Toilet Wax Ring Review: Bol Wax vs. No Seep
A few weeks ago I wrote about the toilet heck we seemed to be stuck in. We had four serious toilet problems (clogs or leaks) in less than a month. I hate toilet problems. Every one of them required us to pull one of the toilets and reseat it (requiring a new wax ring). The fourth problem was actually caused by a poor wax ring replacement on the third — leading to this post. Here’s the details:
After I fixed the third problem and reseated the upstairs toilet (see the toilet heck post for details), I decided to go cheap on the wax ring. Home Depot offers Bol Wax as the low-cost ($1.39) alternative to No-Seep. I thought, “one wax ring is as good as another.” I guess I was wrong. The pictures speak for themselves.
This is the toilet I pulled with the Bol Wax ring on the bottom:
You can see that the Bol Wax ring didn’t make a tight seal all the way around the pipe. (Look to the left of the center hole). In this case I think the ring was just too thin and lacked the requisite structural integrity. Water was basically flowing out of the bottom back of the gasket and down into the kitchen!
This is the toilet after I applied the No-Seep ring:
Notice that the No-Seep ring has an integrated black gasket that fits into the drain pipe. This proved essential to making a good seal. Also, this particular No-Seep (a #10) was a little thicker than its Bol Wax counterpart.
Bottom line: since we made the switch we haven’t had any problems.
Now, I don’t think that Bol Wax is a terrible product. In fact, it’s currently in use on my downstairs toilet without any problems. I think it’s more an issue of the range of applications Bol Wax will work for vs. the range No-Seep will work for. The downstairs floor is perfectly uniform and has a small gap between the toilet and the plumbing. The upstairs floor is slightly unlevel with a slightly larger gap. I think the No-Seep just handled the height / level differences better.
The downside is that No-Seep is $3.99, or about 3x as much as Bol Wax. But for me, $2.60 is a small price for added peace of mind.
What do you think? Do you have a wax ring preference?
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6 Responses to Toilet Wax Ring Review: Bol Wax vs. No Seep
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March 28th, 2008 9:21 am
Small price to pay for peace of mind…
A heads up that link to your blog on houseblogs.net sill leads you to the blogspot account. The individual entries are correct, but your profile needs updating.
March 28th, 2008 7:11 pm
Corey-Thanks for the heads up. I made the change. Feel free to let me know if you see it wrong anywhere else!
March 28th, 2008 11:15 pm
“A small price to pay…”
Indeed. But that said, how many toilets, really, are you installing in a house? I have three toilets, so I’m more than willing to spend the extra $10 (estimating for tax).
Especially since I’ve used No-Seep twice now with no problems at all.
March 29th, 2008 10:58 am
I’m a fan of the No-Seep version, with such small dollar amounts, and I’m a cheap guy… but it’s silly to be comparing percentages.
March 29th, 2008 4:46 pm
Yeah – it rather seems silly now that I tried to save the $2.60… I will say that sometimes these things pay off – like when I bought the cheerios knock-off on the bottom shelf at Giant and they tasted just as good as the original
Had a *realized* how important that little gasket was, this would have been an easier decision from the start. Hopefully the post saves someone else the hassle.
March 31st, 2008 10:06 am
Interesting! I’ll have to watch out for that. We used the kind with the gasket… but only because we wanted a taller wax ring to smoosh.