How to Repair a Cast-Iron Toilet Flange | Ask This Old House

the bathrooms right over here rich alright so what's going on well the toilet had been working fine but then we had a clogged one day and I couldn't get to it right away but then I noticed that there was water dripping on the ceiling beneath underneath okay you need all right do you see any water here on the floor no there was no water here at all all right so now what you do I cleared the clog and it's been fine ever since but now I'm worried that there might be something more going on underneath nerve-wrecking yes well I think I know what the problem is but I can't really show you what's going on underneath that toilet up here let me show you down in the truck I brought along a little market great so here is the outside of a toilet bowl you can see the ball right here and the water leaves the bowl through this thing called a trap way see how it goes up like this and then down around that goes out through the bottom let me just spin it around this is actually a half cutaway you just tip it down so now here's the ball and here's that trap way where the water goes up around and out through the bottom why is it shaped like that well this is called a siphon jet toilet and it's the standard toilet for many many years so to have a siphon you need to have a short leg that's this piece right here and then it has to have a long leg and that's from this point all the way down here once the water goes up over this hill the short leg it's pulled down the long leg and that means that liquids and solids will leave the bowl now what it does is it leaves through the bottom of the bowl and it connects to the plumbing system with this this is a closet flange and that will attach to the bottom of the toilet itself here's a closet Bend now this this is plastic I don't know if yours is lead or cast-iron or even copper and this attaches now normally the stoppages that happen inside of a toilet happen up here inside the trap way but I don't think that's what happened with you I think it happened down here why do you think that well if it happened up here think about what would happen if this was clogged the water would have nowhere else to go but backwards within the toilet itself just lift up here you said you saw liquid down through the ceiling so it means the stoppage must have been down here because if it happened that way it would have backed up here and it would have challenged the one gasket that we have in this system underneath the toilet bowl is waxey like this and so normally that wax seal has very little pressure the water goes right by but as soon as there's a stoppage right here what does it do it pushes pressure backwards and it's going on a leak out right here and down where you saw in the ceiling so I think this was your culprit so I want to remove this toilet and to do that I'm going to turn off the water get all the water out of the bowl and then pull the toilet so the shut-off valve is right here turn that clockwise now if I flush the toilet tank most of the water will leave the tank and go out through the bowl so now we have to get the rest of this water out of the tank and I'm just going to move that float out of the way that gives me a little more room to get down and get a sponge in there to get the last of the water you want to get most of the water out you don't have to get every last drop you just don't want it to spill on the flow when we move the toilet out of the way I now have to disconnect these two bolts down here you can see one here one on the other side and that connects the bowl down to the flange but look at this I actually see a little crack in the toilet did you do that all right let's see how they come out these are brass bolts okay so there's one let's see how this one does now this one oh boy look at that one that was all rusted like I won't even accept my open end wrench let's try the pliers all right so both the nut and the bolt I just spin it around spin around so that'll never come off so I've got to cut it off this is a little bayonet saw a little hacksaw mini hack all right because it's brass I can actually get it to break off so now we need to break this water connection right here and there might be a little bit of water in the pipe I just want to catch that with a rag no that's the last of the connections now I'm just gonna clear away and we're gonna move this toilet out of the room I'm gonna go that way okay so here is that old wax seal right here what I'm gonna do is pry it off all right so here's the old wax seal didn't come on all at once so let's get rid of the rest of it all right so look at this here you know normally a closet flange is designed to sit right down on the tile like this right but look at this it looks like that this bath is rid of a model we did a remodel about 10 years ago all right so when they did you can see the subfloor down here and they did a nice mud job and they built that tile floor up to this level but look way down here there's the old cast-iron flange now that should be up here and it's way down here so what they did the installers they added a series of spacers it looks like now those spaces aren't watertight so if you had that stoppage down there it could actually leak out through these things and through the seal so I'm gonna have to expose this and see what we got okay yes there ain't no flange then look at the old cast-iron flange is completely rotted away sure has what do we do now I think the only right way to do it is to actually break away the remnants of this old flange and connect properly to that cast-iron pipe I hope I have that part in the truck there you go that hasn't seen the light of days in about a hundred years so now I'm just going to clean up the outside of the pipe all right so we got it all cleaned up and you can see the old cast iron Bend right here so I was planning on putting a new cast iron flange on just like the old one and then with that I would have to take this oil temp and pack it down in all the way around then we would heat up the lead in this ladle and pour that into the joint and then pack that but look at this this pipe is so extra wide extra heavy from back in 1880 it doesn't fit the modern sizes so I can't even get that down there so that's up then I said alright I'll just go with this this is a modern version of it which has a four screw stainless screws that I can tighten up this gasket but look same issue too fat on the outside so fortunately they make this this is a device with a gasket right here and four Allen screws and when you tighten up those Allen screws you actually make this gasket get bigger so I'll make the seal on the inside of the pipe so for that I go right down here and then I'll just tighten up these things and I'll get it right at the right height and will be perfect a nice tight seal great I'm glad they make this me too so now I want to put a couple of spacers in just to hold it at the right height in relation to the floor and then I want to be sure that the keyway right here is just the perfect location for our bolts good and now we tighten it up look at that that is not going to leak all right we have solid in place and now it's time to make the connections these are called closet bolts and they go right into the keyway right there one on each side okay and now we're going to make a nice tight seal now I've always used these these are wax seals and the issue with these is you take them out of your truck in the summer and they're just about melted and the winter they're rock-hard today we're going to use is this this is a flexible gasket and this has a lot of advantage it makes a nice positive seal to the underside of the toilet it can also be reused repositioned so we put that right down over there alright and now we get the toilet we are ready to put this back together again great just guide that from that side all right all right so now we just put plastic washer first then stainless washer and brass nut let you just tighten them up I'll get this side all right you can see the new closet bolt is pretty long so the cap would not fit so we're going to use that mini hacksaw I just cut that brass bolt all right Kelly water is back on the tank is filled but most important we have a brand new flange back to the old cast-iron pipe we've got a great connection bottom of this bowl you will not have another leak thank you all right as is our custom on asset sauce you should do the honors we think wonderful thank you so much

Channel: This Old House

Views: 2,894,583

Rating: 4.7167034 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, toilet flange, toilet, plumbing, plumber, cast iron flange, cast iron, home repair, diy, do it yourself, lifestyle, norm abram, tom silva, richard trethewey, roger cook, kevin o'connor, tom silva this old house, tom silva house, tom silva construction, tom silva tools, tommy silva

Id: wKI3NC674MA

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2016