My friend recently rented an apartment in Akron, Ohio and tried everything to clean the pre-existing SEVERE hard water stains from the toilet with no luck. He decided the only remedy would be to get a new toilet since he was so embarrassed by the unsightly appearance. He contacted the landlord to get a new toilet put in and was told that the tenant would have to pay for the toilet but landlord would take care of the labor. I don't think its fair to the tenant to have to pay for the replacement toilet at $178 when he is disabled and on a set income. My thought when it comes to renting an apartment is "if you can't take it with you when you leave, you shouldnt have to pay for it!" Shouldn't it be the landlords responsibility to pay for the entire toilet? I think my friend is getting royally flushed by his landlord! Help! :confused:

Slw, well no one can ever accuse you of not being descriptive! I like your "royally flushed" statement.

I thought I would throw out the compliment there to help soften the blow I am about to serve you. If the toilet is not broken or damaged, the landlord is under no legal obligation to replace it.

Your friend should look at this as a small victory here. The fact that the landlord is willing to throw in the labor of replacing it, is a lot more than most folks get. That is actually quite decent of the guy. He is pretty much meeting your friend halfway. Yes, the landlord gets the benefit of a brand new toilet installed, without having to pay for it. But, your friend gets the benefit of a nice clean one to use while he is a tenant, which hopefully will be for a long, long time.

With that out of the way, I am wondering if your friend tried everything he could think of to get the stains out. I have hard water stain problems myself. I use a pumice stone with a bleach based cleaner like Softscrub with bleach or Lysol Toilet cleaner with bleach. If he hasn't already tried that route and is willing, I will be happy to explain what he needs to do. Pretty much takes a lot of elbow grease, rubber gloves, hot water poured into the bowl prior to attempting the cleaning (did I mention a lot of elbow grease?), letting the cleaning solution and water sit overnight in the bowl when you are through scrubbing it. Gets rid of most of the stains, if not all of them.