New floor and the Toilet

myredracer wrote:
Vinyl laminate planks with simulated hardwood look? Surely not engineered hardwood or real hardwood? Any kind of standard or engineered hardwood is not a good idea. Shouldn't be any type of glue-down product either. Vinyl laminate is quite thin, about 1/8" and is pretty much what everyone is using in their RV.

So on the basis of using vinyl laminate planks:

The toilets use a foam seal/gasket and not the wax one in a house. The toilet flange is like the one in a house. The foam can't tolerate much of a floor thickness change, unlike a wax gasket, but 1/8" may be fine. You want to make darn sure the gasket never leaks. I did laminate planks in a previous TT that was about 1/8" thick and the foam seal was fine. Make sure you use a new foam gasket and not the old one. If things don't look right, you could use a toilet flange extender (made from plastic), which are around 3/8" or so thick, but probably too thick. Many have successfully used a standard wax ring, but if it gets too warm inside, the wax could soften too much. Wax rings come in a thicker "extender" version if needed. I don't know if two foam seals would be a good idea, but some have done this.

There's always a chance that your flange is threaded into the black tank. If so, you can unscrew the flange enough to make up the difference in floor thickness. Cut some pieces of the flooring and put under the flange as a spacer and re-install the screws. These pieces should not extend beyond the flange (to allow for the expansion gap).

You don't want to install the flooring and have a gap around the base of the toilet as it will look awful, plus you can't fill the gap with caulk as the flooring needs to be able to move.

You want to lay the laminate down close to the toilet flange. Make an expansion gap all around of 1/4 - 3/8" so that the laminate is free floating. The laminate needs to be free floating everywhere inside the TT with an expansion gap around the perimeter and where there are penetrations like floor vents, toilet, etc.

Good luck and post pics of the finished project.

Thanks, this is great info! Why not engineered wood? I believe that is the plan as I have seen many people use engineered 3/8" engineered hardwood (or maybe it is laminate wood looking planks??) as a floating floor on top of the existing laminate floor. I actually got to see my exact model with this done and it looked great. I understand the fear of water expanding the wood but we use a large bath mat next to the shower and maybe only a drip or 2 actually gets on the wood. Very similar to our 1/2 bath at home which is hardwood. Please let me know your thoughts and thanks again!