The toilet in our guest bathroom became loose and started leaking. As much as I would have rather focused on just about any other project around the house, apparently, a loose, leaky toilet is universally accepted as “undesirable” and something that should be addressed.

Since the old throne always seems to clog up when we try to flush much more than a single-ply of one square of tissue, I decided to replace it with something modern and more efficient rather than just re-mount it.

Toilet swapping is a relatively easy task, but in this house, with our DIY’ing predecessors, momentous unforeseen challenges were to be expected.

The Last Ride of the Ridgeline

I picked up the new commode in advance. After all this time, throughout the entire existence of the blog, it was the last time the AZ DIY Guy Honda Ridgeline would visit a hardware store, home center, or lumber yard. It was all fixed up and ready for trade-in. The end of an era, it was a sad finish that it wasn’t to haul a heaping stack of lumber, or some bad-ass power tools home.

The Ridgeline would go out with a toilet run. Classy.

I’d be replacing it another pickup truck to support my home improvement adventures, like the unbridled excitement of toilet procurement, preferably a midsize. If you’ve been watching, you know how it went down. If not, the day of the toilet’s ride, you can catch a clue from the pretty filly that caught my eye in the background…

Removing an OLD toilet

There’s nothing a young boy dreams of more than growing up and extracting his first, old toilet. It took me longer decades than I’d hoped, but when the chance for the adventure finally presented itself, I jumped in with both feet,… to the adventure,… not the toilet.

Getting Rid of the water

SHUT IT OFF: I passed the first opportunity for a swear-word inducing challenge when the plastic shafted water valve actually worked. I was able to shut it off, right at the source, keeping it local. A busted valve, like I’ve previously throughout the house would have forced me to shut off the whole house to replace the valve.

FLUSH IT OUT: When you push the flush lever and keep holding it down with the water off, the tank empties quickly.

Mostly.

SOAK UP THE REST: To get the dregs of remaining water out of the tank, I used an old sponge. Soaking up the last drips would prevent a water trail through the house as I’d carry the tank away.

Toilet Disassembly and removal

A toilet is an unwieldy, heavy beast, best not lugged through the house in one piece. It’s easier to break it down into its more manageable bits.

UNPLUG: After the water is off, it’s easy to remove the line from the tank to the valve.

I’d replaced this particular line with a metal, braided one over a decade ago when the original, cheap-o, plastic piece had spit and flooded out house for 8 hours straight. Make the investment in a good water line friends; it’s worth it.

UNSCREW: I selected a socket to grip the nuts holding the tank on to the toilet bowl. Inside the tank were corresponding, slotted screw heads that backed out with my favorite screwdriver. Adventure!

GO TOPLESS: When the two bolts and the water line are removed, the tank is free to be carted off to its destiny. We are going to be so popular in the neighborhood when I set this out on the curb for the next bulk pickup. You know the roving bands of pickers are going to snap it up an ancient toilet like it’s gold bullion.

UNSEAT: In my second stroke of luck of the day, the first nut holding the toilet to the floor was not completely rusted in place. Although there was a little corrosion, I broke it loose with a ratcheting wrench.

The second one wasn’t a problem to get out, even though it was heavily rusted and the nut was frozen in place. The bolt had broken out from below. This was the culprit that had let the toilet loose.

Something was broken below. I’d have to deal with it later.

With the connections removed, I could lift the bowl right up and take it out to be reunited with it’s old friend, the tank. Of course, it was still full of water.

WATCH THE SLOSH: I didn’t want to take the time to do the sponge-thing and slowly empty all the water out of the bowl. Dumbledore didn’t show up and slurp it down like he had with the poison in the Horcrux Cave cave either, …

…so I left it full and carefully carted it out. I was super careful not to water drip out the back. It just might bother the family if I dribbled a stream of toilet water from one end of the house to the other.

Installing a new toilet: The Mounting Flange

Toilets don’t just sit on the floor like arm chairs. They get bolted to a closet flange, which is attached to the plumbing and the floor. That’s closet as in water closet. I’m not going to be all fancy and start calling the thing a water closet, when toilet just sums it up fine, for us regular folks.

This is where things got tricky.

With the toilet removed, I could check out the flange situation. The sealing element, a wax ring, was a bit deformed. Maybe it was due to the loose toilet; maybe it was my demolition efforts.

There was a good deal of accumulated crud of the ages. It was rubber gloves time friends.

I found that the toilet had been installed on wooden shims. It had not been sealed to the floor with caulk. Decades of bathtub / shower splashes had been allowed to seep underneath, break down the wood, and rust the bolt out. That’s what made it loose, causing the leak.

I pried the old wax ring up. Oddly there was the remnants of a second wax ring, jammed down in the neck of the drain pipe. Maybe that’s what caused the overflows. Stupid stuff like that is par for the house.

The metal flange was in extremely rough shape. It was heavily corroded, with remnants of an orange paint or coating peeking through the rust. I was able to remove the retaining nut from the surviving mounting bolt with the ratcheting wrench.

The other rusted bolt had torn out of the flange, expanding the slot that was supposed to lock it in. Not good. There wasn’t enough meat left to hold a new bolt.

