How to save some money when buying tank lids

Suggestions For Saving Money When Buying Toilet Tank Lids

If you're willing to invest a lot of your own time, you might be lucky and find a replacement toilet tank lid that fits your toilet tank at significantly lower prices than what we sell them for (remember "Time is money"); try calling your local plumbers and ask if they save and have any toilet tank lids in stock.

The reason to call a plumber first is that many of them have gotten their tank lids for free. Some plumbers have accumulated a lot of tank lids and are sick and tired of never selling any and just want to sell them "cheap" because they are taking up space. Many plumbers recognize that they'll never ever sell many of them because there is a very limited market for used toilet tank lids. If you find a plumber that stocks tank lids then drive there and hopefully you'll find the tank lid that you are looking for.

Some plumbers are really awesome and will help you find tank lids.
These wonderful plumbers sold all of their over 400 tank lids to us and even helped load all of them into our van for both of our trips to pick them up.

Once in a while you might find a plumber that has lots of tank lids
(we bought all of this plumber's toilet tank lids)

We also recommend calling or visiting local plumbing supply stores. Especially the smaller local ones that cater to repair plumbers. Their prices will tend to be more than what most plumbers will charge, as these stores probably had to buy the tank lids as well as they have overhead/expenses that need to be paid for. The more organized that their tank lids are, the more that they will generally charge you. "Time is money." Note that tank lids will tend to be more organized at a plumbing supply store than at a plumber's warehouse.

If you're lucky you might find a place that will have the tank lids nicely organized.

Usually it's a big mess but sometimes the toilet tank lids will all be laying in a row.

There might be a chance that there is a salvage or recycling yard near you. Check your yellow pages under "salvage yards." If there is one, maybe call them first to be sure that they have some toilet tank lids in stock. If you have a lot of free time, then your local salvage yard might be your best bet. Be careful and don't cut yourself there because in some salvage yards there is a lot of glass, chipped and broken toilets which can be dangerous. Also beware of spiders, wasps, ants and other creatures that might be living underneath old tank lids and salvaged toilets. View our growing list of salvage and recycling yards.

Some salvage yards have lots of toilets. Many have missing toilet tank lids.

Be careful, broken porcelain china can be very sharp.

Numerous small towns have salvage yards that carry some complete toilets.
Many places insist that the customer buy an entire toilet (because without a tank lid a toilet isn't worth much).

There are a few mind blowing salvage yards that do have a lot of toilets and sell separate lids.

Check to see if there are any other recycling type places in your area. Habitat for Humanity and ReOrg have a lot of places that operate a recycling materials and construction yard and they sometimes have a nice selection of low priced toilet tank lids. If you buy a toilet tank lid from them you would be helping a charity and that's a great win-win. Heck you might even give them a few extra bucks just because you saved so much money and it will keep them going.

Habitat for Humanity ReStore recycling centers are all over the U.S. and some have a few toilet tank lids.

Help yourself and ReStore - Habitat for Humanities by visiting their recycling stores often.

Garage and yard sales can be fun to visit and sometimes (although rare) some have a few used toilets. There are even some areas such as Fresno California (they have theirs in October) that have their annual "Operation Clean Up." Santa Clara California has one in March and calls it their "Annual Community Cleanup Campaign". Basically what those are is that annually people get to leave all of their old toilets and the like in the streets on a designated special day. Then that area's crew will pick up those old toilets, etc for free. During those times if you are willing to spend potentially many hours looking and driving around you may find a toilet tank lid for "free" that may fit your old tank. We think this idea is probably the worst of all of the above but we do know of at least 3 people who have found some toilet tank lids this way.

Although rare, sometimes garage and yard sales have some old toilets for sale.

To make it all more fun while searching for your specific toilet tank lid, you might want to print out our pages that list what we will pay you for tank lids. Then, if you don't find your specific tank lid that you're looking for, but you do find some of the lids that we will buy, it might turn out that you can send us those wanted toilet tank lids and with that money you'll be able to then buy your specific toilet tank lid from us. That would be a great win-win for both of us.

Also look in your local phone book under used building materials, used hardware, and even used industrial materials.

We have even heard of some landfills that sometimes will save toilets and toilet tank lids.

Some salvage yards will make you buy the entire toilet and won't let you buy just the lid.
Still not such a bad deal if they charge you less for a toilet than we do for a toilet tank lid alone.

If still unsuccessful, at this point your chances are becoming pretty slim but don't give up yet, you might try placing a free "wanted" ad in your area. If you have lots of time just keep placing the ads.

With placing an ad on a free site like craigslist.org sometimes you hit pay dirt.

If you're pretty handy and think you can replace and then install a toilet, then buying a new complete toilet might also be the way to go. There was a period in the 1990's that toilets flushed poorly but today most water saving toilets generally flush pretty well and so you could go that route.

You can also make your own toilet water tank lid out of wood or you could buy a plastic "fit-most" tank lid cover.

If specific exact size isn't that important then be sure to also check out our sale page on the most common toilet tank lids.

If you have any other suggestions or ideas on how people can save money when looking for toilet tank lids please let us know and we can list it above.

Remember: every toilet tank lid is unique. There is no tanklid in the world exactly like any other.

Good Luck and happy toilet tank lid hunting!

Know that many salvage businesses have some complete old toilets in stock. We do not recommend using them due to their inefficient consumption of water. Today's new toilets get very high marks for performance using 1.6 gallons per flush. Most salvaged toilets use 3.5-7.0 gallons per flush. While old toilets can be retrofitted with new flush mechanisms, these devices will still only maybe reduce water waste use by less than 1 gallon per flush as they simply won't flush well with much less water.

Federal codes do not allow the installation of old toilets that exceed the 1.6 gallon per flush limit.

If any of our suggestions above have saved you some money we hope that you will consider giving back by sending some of those savings to your favorite charity. Profits of our used toilet tank lids sales go to charities