Toilet broke loose!

Cummins12V98 wrote:
Not sure why anyone would unscrew their pipe from the tank and risk a potential leak. Simply use the thin plate shown or the bolt/lags I mentioned and get er dun.

X2 Keep it simple!

The lessons one learns when dealing with this stuff! No wonder plumbers make $75 an hour.

The distance between center of the slots where the bolts will go is 1/4 inch more than the center of the holes on the toilet. If I install this way the two bolts will lean in toward the toilet bowl and will present a weak point in the plastic. My only choice at this point appears to be to enlarge the holes on the toilet to by 1/8 inch to the outside.

For my home, yup, always just call a plumber. Their hourly fee is not much, compared to my time, and all the trips back/forth to home center, trying to figure out, get what I need.

My FW has a Dometic 310, which I really like! I don't know what is under it, but I do know it is bolted through the 5/8 inch floor deck, and is very solid.

Good pics! Not sure I'd want to notch that circle, which may cause it to crack at some point. Could it just simply be bolted to the floor, without a ring, or the half rings pictured previous?

Jerry

Kober wrote:


The lessons one learns when dealing with this stuff! No wonder plumbers make $75 an hour.

The distance between center of the slots where the bolts will go is 1/4 inch more than the center of the holes on the toilet. If I install this way the two bolts will lean in toward the toilet bowl and will present a weak point in the plastic. My only choice at this point appears to be to enlarge the holes on the toilet to by 1/8 inch to the outside.

Question, did you try mounting the toilet to see how the bolts come through, this stuff is all standard, would be strange to find a toilet that is made wrong.there is usually quite a bit of play with the bolts, not a precise fit.

Gary45 wrote:

Kober wrote:


The lessons one learns when dealing with this stuff! No wonder plumbers make $75 an hour.

The distance between center of the slots where the bolts will go is 1/4 inch more than the center of the holes on the toilet. If I install this way the two bolts will lean in toward the toilet bowl and will present a weak point in the plastic. My only choice at this point appears to be to enlarge the holes on the toilet to by 1/8 inch to the outside.

Question, did you try mounting the toilet to see how the bolts come through, this stuff is all standard, would be strange to find a toilet that is made wrong.there is usually quite a bit of play with the bolts, not a precise fit.

Granted, there should be some slop, however, RV toilets may vary a bit from standards, I suspect that toilet may have been a replacement from the original. The replacement may have a bit different mounting hole centers which may have pushed the bolts putting pressure on the flange in the wrong places. That pressure would have then broken the flange..

If the issue is 1/8", grind the bolt area on the repair flange to allow the bolts to sit straight.

Only need 1/16" of inch on each side which is not much material to remove.

The toilet bolts should have big enough shoulders that 1/16" inch opening shouldn't be an issue.

First, thanks for all your replies and suggestions.

If I ever have to do this again, I think I'll just bolt the darn thing to the floor. 3 trips to Ace and re-doing things a couple of times it's finally done.

As you can see in the pictures I mounted the repair ring over what was left of the existing flange. Big mistake. It left the toilet sitting on top of the ring instead of on the floor. Wobbly and I don't think it compressed the foam ring enough to make it leak and smell proof. I finally Dremelled the flange to where there was a tight fit with the new ring and Voila! It all came together.

I did have to dremel one4 of the holes on the toilet a bit to make sure that the bolts were perfectly vertical and not leaning to the inside due to the difference in location of the holes in regards to the repair ring.

All's well that ends well. I'm posting all this in the hopes of making life easier to the next guy this happens to.

Looks great, and I'm sure you did a much better job than the RV shop flunky would have done, after waiting weeks to get it in.

Good explanations and pics, that will surely help someone else doing same!

Jerry

Looks good!

I think using the metal repair ring would be better overall, gives you 4 screws into the subfloor spread out over a larger area.

This means each screw sees half of the load when compared to using only two screw/bolts directly at the toilet mounting points. RV subfloors are not known for having a lot of strength and spreading out the load from two screws to four screws may prevent you from needing to do this again.

Would be a different story if you were dealing with a toilet in a home where you could get directly under the toilet from the underside and add extra reinforcements to the sub floor.

So the bolt/lag screw solution I mentioned would have been the golden child as you could have placed the bolts at the proper center to center dimension to match the toilets holes.

Gdetrailer wrote:
Looks good!

I think using the metal repair ring would be better overall, gives you 4 screws into the subfloor spread out over a larger area.

This means each screw sees half of the load when compared to using only two screw/bolts directly at the toilet mounting points. RV subfloors are not known for having a lot of strength and spreading out the load from two screws to four screws may prevent you from needing to do this again.

Would be a different story if you were dealing with a toilet in a home where you could get directly under the toilet from the underside and add extra reinforcements to the sub floor.

Yup, the 6 screws holding the ring down definitely makes it as solid as can be. The original ring only used 4 of the 6 holes.