Dirty toilets - don't jump to conclusions please.

[cgilley]

Kind of hanging myself out to dry here, but here we go. I have 5 toilets in my house. The house was built in 1989 and has nothing but CVPC or copper for plumbing. The toilets are all 20 to less than 5 years old. Most of the hardware has been replaced multiple times. The toilets may range in age from 20+ to 2 years old. I mention the age because toilet bowl design has changed over the years with the advent of the low water flush units.

I've noticed a significant increase in dirty toilets. I don't mean we forgot to flush, but usually you get a ring around the water level when you don't. What I am seeing are tracks coming down from some of the toilets - mainly the newer ones - and the tracks are patterned after the flow holes up under the rim. I have never seen this on the older toilets. I can go back to the late 60s as a kid and tell you I have never seen this.

Is this a hardware issue? Water quality?

 

[Geofd]

You could do a couple of things, take a sample to your city water dept, for a test, even a pool co would do

Another thing you could do is shut the water off to your toilet flush it tape off the holes under the rim pour vinegar/clr into the hole under the flapper that should fill up the rim of the toilet,let it sit overnite remove everything turn the water on and see what happens

 

[pakle]

Does someone in your family have diabetes, possibly undiagnosed or poorly controlled? Mold can feed from the excess sugar in urine.
https://www.healthline.com/health/diabetes/mold-in-toilet-diabetes#the-research
Lots of Reddit posts about this too.

Just throwing that out there as a possibility.

 

[Twowaxhack]

Toilets that get cleaned once a week and flushed when used typically don’t have a problem.

 

[Aggie83]

I had this problem in toilets on a well with lots of iron and manganese in the water. The inside of the tanks would grow black bacteria and occasionally streak it into the bowl like you describe. When that happened we would chlorine shock the well and get a Dow ial cleaner for the tanks. The bacteria are not harmful, just unsightly. https://drinking-water.extension.org/drinking-water-contaminant-iron-and-manganese-bacteria/