I’d have to go to he hardware store after all, to get a new flange assembly. I’d have to carefully cut, chisel, and break the old one out of the drain pipe, kind-of like I did for the sink drain during he kitchen remodel. I might even have to chip into the concrete.

I took some measurements; who knows what I’d be able to get my hands on?

Rather than treat the household to the delightful bouquet of escaping sewer gasses, I stuffed a rag down into the hole. It was the ultimate, natural end of the t-shirt life cycle: new shirt -> exercise shirt -> work shirt -> painting shirt -> rag -> sewer-hole plug.

Fixing the toilet Flange

Reprieve!

As I stood, slack-jawed, in the plumbing section of Ace Hardware, one of their resident, super-smart old-man guys ambled up and asked if he could help. I showed him a photo of what I was working on. He reached up and snagged a cool metal flange that gets mounted, quick and easy, on top of the existing wreck. It gets screwed to the floor, to lock it in place. I would not have to remove the old one after all. It would save me a ton of time and effort. Sold!

This quick ring is supposed to fit any broken or missing flange situation. I’m so glad I didn’t have to spend my afternoon chipping concrete and trying not to break drain pipe.

I installed the mounting bolts in the flange and lined them up by making sure they were both equally spaced from the wall.

Since this is a single story, slab home the tile floor is over concrete. I deployed the hammer-drill with a masonry bit to bore the mounting holes. A hammer-drill in a small bathroom space makes some serious noise that will leave your ears positively ringing unless you wear protection.

It’s important to drill those holes a bit deeper than the fastener. I used special concrete screws that didn’t need any sort of anchoring hardware, they self-thread right into the drilled hole. I zipped them in tightly with my impact driver.

The hammer-drilling had broken away more of the mortar around the drain so I used pre-mixed concrete patching compound to fill in the whole area.

As the concrete path started to dry, I gave it a good buffing with a rag to clean it up and make it look a little prettier. We can’t have our guests peeing under the toilet and seeing sloppy workmanship can we? I’d let it cure overnight.

iNTERMISSION

Since I had to wait for the patch to dry and there was a lot of room to work, I took the opportunity to do a quick fix on the wall. I’d covered it with a sheet of plank embossed hardboard years ago to dress it up as wainscoting. Again, the terrors of children and showers had done it’s worst. Here and there, water had infiltrated the faux seams and penetrated the sheet, allowing the wood to swell up.

I sanded those high spots down with the cordless sander and wiped the wall down to get the sawdust.

I had a can of white trim paint in the garage, so I gave it a nice, crisp coat.

It looked great. In hindsight, I wish I’d taken the opportunity to replace that water valve anyway. It’s old and creaky, plus it’s plastic. At some point it’s going to break when it’s most inconvenient. It would have been so much easier with the toilet removed.

But alas, I called it a day.

Installing a Toilet: Attachment and Assembly

I’d picked up an American Standard, VorMax in their more antique-ish looking “Esteem” design from Lowes. It had a lot of cleaning features and “ultra low” water usage. Their kit included everything I needed. With the flange repaired, there was no need to grab anything else from the hardware store for the install.

First up was the wax ring to seal the toilet to the plumbing. I mushed it onto the base with the bowl upside-down on the floor.

Carefully, I flipped the whole thing over and lowered it over the bolts, doing my best to let it settle evenly onto the wax ring so it could compress into place.

Like the rest of the house, the floor was not remotely level, especially with the custom “drunken-weekend” tile job that came with the place. Without disturbing the newly mushed wax ring too much I leveled the seat with my handy collection of plastic shims.

I tightened it down against the shims until it was locked in place.

The tank components came fully assembled in the box. It’s was a little unwieldy to maneuver in the small space, while trying not to bash my head on the cabinet, but I managed to get it in there without breaking anything or hurting myself. Can you imagine going to urgent care and explaining a toilet install concussion?

I attached the tank with the included hardware and hooked up the water line. I eased opened the valve and let the tank fill. No leaks!

The VorMax (I love saying that) includes a dual valve system for flushing. A simple push of the lever opens up one of the two flappers, for light duty work, and the best water savings. For ahh,.. heavy lifting?… serious business?,… or how about, matters of significance… the lever goes all the way down and opens the second flapper.

With both vales wide open the thing lets loose like a mountain howitzer. There’s no cutesy rainfall trickle of water tinkling from little pinholes around the circumference of the rim. No, there is a horizontal white-water torrent, shooting from a single barrel in a high-speed cyclone of fury. Stuff is going DOWN!

Another added bonus of this kit was the included, soft closing lid. A hinge assembly gets installed first, then the seat assembly clicks on easily. No more lid slamming in the quiet hours of the night to wake me up from my DIY dreams.

Even though the installed toilet is taller (ADA compliant) and protrudes further into the room, it does not feel like it It appears to be smaller for some reason. All I have to do to finish is lay a bead of silicone caulk around the base to keep water from seeping under there if there’s an exuberant shower issue.

I’d delayed writing this one up to see how the VorMax performed. Two months in, and it’s doing great. It’s easy to clean and has never had any sort of issues.

(Disclosure - Non-Sponsored, no relationship with American Standard, but we do have a little stock in our retirement accounts. Opinion and experience is 100% my own)