For those people interested in replacing their toilets to help the building conserve water, there’s been a change in plans that should result in cash savings as well as more personalized service. Cathy’s working out details and I’ll post info as I get it.
The big concern for everyone seems to be the tiling. I know that our own upstairs toilet sits on the tile and our downstairs one is tiled in. From talking with other people, I believe this is a common situation. It’s a concern that ultimately needs to be ironed out with the actual installer.
One resident has contacted me looking for info from anyone who has experience with having toilets replaced in this building (see below). If anyone has any useful info, feel free to post it in the comments. Thanks!
I live at 210 and have questions regarding how everyone in this building installed their toilets. I spoke with a plumber familiar with our building and he says that the toilets need to be tiled in and sit flat so that they line up with the rear outlet. We had a leak nearly ruin our floor completely due to not being able to see a leak because the toilet was tiled in. What is everyone’s experience?
I replaced a toilet a few months ago. Here are some things I learned. (1) The toilets sit not on top of tile, but rather directly on the plywood base flooring. This causes the tiling to surround the toilets making it difficult to remove the fixture, and generally requiring tile modifications to replace a toilet since newer toilets will rarely fit in the old spot. Re-tiling a bathroom floor is approx $500 to $900, plus tile. Add that to about $600/toilet and you can expect to spend about $1500 per toilet replacement. (2) I used Three Mason’s for the floor replacement and PlumberBoy (Dracut) to replace the toilet; both were extremely knowledgeable and skilled and fast. I’d call them again first, if I needed to. (3) A few months after installing the toilet there was a small amount of leakage. I though it was the seal, but Andrew of PlumberBoy came back and pointed out to me that the exit/drainage pipe within the wall was plastic. Plastic expands and contracts with the temperature. The vertical exit pipe, we found, was not properly secured, within the wall, to frame timbers, and therefore, over time, it moves, slightly loosening itself from toilet seals. Once Andrew pointed this out you could see it in the torque tightness of the rear-facing toilet bolts. When these were tightened you could hear the exit pipe in the wall being pulled _toward_ the toilet seal. Andrew tightened this, without charge, and told me to check these once in a while.
I’m not convinced that all the toilets are tiled in; my upstairs toilet clearly seems to be sitting on top of the tile. My understanding is that the original contractor used linoleum, or something similar, which added virtually no height to the toilet. When people started replacing the linoleum with actual tile this raised the toilet which meant that the outflow connection in the back no longer lined up unless the toilet sat on the plywood subfloor and the tile was cut around it.
Given that, I’m not sure why my upstairs toilet still looks like it’s sitting on top of the tile, but it really does appear to.
Might need to look at a “thinner” tile if that’s such a thing. From our experience last year with the unseen leak rotting the wood floor I would hate to pay $$$ just to be setting myself up for more damage in the future when the wax ring breaks down for replacement. At least if the leak occurred on a toilet above the tile I would think you would be able to catch it earlier.
Also anyone know of any brands? Koehler barrington is what I had previously.