Bemis 170 Elongated Plastic Toilet Seat with Top-Tite Hinge

The Bemis 170 is an elongated seat sized 18.625 inches long by 14.125 inches wide, with a 5.5 inch bolt spread. That 5.5 inch center-to-center spacing is the standard two-bolt hole pattern used on virtually all residential and commercial toilets, so it drops onto most manufacturers' elongated bowls. Measure your bowl from between the bolt holes to the front rim: an elongated bowl runs roughly 18-1/2 inches, a round bowl about 16-1/2. If yours is round, this is the wrong seat.

No reaching under the bowl. The Top-Tite hinge on the Bemis 170 tightens from the top, so the seat is installed and re-tightened standing over the fixture. That matters in a tight commercial stall or where a wall-hung tank leaves no clearance behind the bowl, and it is why maintenance crews can retighten a loose seat in seconds without a basin wrench.

It is a solid plastic seat with molded-in color, so the color runs through the material instead of sitting on the surface as a coating. That resists wear, chips and stains, and scuffs do not show as bare white underneath. Bumpers and hinges are color-matched. For heavy public restroom traffic many specifiers step up to a commercial open-front seat, but for apartments, rentals and light commercial the 170 is the standard-duty choice.

Both the seat and the hinge on the Bemis 170 are plastic. A molded plastic seat does not swell or delaminate if water gets into a nick the way a painted wood seat can, which is the usual failure in bathrooms that get mopped or see steam. Plastic hinges also will not corrode or stain the china, though they do not have the mass of a metal hinge if you want something heavier.

That is what it is built for. The 170 uses the common 5.5 inch bolt spread and elongated footprint that fits most manufacturers' elongated bowls, so one part number covers units from different china makers as long as every bowl in the building is elongated. Mixed round and elongated bowls need two SKUs, since this seat only covers the elongated openings.

White only, model number 170 000. The bumpers and hinges are color matched to the seat, so the whole assembly reads as one piece against a white china fixture.

About 1.563 inches. That is the seat height, so it is what gets added to the bowl rim when the lid and seat are down. Worth checking if you are working to a finished seat height target on an accessible fixture, where the bowl rim spec and seat thickness together set where the user actually sits.

Yes, Bemis publishes both an installation guide and a spec sheet for model 170 000, and both are available as PDFs with the product. The spec sheet is the one to hand a plumber or attach to a submittal; the install sheet covers the Top-Tite hinge tightening procedure.

Mexico. Useful if you are filling out country-of-origin fields on a government or institutional purchase order, where that line has to be declared before the PO clears.