old toilet (after 5 yrs), although at that time I did not know what caused the bad smell. Maybe the earthquakes from Indonesia over last 2 yrs was a contributory factor, causing tiny cracks in the cement to appear, thereby allowing foul air to seep into the toilet space?

Anyway, when my plumber told me he never applied silicone sealant to the pan collar I realized probably all plumbers in Singapore also install toilet bowls without applying silicone sealant!

That is very unhygienic. Ask yr plumber if that is true. Probably he will tell you he don't use silicone sealant for your toilet bowl's pan collar too.

With unsealed toilet bowls we are probably breathing in all sorts of viruses and bacteria discharged from sick neighbors in the block without knowing it.

The HK health authorities at first were mystified how the SARS virus were spreading in the same apartment block. Finally they traced the spread to faulty sewage pipe.

The authorities did not reveal what caused the leak (in order not to spread public panic) but the culprit was the unsealed toilet bowl that allowed foul air (carrying the virus) to spread from one upper flat to another lower down. If the toilet pipe had merely been leaking water, do you think the affected flat owner would not have noticed that and left the leak unattended? Of course not! So I believe SARS had spread via the unsealed toilet bowl pan collar!

Now that my toilet bowl has been re-installed, there is no more foul smell !

So, please remind yr plumber to apply silicone sealant to the pan collar.

Edited April 20, 2008 by BlueFly

[hihihi 0]

Hmm... I remeber old style (>20yrs ago) they only used cement. New style sure will use silicon sealant.

[BlueFly 0]

Hmm... I remeber old style (>20yrs ago) they only used cement. New style sure will use silicon sealant.

hey, they still do -- cement is for the toilet bowl base so that the bowl sticks firmly to the floor and is not moveable. silicone in general is used to provide a water- and air-tight seal and shld not be used where joint strength is important. also, some special-purpose silicones also hv good bonding strength.

actually i was referring to using silicone for the pan collar, not the toilet base. hope u didn't misread the post la.

[juliet_tan 0]

Yah should do that. Mine is a p-trap toilet. The guy never put anything on the connector, eventually there's always this smell, and worse still sometimes have brown stains on the ground. Then i tell him to redo.

BTW can also DIY. luckily i don't have to do that