Great !! Fix one problem, create another!

Our former toilet seat always needed tightening. So I go the local hardware store, see toilets with, "STA-TITE Seat Fastening System (TM) Never loosens". Great, my problem is easily solved. I buy a Mayfair, by Bemis molded wood toilet seat.

Go home, install it. Family member states, rightly so, it is very noisy. We live in a small house, all the bedrooms are close to this hallway bathroom. If you open the top lid it's loud when it hits the toilet tank, when you open or close the seat it loudly bangs the toilet, etc.!

I'd rather not to have to "train" family members that they have to gently, slowly, open and close the toilet seat lid and at 2 in the morning!

Any suggestions?

 

Any hard lid will make a clunk sound if opened quickly and it hits the tank. Most people quickly learn to not bang the lid into the tank. Also, if they allow the lid to simply fall it will make a loud banging sound and may eventually break the seat. There are soft close seats that close slowly when you let go of them. And in the up position you can install a rubber bumper to make it more quiet. But, by far the easiest remedy is to simply not slam the lid.

 

Really, no one is slamming it....you just lower the lid and or the seat to within 3 inches from the toilet, let go, and it is pretty loud....you have to hold the lid or seat all the way till it touches the toilet.

Yeah I know there are soft close.....should I, can I, return a one day, opened and used, toilet seat to the store? I'd feel embarrassed! Fortunately it wasn't that expensive. And do soft close toilet seats even come with Sta-Tite?

What rubber bumpers are you referring to? I was thinking of some kind of small rubber or soft plastic bumper things but wan't sure it that was feasible or exactly what or where to find what I vaguely had in mind. They'd have to stay on and tolerate being cleaned/scrubbed.

 

Opening and closing a toilet lid quietly is easy. 99% of the people on the planet do it all the time. Not doing it is just laziness or they just don't care. Do you hold eggs 3" off the counter and just drop them then go search the Internet for egg cushions or break resistant eggs? No, you place the eggs down on the surface. It's not rocket science.

I would not limit my toilet seat purchase to only Sta-Tite ones. Toilet seat bolts are not complicated or difficult to tighten. The traditional seats in my home have gone 18 years and still haven't come loose or needed to be tightened.

If you want to install bumpers or cushions you have numerous options. I would stay away from felt pads but there are tons of options for rubber and plastic bumpers. They come in different shapes, sizes and have different harnesses to provide the amount of cushion you want. Home centers, hardware stores and Amazon carries them. Many come with peel and stick adhesive so they are super easy to install.

 

Geeze, you're funny, I guess in my 67 years of living I am the 1% who has been closing toilet lids and seats incorrectly all this time. I never knew that! Thanks for the information.

 

Get a slow-close lid and use blue loctite on the bolts.

 

Okay...I do know about slow-close lids, our other bathroom has one.

The toilet seat I replaced was inexpensive, I think some kind of plastic material, not slow closing. I guess because it was so light weight it wasn't noisy when you closed the lid or seat. (In spite of me not knowing how to close toilet lids and seats, ha ha.) But it kept loosening....that is what started this mess. Not a noisy toilet lid and seat, but a toilet seat that kept loosening.


I had no idea this project would be so complex!

 

There are seat and tank covers you can use. This will at least stop the noise from the lid hitting the tank when opening. But really, noise from dropping the toilet lid? First world problems!

However, I will admit that the bolts holding the seat can and will loosen. On mine the left side cannot be kept tight. The right side never loosens.

 

OK so now this might be getting a bit too personal but we are all friends here, right?

I recently replaced three toilet seats for cosmetic reasons. The others were old and chipped. Even though there was no loosening or other issues SWMBO insisted that they needed to go!

The new ones have a snap in bolt system (Sta-Tite? I don't know.) A fitting is bolted as usual with a snap off nut and then the seat is snapped into the fitting and closed with a friction fit cover.

I found that the right side connection (as one is seated) continuously popped out of the fitting when completing the necessary paperwork. Very surprising (and annoying, especially in the middle of the night).

After careful analysis I discovered that leaning to the left to complete the paperwork caused pressure on an area not supported by the bumper below and leveraged the connection out of the fitting on the right.

I solved that problem by adding a bumper in the area below the pressure point. ( I'm a DIY guy, I salvaged the bumpers from the old seats!)

Perhaps bolt loosening (especially on one side) is caused by the same phenomenon.