Jolly Plumbing owner Barry Jolly is a well-known entrepreneur in the Northern Kentucky area, having been in the plumbing industry for 31 years. In this article, Jolly uses the expertise he has gained and explains to us the basics that everyone should know about how to set a toilet correctly.
The most serious problem you have with a toilet being installed properly is not necessarily the water leaking, like many people think. The most serious problem that can actually come up has to do with the sewer gas.
If you have a toilet installed but it’s not sealed to the floor correctly, then you will have a lot of sewer gas and odors coming up in your bathroom. That is actually the biggest problem I see people having as a result of not setting their toilet properly.
If you are setting a toilet on your own and you want to make sure this doesn’t happen, then my best advice is to make sure that you are using a good wax ring on the toilet, and then to make sure that the toilet is bolted to the floor solidly. Otherwise, if you don’t have precautions when doing these things, then sewer gasses will eventually seep into your bathroom and house.
Aside from that, there is only one real plumbing connection when you are hooking up a toilet, and that is the water line that comes up out of the wall and goes into the tank. You want to make sure that you have a shut-off valve in place underneath the toilet, and that your supply tube is hooked securely to the tank. Beyond that, though, there isn’t much else to worry about as far as the plumbing connection is concerned.
If you don’t think you are going to be able to set the toilet properly and bolt it tightly to the ground, then I recommend calling a professional in to handle the job. Any professional plumber should be able to do this kind of thing, because setting a toilet is basic.
Whenever you are having plumbing done in your house, and especially if you are replacing a plumbing fixture, the state code in my state requires that the job is done by a plumber with proper licensing. So for both insurance purposes and also just as an additional way to make sure the job is done right, I would recommend using only licensed plumbers for jobs like this.
Any licensed plumber should certainly know how to set a toilet, so there isn’t much beyond asking about licensing that you need to make sure of before choosing the right plumber for the job. I would say that if you stick with a good, reputable plumbing company, then you should be in good shape as far as setting a toilet, or really any other fixture, since projects like this are among the most simple things for a plumber to do.
Unfortunately, when ends up happening oftentimes is a lot of homeowners don’t know what they can and can’t handle when it comes to their own at-home plumbing jobs. When people start a project and then realize they can’t handle it halfway through, then they usually call us to come finish the job right.
In fact, calls like that are one of the most common service calls that we get, especially on weekends. Folks try to do things like setting toilets themselves—on Saturdays and Sundays, especially—and then all of a sudden they get themselves in a jam and it is weekend afternoon and they don’t have a working toilet anymore. That is when they usually call in and say they need our help.
So we get a lot of calls like that, and we do provide 24-hour service, 365 days a year. One of the things that I think makes Jolly Plumbing a little bit different from most other plumbing companies is that we have a live person who answers the phone—not an answering service, but an actual employee of Jolly Plumbing who is answering our phones 24/7. So when you call, you can be assured that you will get ahold of someone who can help you right away.
