How To Install A Toilet So It Won't Leak

in this video i'm going to teach you everything you need to know so that you can change your toilet and install a new one even if you're changing the height of your floor stay tuned all right guys one of the most important things you need to learn about managing your house is managing the water specifically with your toilet there are at least well there's at least one toilet for every person living in north america right we're toilet crazy we've got them at home we've got them at work we've got them where we eat we got them where we play got them in the park bottom line is there's a about a billion toilets floating around north america and on a regular basis they need to be removed and changed the sizes change styles change you used to have like huge tanks right enough water in there to fill a swimming pool but now we're getting really low flow and trying to conserve so everybody's updating toilets we're going to go through the process for doing this first thing you got to do shut off the water supply in the back i am lucky because i have a 90 degree turn shutoff valve and then remove these things these things are brutal a lot of times people try to move their toilet and then they want to reinstall it later because they're doing a renovation and if you don't manage this it breaks really easily so you got to put it somewhere safe thanks matt yep now that the water's off you gotta empty the sucker all right empty out the back now this is called the tank and this is a one-piece toilet so we don't have any risk of leakage here but if it's a two piece especially make sure that you've emptied out the back and you just check to make sure that the two screws and bolts that are there are tight and nothing's wiggling around okay managing your water here is really the key if you don't manage the water that's in the toilet when you move it because it is a p-trap if you look at an old toilet you'll see the pipe come down and up okay there's a big snake here and the water actually sits in the bowl all the way down and all the way back up again until it spills over the top to go down to the through the floor and so that's the p-trap here just like underneath the sink if you leave all that water in there as you move it splashes over the top wall okay and it ends up all over your floor so what i got a system here to help you do this so you're not going to run into trouble first of all get a pail of water because it's a p-trap if i pour a large volume of water down at a quick time it creates a vacuum and it'll suck all the water out of that p-trap almost to the very end check this out so the water level used to be here now it's down here so that means on the back side of that p-trap that's in here i've got a few inches to play with that's enough for me to manage no need to go grab a vacuum and shove your vacuum in a toilet and get it full of bacteria god just do that and then follow the following process you want to disengage your water supply from your shutoff valve a couple of turns it should be just finger tight now you're going to get a dribble here don't panic it's just a little bit of water in that hose okay secondly all toilets have some sort of connection system to the floor in this case there's this little cap and a screw and there's something on the floor that's attached to the floor inside the back of the toilet that that screws into okay there's all kinds of systems out there now be careful and pay attention to which one you have if you have a traditional toilet it's just going to be the white caps with toilet bolts you might even need a hacksaw to cut those bolts off depending on the condition of the toilet this toilet looks to be grouted and silicone to the floor if you've never seen that before consider it because the grout offers you a lot of stability and the silicone gives you a great seal look at that there we go what do you mean it was crowded to the floor what does that mean well the toilet was installed and then grit was pushed into the groove into the dryer and then what does it gives it stability so it doesn't rock it's very common when you're working on uneven surfaces because instead of using uh silicone shims you can just grout it in yeah big deal come back the next day a little bit of silicone off you go all right now she's ready to be released okay so what we're going to do is we're going to lift this up matthew's going to bag it behind me and take it out of the way i like putting something like this straight into a shower pan unfortunately today because we're using lights we can't get to the shower pan so we'll set it behind us the reason for the bag is in case there's any water pouring dripping out we keep it contained okay now uh we're also going to get a chance to see the condition of the seal on this toilet and we'll talk about that and we'll discuss options to make this work we haven't done this in a little while yeah this one's a difficult one because you're basically here you're getting it up in the air i have nothing to grab here yeah so i'm going to grab the back corner and the front edge okay right here and i'm just going to wrap it okay ready all right i'm trying to lift it up level [Applause] there you go okay is this right down yeah all right now at this point if you can just get more bag towards the back okay and then rock it forward all right for a little bit there we go okay that's good now slide that right over easy easy yeah okay well that one worked really well i like that system so this particular toilet came with a whole flange nut and bolt system look at that who installed that look at that not even a drip of water no wax there's a lot of options out here for doing this kind of work so what i'm going to do now is let's take this apart and we'll show you different options so this is actually a pretty advanced toilet it's going to be rather expensive to buy these about four or five hundred bucks here's the deal traditional toilets don't come with a system like this okay for connection that's where the screws went into isn't that amazing let's get something back to what it looks like a little bit more traditional okay so this particular toilet comes with installation instructions for this unit right here and this one sits on the wax all right and it's just a really traditional wax ring but the toilet itself