Replacement toilet seat

MothballsWallet

Hello again, after asking about our shower on another thread, I need to ask for some more advice regarding replacing the seat on our toilet.

In 2017, we bought this Portland Close Coupled toilet from Wickes and had it installed and it's lasted 8 years and counting, which is good. Now one of the supports for the hinges has snapped and we need to get a new toilet seat as I don't think we can just glue the support back together with "superglue".

I know Wickes has replacements on their website starting at £10 but it's more the dimensions I'm considering as the toilet is 350 mm wide from the specifications but Wickes' own list starts at 356 mm wide and goes up to 472 mm (I've also looked at B&Q's list which has similar size options if you look in the product details, their product size filters look a little weird to me), so I was wondering if anyone had any advice for what would be suitable to replace it?

I'm quite happy to get the new seat from anywhere reliable, I'm just giving the Wickes and B&Q lists as examples of what I've seen so far from my own searches.

Brie

don't ever buy a cheap toilet seat.  they don't last.

what I suggest is to get a large piece of paper (newspaper will do nicely) and trace the shape of the seat on it and measure it as well.  take that into Wickes/B&Q/wherever and see what looks the same.  

if there's a couple similar but one is soft close go for that.  banging a seat down at 2 am is annoying to others in the household.  

tacpot12

I don't think Wickes' dimensions for the toilet are correct. On their website it says the cistern is 390mm wide, and from the photo the toilet seat appears wider than the cistern! So give up on stated dimensions and measure the toilet seat you have, and then buy a replacement that is that size. 

Baldytyke88

I just bought a new toilet seat from Argos, I didn't have a problem.

Emmia

After a lot of very careful measuring, I bought one from Amazon which fits absolutely perfectly. 

Albermarle

don't ever buy a cheap toilet seat.  they don't last.

I agree. It is always the hinges/hinge brackets that break and then you have to chuck the whole seat away.
The OP did well for a Wickes one to last 8 years.

MothballsWallet

Thank you everyone - we'll follow the advice from @Brie and @tacpot12 about measuring the seat for ourselves and then looking for a match.

We've had something else go that I'll create a new thread for to get advice on, then we may get some quotes from local handymen on getting things fixed. I might be able to do some of this myself, but I'm not sure I've got the right tools here.

I could go to my mum's in Scotland and get some of what were my grandfather's tools and come home, but the the tickets could cost us a lot more than getting someone local to help.

WIAWSNB

MothballsWallet said:

Thank you everyone - we'll follow the advice from @Brie and @tacpot12 about measuring the seat for ourselves and then looking for a match.

We've had something else go that I'll create a new thread for to get advice on, then we may get some quotes from local handymen on getting things fixed. I might be able to do some of this myself, but I'm not sure I've got the right tools here.

I could go to my mum's in Scotland and get some of what were my grandfather's tools and come home, but the the tickets could cost us a lot more than getting someone local to help.

Always good to have some basic tools in the household, and if you check places like Screwfix, Toolstation, Wickes and even B&Q, you'll see how cheap most are. Eg, less than £10 got me a set of three, perfectly-good, adjustable spanners recently, to do a job for my bro - I took the largest one with me (for compression plumbing fittings) and left it there for future use, and kept the two wee ones...
Any such job you can do will save you many times the cost of even one hour's pro labour.

Yorkie1

When measuring "the seat", is it better to measure the top of the pan rather than the actual folding seat which is to be replaced, do you think? (I have a large seat which I need to replace; I think it's too long for the depth of the top of the ceramic pan).

Emmia

Yorkie1 said:

When measuring "the seat", is it better to measure the top of the pan rather than the actual folding seat which is to be replaced, do you think? (I have a large seat which I need to replace; I think it's too long for the depth of the top of the ceramic pan).

I measured the pan rather than the seat and found a seat to fit the pan 

MothballsWallet

So just an update: my wife has basically done what @Brie suggested using parcel wrapping paper, so now we have an outline of the seat that we can take with us/use when searching.