About 3-weeks ago I installed a Wickes Belmar toilet for our neighbours.

The cistern is the same width as the back of the pan so once fixed in place you can’t see the bottom face of the cistern at all.

Passing through the bottom of the cistern are the flush valve, fill valve and two fixing bolts which are only secured by the wing-nuts below the pan and can’t be installed in the cistern unless it’s sitting on the pan. (i.e. there are no fixings between the cistern and pan).

The fill valve is a Euro (3/8 BSP) size so has a 3/8” – ½” adaptor which also acts as the retaining nut.

I have fitted and re-fitted the cistern 5 times now being extremely careful to check every part is tight and have even tried sealing over the fixing bolts inside the cistern with Fernox leak sealant but whatever I do there is always a slight leak between the cistern and pan.

This shows up as a dribble from the clearance hole in the pan which the feed pipe passes through in order to get to the fill valve but obviously the water could be coming from anywhere and simply building up on the back of the pan until there's enough to dribble out.

At the moment I’ve no idea what else I can do.

Any clever ideas?

John.

Hi,

Lift up the cistern, remove the foam sealing ring and chuck it away. Get some 'Plumbers Mate' from a builders merchant, roll up a big sausage of it and create a donut the same size as the sealing ring you threw away and put it in place of the foam ring. Make it quite thick as the cistern will flatten it when you screw it down. That normally sorts it.

Tommy

I had a toilet that did that once, close inspection and there was a what I can best describe as a small crack, just dried with a hair dryer and laid a bead of cheapo mould proof silicon over it.

NB/ I always seal all screw and bolt holes just to play it safe

*If* we're talking a 'close coupled' cystern we have problems with these leaking at work and its usually the supplied washer / doughnut not sealing correctly (check qualty of pan/cystern mating face)
We tend to either use plumbers putty or good quality silicon sealant

If it leaks while or after flushing its the doughnut not sealing, if its leaking all the time its the through securing bolts or the washer on the flush mech.
Take the bolts out with the rubber washers make sure the cisterns square on the pan clean round the washer area refit the bolt/washer and evenly tighten each bolt a bit at a time they need only to be gently evenly tightened otherwise the water pee's out.
Took me ages to find the above out after fitting my new toilet last year, tightening the wings nuts down like a 1956 moggy minor head gasket just forces out the rubber washer and makes the thing leak more.
Cheers,
Bob

[Edited on 6/8/11 by splitrivet]

Radweld?