is designed differently okay so here we go this is all special installation for that particular unit this is traditionally what you're going to find so here's the wax ring that you would buy that i used in this situation all right and it is one inch thick okay and it gets compressed and it makes a really good sew and you can see it is no longer one inch thick all right now the reason that it fits so well and it didn't leak anywhere is because the height of this flange versus the toilet the tile here i'm a big believer in the idea of this the top of your flange needs to be at bare minimum flush with your finish floor or a quarter of an inch higher and anywhere in that range okay now on this particular floor it has a slight slope look at this almost flush at the back okay full quarter of an inch higher than the floor on the front all right and that's why this works because i use a regular wax if this is lower i wouldn't want to about this [Applause] okay this is the large version of the wax same product one and a half times as thick okay so if you have a toilet that's really flush with the floor i wouldn't suggest going with the regular wax get the jumbo reinforced flange cap wax okay get the jumbo and that'll help make sure that you get good compression into the wax now let me just go through a couple of things here when you pull this one out of the package okay the jumbo wax there is a possibility that you can screw this up if you have a good gap here if you have a nice gap here and you get the jumbo wax you have the potential of doing something like this you're going to go like this you're going to drop your wax in place right you're going to line up your bolts you're going to go to set the toilet in if when you go to set the toilet in you're not all the way where you want to be so you're going straight down on it okay you're not going to get good compression what possibly could happen is you could start here and then you might start moving backwards okay and you get into position you think oh great i got a good seal what you've done is you've collapsed your hole okay and you end up just going to do the demonstration here i've seen this before many times we'll get a call from a customer they're like this is back in the days when i work warranty for a renovation company and i'd open up the toilet and i'd see something like this all right instead of a nice big three inch hole they got this all right that looks like the size of a drain for the sink you're going to run into trouble so you don't want to be forcing the wax back or sliding it left and right when you drop your toilet on you want to be over top foot go straight down if that means you need two or three people to help you then get them okay but you've got to make sure you go straight down onto your wax to avoid that trouble all right garbage okay here we go so i'm going to set this aside because i'm going to use this one later to reinstall this toilet let me just go through a couple of other options you all might have seen this before and i use this on a toilet and my uh a bathroom video max in my my form here's downstairs yeah and downstairs we had um oh this this place the floor downstairs is over crawl space and the crawl space is really short and it's old-school 1880 construction so the floor has a lot of movement and so what we did down there to solve our toilet problem is i had a the toilet flange sitting on the plywood and then we had flooring and because of the height of the flooring i had to add some beef to it we put in this rubber gasket here okay it goes over the holes and this rubber gasket replaces the need for wax okay so then what happens is the toilet sits on this and as the house moves and breathes so does the gasket see that so if the toilet is moving around in position all year round with different seasons the gasket maintains contact with the toilet and have a good seal wax doesn't do that once wax is pushed and collapsed it does not spring back in place so if you have an older house or you're on a crawl space and you get weird weather having a foam gasket like this might be a good solution for you this was available at home depot if you want to search it out we'll put the uh i'll put a link i think it might be available on amazon closet flange extension okay and it also comes with a flange extender now this ring is going to be for a good first this situation here check this out we are adding new flooring now look what happens all of a sudden the flange is lower than my finish floor okay you don't want that because if i put this on here with that lower than that my toilet is not even going to make contact with that flange okay that's the serious problem make sure you've always got that at least flush or a quarter inch higher so what they do is they sell this little extension kit okay boom boom boom there we go now we set this up so your bolts are when you're looking at it like a clock face you're at three o'clock and nine o'clock nice and square and level don't go like this or the toilet might have a potential to pop right out of the holes okay now you're high enough that might even be a little bit too high okay but what you want to do is you want to screw these four corners right into the existing abs drain system okay so i have abs drain you might be on a cpvc if it's on cast you can't use this you can't use this extender on cast okay they have a different one and that's a whole new world most people in the world were not on cast plumbing anymore because extended toilet bolt kits as well because when you start building up your toilet kit you might not have bolts long enough to get above the new toilet when you start stacking all this together right so all three of these things work together to get an extension and a seal let me get these out of the damn way okay there we go extension seal and in between this is a gasket under compression and it seals everything okay that's why we're screwing it down a great compression don't use silicone i've seen so many plumbers use silicone and throw on a teflon ring it's lazy it's wrong it always leaks anywhere where you have water sitting silicone will give out and eventually because the toilet should sit there for the lifetime of the of the room we don't reinstall them every year to get a fresh seal but if you have any silicone in that assembly water will get