Toilet Bowl seal leak

Thanks for all advice, tried a couple, but brought a new seal kit from thetford, problem solved !

Just finished tearing apart my Sealand/Dometic ball type toilet. I replaced the moving parts/ball and seal around a year ago and worked good until about a month ago. The water would not stay in the bowl after flushing.

It is amazing how much crystalized "stuff" is on both sides of the seal and bottom flange of the tank. I used a sharp chisel to clean off the bottom of the bowl. I used a fine grit sanding block with water funning over the rubber gaskets and finally had everything clean. I used toothpaste and a old toothbrush on the ball. I re assembled and all seems to be good so far.

Looks like the "stuff" starts to collect on the parts then the seal is finally broken.

I concur with your post, I'm all about saving a dollar as long as it doesn't cost me two dollars and aggravation.

I believe that some handyman tricks and quick fixes can be good ways to temporarily correct a problem, but in the end these short cuts can cost you more money and time than if you just replaced the offending item. This is especially true with wear items or parts like plastic moving parts, seals, etc. I don’t fault someone for trying or even recommending a proven method of “rigging” a broken or malfunctioning item, I think we have all done it at one time in our past and they serve their purpose. It is that adaptive nature that has allowed us to advance technologically as a species. Some “fixes” are better than others (slime a tire or taking it and having it patched and plugged properly).

That said though, I usually evaluate a risk vs. reward when it comes to my decision to rely on a quick fix long term. In the case of an RV toilet. Faulty valves and seals can either result in water leaks or funky odor in the RV. In that case, the savings you see from not buying replacement parts might be $50 or so (if you do the work yourself). $50 is a small price to not smell a funky holding tank after a night of tacos and beer.

OJ

If I have 6 service calls in a day,3 of the calls will say" But I read online that this was how to fix it". Then a 1/2 hour job turns into a 1 hour job. I'm just saying that at least 50% of the advice in the tech forums is not bad, but terrible advice. One example, most of my gas appliance issues are because of the recent influx of faulty Chinese propane regulators, haven't read that once in any of the forums, go figure. I could go on.

up2nogood wrote:

Cummins12V98 wrote:
Any tricks to keep water in the Dometic/Sealand Ball type toilet?

I posted on my fix on the Sealand, but after hearing about petroleum , not sure if vaseline is good, I will use plumbers grease the next time , but a good cleaning as I posted before ,and some sort of grease . Worked for me ,and that was six weeks ago.

Thanks, I rebuilt mine last season all new parts ball seal spring and all. Worked great until about a month ago. Almost looks like the ball is rotating about a 1/4" farther towards the wall than it should. I guess I need to tear it all apart and clean the seal. I tightened the two screw/bolts with no luck.

hot water sounds like a good Idea after I have cleaned and re assembled it.

gordypig wrote:
Buy the seal, all the olive oil and silicone grease in the world wont reseat it, and to put CLR on a Teflon gasket OMG. To the guy who bought a new gasket and it still leaks, you bought the wrong gasket. . You should have bought the gasket with the weep drain hole in it. I love these forums it keeps me busy as an mobile RV tech

And now you will enlighten us as to how to fix them ,of course a good cleaning and a little grease fixed mine, and after six weeks it is working fine , must of got lucky on the advice that was given me a few years back. I won't be calling any mobile RV tech anytime soon, but thanks for all the help you have given the members here, you helped the OP SOOOOO much.

Buy the seal, all the olive oil and silicone grease in the world wont reseat it, and to put CLR on a Teflon gasket OMG. To the guy who bought a new gasket and it still leaks, you bought the wrong gasket. . You should have bought the gasket with the weep drain hole in it. I love these forums it keeps me busy as an mobile RV tech

Clean it with a bowl brush paying particular attention to the underside...Then, as suggested in the Dometic owners manual: Drain the bowl, press down on the seal all the way around to make sure it is seated, pour a pan of VERY hot water in the bowl and let it sit until cool. This will soften the seal and allow it to reseat itself. I have done this several times and it has never failed to work...

B.O.

Lime-a-Way,rubber gloves and an old tooth brush. Gently clean gasket and underside of bowl lip that the top side of the gasket comes in contact with.Lime-a Way has been used for decades in commercial food service to remove lime and scale deposits from dishmachines. Has been on the retail market for 10+ years.