Auream
New Member
I am re-doing a bathroom and I've been lurking on here for a while. Finally have a question that couldn't be answered by searching. I'm going to be tiling and changing the height of the floor, so I needed to cut off my toilet flange and install a new one a little bit higher (this will also let me leave off the flange while I add underlayment and tile making everything much easier).
Anyway, I cut out some of the subfloor (which was showing dry-rot anyway) and noticed that at some point the last foot or so of cast iron waste pipe going up to the toilet had been replaced with PVC. It appears that whoever did it pushed the PVC pipe into the spigot of the cast iron, and packed it with oakum, and that's it. No sign of lead or anything to actually hold the oakum in, unless I'm missing something. No idea how long its been like this, but this isn't sufficient, is it? In addition, this section of PVC pipe is slightly loose, which I noticed when I accidentally pushed on the flange and the pipe twisted slightly in the socket (not sure if its a problem or to be expected). On top of that, this section of pipe appears (maybe its just an illusion) to slope the wrong way (looks like its maybe 1/8 inch lower by the toilet flange than where it goes into the cast iron).
I wanted to take a pic or two but I sat on my camera yesterday and broke it while taking pictures of the renovation
Anyway, my thinking is that I might have two options:
1) Try to fix what's there by packing in lead or some acceptable substitute, and seeing if I can get the PVC to slope the right way.
2) Pull out all the oakum and PVC, clean out the spigot, and use a rubber donut (Ty-seal?) to attach new PVC.
Any suggestions on which of these options is the way to go, or is there a better way? Thanks a lot!
Anyway, I cut out some of the subfloor (which was showing dry-rot anyway) and noticed that at some point the last foot or so of cast iron waste pipe going up to the toilet had been replaced with PVC. It appears that whoever did it pushed the PVC pipe into the spigot of the cast iron, and packed it with oakum, and that's it. No sign of lead or anything to actually hold the oakum in, unless I'm missing something. No idea how long its been like this, but this isn't sufficient, is it? In addition, this section of PVC pipe is slightly loose, which I noticed when I accidentally pushed on the flange and the pipe twisted slightly in the socket (not sure if its a problem or to be expected). On top of that, this section of pipe appears (maybe its just an illusion) to slope the wrong way (looks like its maybe 1/8 inch lower by the toilet flange than where it goes into the cast iron).
I wanted to take a pic or two but I sat on my camera yesterday and broke it while taking pictures of the renovation
Anyway, my thinking is that I might have two options:
1) Try to fix what's there by packing in lead or some acceptable substitute, and seeing if I can get the PVC to slope the right way.
2) Pull out all the oakum and PVC, clean out the spigot, and use a rubber donut (Ty-seal?) to attach new PVC.
Any suggestions on which of these options is the way to go, or is there a better way? Thanks a lot!