underneath between that silicone it'll start working its way out under your subfloor brought out your subfloor and when your subfloor starts to rot around your toilet all your screws are in rotting wood and so the wood swells and then everything starts to get loose and then your toilet starts to wiggle and as your toilet wiggles the wax starts to open up worse and worse and worse next thing you know the wax is broken the water's all around the toilet this is what happens it can take five or ten years but so don't let somebody install a toilet incorrectly in your house because the warranty they're gonna give you on that installation is 30 days to a year tops right but the damage they can cause by doing it wrong will bite you in the butt years down the road you'll be sitting there going geez honey there's a really weird dark stain on the ceiling what's up with that somebody use silicone on your toilet all right now the next option is this product here okay it's very similar now this one comes this one has two different thicknesses and rings okay so this is my go-to any time that i know i need an extension but i'm not sure how big it's going to be because i haven't pulled the toilet off yet i buy one of these okay there's two gaskets that come with it there's an adhesive backing on it okay the adhesive backing is to apply to the underside of the ring i'm gonna set that up bam all right now you're ready to go extension all right now the reason i like this particular system it's like i said it's got the screws so i can screw in four corners the other thing it has is this bolt system doesn't allow it to slide out okay so you can put these in the right location and then you stack it like this and then you would screw it in okay now when you're gonna go install your toilet they have these clips check this out little plastic washers it's kind of like a zip tie okay and you can get your bolts standing straight up by using that zip tie remember what i said about setting your toilet straight down if you use this system here you can line this up perfectly and as an individual you can set that on if you don't have those these bolts can be all over the place making contact with the toilet and then you gotta lean and slide and try to you need two people but with this it's a one person installation very common out there is the existing floor if you're adding tile then you know you have to get one and a quarter inch thick on your subfloor so what we do is we don't move the flange we add the plywood around it we got a great video that we added the subfloor okay if you're doing a project like that you need to add subfloor thickness we'll put a video link in the description we can check the card if you get cards in your notification the other thing is when you go that thick on your tile take the the seal okay boom double stack this bad boy okay good to go now when you do your screws you screw through here they're already lined up boom boom boom all the way down into the abs now you've got enough height difference here to add plywood and tile and still have a little bit sitting above your floor okay guaranteed every time if you're doing a tile job and you're going from just regular subfloor because you had a vinyl sheet floor go back to the original 5 8 get that little quarter inch plywood out of there grab one of these kits and double stack it all right and then you can install your toilet knowing that you're going to have a great seal and depending on the thickness like i said you can go with the regular wax if you are a little bit above your floor when you're finished or you can go the large wax when you're done all right one more thing when you're doing your toilet day make sure you pop by your local coffee shop grab yourself a copy these are like wax lined cups perfect every time that'll stop the sewer gas from coming into the house while you're working this information is really good for anybody who has cpvc or or abs plumbing all right if you have cast you can actually buy brass rings if sometimes the cast you still have lead the lead is a soft metal that's sticking up and you can actually just take a torch to it really lightly and then you can hammer it flat okay i know it's crazy and then you can put your adhesive right over top of that and then bolt your toilet to the floor there's a few other varying situations but they also make a a flange insert that goes into that pipe and it's called twist and seal all right it's a white pvc has a big three inch black gasket on it and the sides are tapered the idea is you set it in place you start spinning it and the the contact that the the gasket has with the side of the pipe slowly starts to get compressed tighter and tighter and tighter as you thread it down so if you have an old pipe and you don't have a flange and you've got nothing attached to that twist and seal will save your bacon okay so it is on the market all of these things are available at your local building store you don't have to go to a specialty supply store for this that's the best part when in doubt if you have an issue take a picture of what you're dealing with get a measurement of whatever your finish is from your floor know your flooring assembly you're going to be using you can go to the hardware store and they'll help you get the right stuff okay they're at least competent enough to help you with that most plumbing departments at these stores you've got someone who has enough confidence to help you with your toys huh and if you have other questions and you just can't seem to solve your problem consider becoming a member on our channel we've got a forum you can send pictures and ask questions there and we can help you out ourselves okay so in summary let's just go through the the major points here one don't ever use silicone if you have to rely on silicone to seal your water you're just delaying the damage that's inevitable number two try to get flush to a quarter inch up okay if you're a quarter inch high it's perfect regular wax is good if you need to build it up use a system that's designed for building it up don't get creative in your home and experiment all right and number three always install your toilet straight down when you're finished and you'll be just fine remember one of the most common causes of water damage in the home is a leaking toilet it's unbelievable i've