One of the little worries homeowners struggle with when leaving for a long vacation is whether they might return to a dry toilet bowl.
It’s a genuine worry – toilets do lose water with time and even become unusable in the process.
If you’re unlucky, it will leave rusty lines that may demand serious scrubbing to disappear.
So, How Can You Keep Water from Evaporating from The Toilet?
Spoiler alert: it’s not easy. The simplest trick around this problem is to sprinkle some antifreeze agent until it’s about 50% of the mixture in the bowl. The second trick is to leave your air conditioner running the whole time. This can only be effective within a certain temperature range.
Let’s take a closer look:
1. Increase The Boiling Point with Antifreeze (ethylene glycol)
The job of the antifreeze is quite straightforward – to lower the freezing point of water and, if mixed with water in the right proportions, increase its boiling point as well.
Water traditionally turns to steam at 212°F.
If you want your engine water to boil at a point above this, mix it with an antifreeze agent preferably in 50:50 proportions with water or indoor applications.
That way, you get to raise the boiling point to about 223°F.
Any little amount of water left to stand anywhere in the open for a long time will certainly evaporate bit by bit until all of it is no more.
You can reduce the likelihood by increasing the boiling point.
A higher boiling point means your toilet water won’t evaporate as fast as it would without the agent.
Secondly, antifreeze agents don’t evaporate as easily as water. In fact, most of them don’t evaporate at all.
While antifreeze agents are a near-certain solution to this problem, don’t just sprinkle a few drops in your toilet and expect it to work wonders.
To get the best results, you will need to mix the agent and water in the ratio of 50:50.
This is going to be hard to achieve for water in the toilet bowl, but a mixture with a deficiency in either component may not work as desired, so figure out a way around it.
Remember To Close The Lid After Everything
2. Turn On Your Air Conditioner
High temperatures, alongside an array of factors, can be the reason why your toilet water is evaporating so fast.
You need an air conditioner to keep the room cool even though these machines have been proven to increase the rate of evaporation.
If you were to compare the rate of evaporation in two glasses of water, one placed in a normal room and another in a room serviced by an A/C unit, the latter would register higher evaporation.
Why?
Air-conditioned rooms have lower temperatures than outside the home.
Low temperatures translate to little evaporation. Of course, other factors will come into the mix, including the humidity and the size of the bathroom versus the power of the AC unit.
Wait! Won’t It Bloat My Electricity Bill?
No – leaving your AC running for extended periods to cut on evaporation won’t bloat your electricity bill but you must get a few things right.
In fact, the opposite is true – it would be expensive for you to leave the AC unit turned off if you know the high temperatures will ruin your antiques and fine wood furniture and even melt your candles.
And that’s before it evaporates all the water in your toilet and leaves ugly marks all over it. Also, don’t let your AC unit blast at full capacity in your absence – you risk over-cooling the room.
The best way to go about it is to set your thermostat at 85 – 90°F.
At that range, your room will stay cool enough to discourage excess evaporation from the toilet bowl and even help keep your fridge and freezer stay within recommended operating conditions (remember fridges were designed to function in cool environments).
3. Wrap The Toilet Seat with A Clingy Plastic Wrap
This sounds like something you’d do as a prank, but you can prevent water from evaporating from the bowl by covering the seat with airtight polythene paper.
Before anything, ensure your paper is large enough to wrap around the toilet seat. Also, remember to clean your toilet and flush the water to get a fresh replacement.
Start by applying a thin layer of petroleum jelly on the toilet seat. Polythene papers adhere better on oily and slippery surfaces than on dry or plain wet surfaces.
Get yourself any type of clingy plastic paper preferably regular colorless polythene paper.
With the cover still open and a layer of jelly in place, proceed to wrap your polythene paper around the toilet.
Maintain a tight wrap and fasten the paper beneath the toilet seat with strong cello tape.
Rub your finger on the surface of the paper to confirm it is tight enough – the objective here is to make the bowl airtight so that your water doesn’t evaporate under the surrounding humidity and temperature.
Conclusion
How can you keep water from evaporating from the toilet?
Perhaps the simplest and most obvious trick around this problem is to sprinkle some antifreeze agent until it’s about 50% of the mixture in the bowl.
The second trick is to leave your air conditioner running the whole time.
This can only be effective within a certain temperature range.
