Blech, toilet troubles

So the upstairs toilet stinks. Like ridiculously bad. Downstairs toilet does not. 

The downstairs toilet not stinking or behaving weirdly makes me think it's not the septic tank, which is getting cleaned out soon anyway.

UUpstairs toilet is used all the time by the three women in the house, so it's not dry drain. It doesn't wiggle or wobble, which was my first check thinking the wax ring got wiggled loose.

I have to imagine any vent issues would affect the downstairs toilet too, but, there are like 6 potential vent caps behind the house so it could be one clogged specifically attached to that toilet, just no idea which one or if PO put individual vents on each toilet. 

It's only been installed about a year, and without any wiggle, I have trouble believing the ring wore out already but I don't know what else to check or look at. 

I feel like we already had this problem here, but I can't remember for sure. 

Anything else I should check or is pulling the toilet and replacing the ring my only real troubleshoot available?

RevRico said:

So the upstairs toilet stinks. 

Any particular part of the machine stink?  Around the base, behind the tank etc.  How's the floor under it?  Rot stinks.

It stinks ever after a good cleaning?

In reply to 914Driver :

It's been going on for a few days, so the whole bathroom smells like a septic tank. The smell got weaker when we started keeping the lid down, but that doesn't seem to be working anymore either.

The wood around the base is dry, doesn't show any signs of leaks. Well, any sign of new leaks. Things got a bit damp when the old toilet tank broke off the old toilet, but dried up with a dehumidifier and that was over a year ago. 

Cleaned the bowl, it even has one of those stick on cleaner pods in it all the time, which has its own obnoxious smell. The tank is shiny and new looking inside. 

It seems like it would have to be the wax ring. Maybe the old ring wasn't quite thick enough?

Sounds like someone gave you an upper decker.

In reply to dculberson :

Man, if Johnny rings aren't even lasting a year anymore, something is seriously berkeleyed. 

Whether I want to or not, and I don't, I guess I gotta replace it again. 

Watch me find out the flange is busted and I need to rebuild the bathroom that I can't afford to rebuild. 

RevRico said:

In reply to dculberson :

Man, if Johnny rings aren't even lasting a year anymore, something is seriously berkeleyed. 

Whether I want to or not, and I don't, I guess I gotta replace it again. 

 

Watch me find out the flange is busted and I need to rebuild the bathroom that I can't afford to rebuild. 

I don't mean that the ring failed after a year, perhaps it never sealed well because it wasn't tall enough. Make sure your new ring sits well proud of the floor. I had to do an extra tall wax ring with my shop toilet; I initially had a standard ring but putting it in place and checking it out it clearly would have only very lightly sealed and would have eventually failed.

In reply to dculberson :

I always do the super sized ones. Even in new construction office buildings, the regular sized never worked right for me. 

I actually had to buy a flange extension for the toilet in the basement, because of the way the cutout in the concrete is made. There was some old low flow round bowl there when we moved in that was promptly replaced with a kohler jet flush that has a different footprint. A waxless ring followed by two wax rings until I figured out it just wasn't sealing because of how deep in the floor the flange was. 

I just really don't feel like pulling a toilet, so I was hoping there might be something I missed in my troubleshooting.

I don't really know, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

The way I see it, the sewer smell is obviously coming from the pipe (!).

The toilet water trap keeps any smell from traveling above that.

Thus, the "leak" has to be below the water trap (assuming there is water in the toilet trap).  Any cracks would likely leak, so...