probably replaced in 500 toilets in my career and i'll tell you right now about 430 of them were installed or wrong so if you're watching this video chances are yours is two the way you can tell is if it moves side to side or front to back you got a 95 chance that there's a leak going on right now you might want to take it up and have a good look okay if you like that information and you think it saved your bacon give this video a thumbs up don't forget subscribe to this channel because we are in the middle of a massive bathroom remodel project we're doing everything bought from the local building store so that you guys can do this project at home on your own okay it's going to be totally doable yes you can remodel your bathroom and you can make a ton of money doing it so now that we got our flooring installed let's take a look at the actual implementation of the solution here we'll start off by going with the thick ring now you're going to see that maybe that's allowable on the back because i have a slope floor and a level fixture um i'm way too thick at the front so that's not gonna be acceptable remember this it's gonna be sitting on the floor so i can't have something that's causing this to be sitting too high off the ground or that's just going to be a serious problem for me here we go this is the thinner piece okay i'm just above flush here maybe an eighth and i'm a quarter in front i like that we're gonna go with it you know it's funny because you know most toilets don't have an elaborate system like this and this has an integrated rubber gasket here that the toilet actually is going to stretch and have its own self-seal and i'm using wax to seal this to my my flange majority of toilet toilets that are on the market today are basically they're cheap they don't have you know expensive flange options there's a lot of different companies out there who sell four six eight hundred dollar toilets and they have really complex systems to manage the fact that it'll never leak but the average person is getting a builder grade toilet or they're going to a box store to find a toilet to replace what they have now and they just don't sell quality there so you have to contend with the fact that your installation has to be bloody perfect to protect yourself there's just no mercy for you [Laughter] wow that'd be nice if they weren't quite so aggressive if when you put your flange on and you're over gaps or screws and you can't use the pre-drilled holes don't worry about it all right just reposition i know this ain't sexy but it's going to get done [Music] okay yeah just because it works doesn't mean it's easy all right now this is just nasty we're dealing with these wax rings if you want you can wear latex gloves if you can get a even find them due to covet it's hard to get a hold of products like that at the hardware store nowadays so where are some clothes that you can rub your hands on and get rid of the wax all right now that's in position next couple of steps got to happen pretty darn quick here all right we do not want to be smelling our sewer system thank you timmy's for your help it's just wax but you don't want to have too much buildup on the inside and make your hole smaller right all right now here we go it's amazing now with most conventional toilets all you do is you put the wax down attach your screws and drop your toilet right over top with this system i have to go grab a wrench now but i got to install this coupling i got to install this system over top and then tighten my screws [Music] so you can see that the nut sits on top of these brass washers when the washers start to bend you're putting more pressure on that toilet than you need to okay that's your key you don't know when to stop you want to know how much pressure as soon as this nut starts to bend that washer and so it's folding into the hole just stop you've got enough pressure you're not gonna doing any more favor to yourself by going any tighter all right well now i'm just gonna drop the toilet in place and connect the water supply again cutting the bolts down because i don't want to have any interruption with setting that new one on top boom this particular toilet what's that for that's where this goes okay that's where the screw the screw to set this in goes so when you're going to go set the toilet down put the hole right in the middle of that tape and then set it down i'll bend to the left you go to the right i know it seems silly but straight over okay i'm good me too there you go it just sits right in place [Music] put our little decorative cap on there that looks pretty connect our water supply shut off valves always start with finger tight and when it gets stiff you know you've made contact with the gasket that's in there okay then you can take a pliers give it another full turn maybe a 14 and a half really gets good compression okay check for leaks we're good now remember whenever you're doing a remodeling project you're adding new flooring if your plumbing is coming through the floor you don't have to cut it off and put on a new shutoff valve just work your flooring around that hole get yourself one of these this is called a split pipe flange okay this will cover up the pipe and just snaps in place and you just set it there good to go perfect every time here we go guys now listen very careful when you put the you don't want to at the last moment when you have a full tank of water crack the darn tank remember we are remodeling this bathroom it's a four piece so we've got a shower tub new vanity double sink instead of one all these projects are in our new video series you can click the link over here and follow from the beginning thanks for joining us we'll see you again soon

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 78,468

Rating: 4.9494848 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, home improvement, leaking toilet, leaky toilet, wax ring, home repair, fill valve, how to change a toilet, how to install a toilet, how to remove a toilet, best way to install a new toilet, bathroom remodel, plumbing basics for beginners, can i replace my toilet myself, what are the steps to replacing a toilet, how do i know if my toilet is leaking, should i caulk around my toilet, toilet repair

Id: eIkPTezSkx4

Length: 27min 5sec (1625 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 25 2021