Toilet leak

[Whirnot]

Has anyone found a better solution to keep the ball in the toilet sealed? We dump olive oil on it and it works, but only for a day or so.

[axis earl]

Replace the seal from the top and put a liberal amount of silicone plumbers grease on it. Keep an extra seal on hand for next year.

[Bob Denman]

Yup! A new seal, and keeping a spare handy: your best bet!

[Metalman]

I have worked silicon spray into the seal without removing it. It held water for quite a while. I eventually replaced it and will continue to add silicon grease on a regular basis. I keep water in the bowl all of the time.

[blw2]

a few years ago I let the bowl completely dry out once when i had a long spell in storage.
after that I couldn't get the ball to seal. I researched and tried all sorts of things...cleaning it, lubricating it, etc... nothing really worked well. At some point I even tried some seal conditioner from tehtford.
I'd read that it's often caused by hard water deposits and I tried cleaners like CLR...but still not a long term solution. Some of these made it better, or even fixed it short term, but not fixed

As a last ditch effort while I waited for the new seal to come from amazon, I poured a strong CLR solution in the bowl, fairly deep so it would take a while to leak out. I forgot the specifics now, but basically I soaked it for a few days keeping it submerged, every now an then I'd step on the pedal a bit to let some solution get to the sealing surfaces better. So after maybe 2-3 days (not sure how long it was) I found that it wasn't leaking by....

since then, I diligently keep the bowl flooded. As part of my putting into storage routine I have taken to pouring a bit of the blue tank treatment chemical in the bowl and maybe 1/3 or so full of water, just so it's extra deep and will take longer to dry out. I tried it once thinking that it might slow the evaporation rate slightly....(I really have no idea if it does or not, but I still do it.) I keep a close eye on the water and add water after a few weeks as needed when it's evaporated a bit.... it's certainly not leaking...well at least not more than a drop every week or so

this was a few years ago now!...and I still have that new seal kit I ordered floating around in the garage someplace.

ps. I went and checked my order history. I bought the seal January of 2017.

[Metalman]

A while back I posted closeup photos of the new and old toilet seal surfaces. There was a slight depression on the old seal, which I assumed was the reason why it didn't seal. My thought was that the non-lubricated (dry) seal was slightly squeezed by the pressure of the ball valve. After all there is no pressure on the flush lever 99.99% of the time. We have hard water and you might be correct that the minerals in the water stiffens the seal. I don't know why the blue holding tank chemical would keep the seal from leaking, but anything that works is good. So far so good for the silicon grease, as the RV has been used only two times in three months and the bowl is still holding water.