Unusual weekend experience.

Challenged

Challenged

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Challenged
On Saturday morning at 5:45AM everyone in the house was fast asleep. Suddenly there was a loud pop and then the sound of water. Wife gets up first and goes into the master bath, starts calling my name frantically. I'm out of it, but head into the bathroom to see the floor covered in water, with a constant stream of more water pouring out of the bathroom area. I was able to shutoff the water to the toilet and then we used up every towel in the house to get things dry and put on some fans to help make sure that we had dried everything out. Upon further inspection, the toilet tank had completely cracked, spontaneously, from the very top to the very bottom.

Historically, this is not a concern that I had previously had in my life, unfortunately it is now. You can read about a class action lawsuit about the manufacturer here: https://www.click2houston.com/consu...-up-to-4000-for-faulty-toilets-after-lawsuit/

Now, at this point, I was ready to just go out and replace all my toilet tanks to not use this manufacturer, but here's where things get a little more interesting. My wife received a text from one of her best friend's dads after she mentioned it online to some friends and the same exact thing happened to them just three weeks ago, interestingly, they weren't using the Vorten's brand, but American Standard instead. Now I'm left wondering which manufacturer to choose for the replacement tanks so I'm not worrying about this when I'm on vacation or when I leave for work in the morning.
 
American Standard has been around for over a century and is sold in just about every plumbing/big box store in the country. I’d highly doubt you end up with this problem again when using any of the major manufacturers. For all we know, the tank was installed improperly with too much torque applied to the tank bolts which stressed the ceramic tank (although you’d think proper design would help eliminate that risk).

I’d be fine with American Standard, Kohler, or Toto. I’ve used Glacier Bay as a cheaper option and they’ve been fine as well.
 
From the lawsuit, the technical reason for the failure: "...the tanks were either fired too rapidly or allowed to cool down too quickly or in an uneven fashion. This flaw in manufacturing caused residual stresses to be formed in the ceramic materials. These stresses are concentrated around inclusions in the ceramic material with large stress concentration factors. This in turn causes minute cracks that propagate due to normal and anticipated use. During the continued emptying and fill cycles of the water in the tank, the cyclic stress on the toilet tank continues to slowly propagate these cracks until fracture and failure."
 
My suggestion? Upgrade to one of them fancy Japanese toilets that will do just about everything but a "happy ending"
 
This failure mode has been around for a very long time. The bowl of our American Standard cracked at an age of 50 years Thin crack hardly leaked. It's twin in the other bathroom is still fine,at 60 years old.

Mother lived in a very large apartment complex, more than 400 units. Her bowl cracked. She was worried that the management would think she had abused it, and want her to pay for it. No problem, they have such a failure a couple of times a year. The complex was built in the '40's, and this happened in the 80's.

I do turn off the water when on a trip, but mainly in case the rubber hoses to the washing machine fail.

If you decide to turn off the water, you have to also turn off the hot water heater, if the thermostat sticks 'on'
it will over pressure the plumbing and vent steam in large quantities. That is worse than leaking water. If the over pressure/temperature device fails to release the pressure, the tank will explode,with truly disastrous results.
 
The American Standard tank that failed was apparently only 3 years old, while the ones we have are stamped 2012. I joked with my wife that may have to preemptively replace the toilet tanks every three years now as a precaution, as I have exploding toilet tank PTSD.
 
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I gotta say, my toilet tank spontaneously cracking is low on my 'worry priority' list.
 
Had this exact thing happen during college in my first apartment. We knew the slumlord would never get around to replacing our only toilet. So we wrapped the tank back together with clear packing tape and sprayed rubber sealer on the inside of the tank. The tank was still holding together three years later when I moved out.

This was the least of our problems especially after the owner almost killed us by running the replacement gas line through the A/C ducts...

To answer some questions, AR is the only state that doesn’t have renter right laws or even minimum habitability laws. You can actually get evicted with no warning for complaining about issues. Or in the words of the largest slumlord in my old college town, “you better be lucky you even have a roof”. o_O
 
midwestpa24 said:
Until it floods your house to the point of potentially totalling it.
Click to expand...

Probably a bit of an extreme consequence. Flooring, possible HVAC repairs, and a foot or two of drywall don't usually "total" a house. Not an inexpensive problem, to be sure, just nowhere near the level of totaling a home, even if the leak occurred upstairs.
 
geezer said:
This failure mode has been around for a very long time. The bowl of our American Standard cracked at an age of 50 years Thin crack hardly leaked. It's twin in the other bathroom is still fine,at 60 years old.

Mother lived in a very large apartment complex, more than 400 units. Her bowl cracked. She was worried that the management would think she had abused it, and want her to pay for it. No problem, they have such a failure a couple of times a year. The complex was built in the '40's, and this happened in the 80's.

I do turn off the water when on a trip, but mainly in case the rubber hoses to the washing machine fail.

If you decide to turn off the water, you have to also turn off the hot water heater, if the thermostat sticks 'on'
it will over pressure the plumbing and vent steam in large quantities. That is worse than leaking water. If the over pressure/temperature device fails to release the pressure, the tank will explode,with truly disastrous results.
Click to expand...
Disastrous results is a distinct possibility. It's been almost 50 years, but one night just after I had crawled into bed there was a very loud "KaBoom!" that shook the whole place. It wasn't the building I was living in, but
another across the back alley. It happens that the water heater for this place was installed in a multi-car garage - separate from the living quarters. The tank blew out it's bottom and went through the roof - coming
down in the next block. One side of the garage was collapsed, and three cars in it piled up against the far wall. Holes big enough to crawl through were made in the rear wall of the apartment building. The only good
thing about the incident was that I don't think anyone was hurt.

Dave
 
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