Recommend me a toilet seat.

[andrewc]

One of the toilet seats at my parents has a snapped hinge.  I went up earlier with some new hinges & found I'd bought the wrong type.    It's a "top fit" toilet with no way to access the fittings from below.    Looking at available fittings & videos of installing them everything now seems geared to quick release seats, which this isn't.


It's probably going to be easier to buy a complete new seat with attached fittings,  so what does the YACF collective recommend ? 


Wood,  or decent wood effect.  Sturdy & easy to fit.   Not insanely expensive. Soft close not essential.     The local DIY places have stuff from Croydex looks OK, but there seem to be quite a few reviews saying the fittings can come loose.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I remember, in "Little Eye on the Provinces" style, a local news article from about 2005 about somebody stealing a toilet seat from the mayor's office. So that's what I'd recommend. Preferably one with built-in heating, that also plays a tune when you sit upon it with your sit-upon, and maybe even squirts measured doses of air disguiser into the air. Or, as you want it in wood, make your own out of old packing cases using simple woodworking tools. Sand well to avoid unfortunate splinters.

[Wombat]

With my way too extensive experience of maintaining/replacing toilet seats at a heritage railway, I'd say that they are all utter rubbish.  Yes, they will come loose, no, none of them actually fit properly, even the ones that are supposed to be specific to that actual pan.

Wirquin do a seat with a "lock+" thingy which fills that gap between the stupid scrawny bolt, and the big hole in the pan, and I think there's a variation for the top fix ones.

So yes, definitely buy an entire new seat, and expect to have to fiddle with the fittings to get it to actually fit.  Sorry I can't be more upbeat about it, but I despair of toilet seat design, and I'm almost scared to go in the local plumber's merchant, as they always ask how many toilet seats I want this time...

[Kim]

The rot set in when they started making the bolts from cheesy plastic, so you couldn't overtighten them.

[andrewc]

My own substantial botty sits upon a Bemis Chicago in "Whisper Grey" .  Simple, sturdy and hasn't moved since I installed it 2 years ago.  Doesn't match Mum's decorative requirements though 

[jsabine]

Laufen top fix fittings as supplied with the new seat were straightforward to fit and adjust when we replaced our loo seat a year or so back.

(In fairness, it is a Laufen pan, so you'd hope they'd work, but there didn't seem anything special about the design to ensure interoperability.)

[andrewc]

The offending (& offensive) toilet is installed in a tiny room on the ground floor.  By dint of lying on the floor & contorting myself into unnatural shapes I was able to work out that it was a bottom fixing seat.  It must have been installed before the pan was fixed in position.   I was able to get the old seat off, but the screws & hinges were corroded to hell & couldn’t be unscrewed.  A quick trip to B&Q provided a white Bemis.   Another 45 minutes of grunting & swearing got this in position.   


Div point 1.  Working by touch & unable to see what I was doing I unscrewed the bolt holding the cistern to the pan.  Where is all this water coming from….


Div point 2.  The plastic 17mm insert of my cheap plastic plumbers spanner came out & got lost.  The bolts are finger tight.  Luckily I’ve strong fingers…

[Kim]

Never too late to consider the French option...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Dry composting and a handful of sawdust.