PLEASE HELP! Does anyone make a 15 1/2” rough in toilet?

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MsBee

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The toilet bowl in our very old crane toilet cracked. We live in an almost 100 year home and the toilet is in a very small powder room. So we are looking for something that is comfort height and small. Does anyone make a 15 1/2” rough in? What can I do.
 

Jadnashua

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No, nobody makes a 15.5" rough-in toilet! But, many of the older toilets actually have four bolts holding them down, so those that are 15.5" from the wall, may not be those attaching the toilet to the flange.

BUt, if it is really 15.5", unless you can move the flange, your best bet would be a 14" RI toilet.
 

Reach4

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The toilet bowl in our very old crane toilet cracked. We live in an almost 100 year home and the toilet is in a very small powder room. So we are looking for something that is comfort height and small. Does anyone make a 15 1/2” rough in? What can I do.
I used a 12 inch Unifit for a rough a little over 13 inches. Doing something similar with a 14 inch Toto Unifit is probably your best action.
What I did:
Initially, using the bolt method, I thought I had a 13-7/16 rough.
http://www.terrylove.com/forums/ind...baseboard-and-shoe-molding.58080/#post-428138

http://www.terrylove.com/forums/ind...nifit-or-stick-with-the-12.59681/#post-442544
showed what I did... my rough was closer to 13 inches.
It turned out that my rough was less than I initially thought based on external bolt measurements. The bolts were not in long slots which would have provided some easy adjustability; they were in side slots. The bolts were not the exact same distance to the wall.

https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/toilet-rough-in-dilemma.89675/#post-643625
has marked-up unifit photo showing the concept. The drywall screws (green arrows) would not have been necessary. I do overkill at times.
 

WorthFlorida

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Most toilets do have 14" bowls avaialble. 12" is standard and many will list 10" or 14" offsets. There are offset flanges adapters that are made for such a problem. As Reach mentioned, the Toto Unifit is a good option. https://www.homedepot.com/p/JONES-S...our-Way-Offset-Closet-Flange-C44420/313740730

Many toilets do not fit up against the wall and I have one bathroom with one about 1"+ from the wall. With a 100 year old home cast iron was or still is in use and it was not always easy to get the flange exactly where you wanted it. Also the location of floor joists may had to do with it. The home may have been built when high wall tanks models were the norm and the trap way and a little bowl for little there was, was in front of part of the base. The water actually flushed toward you, the front of the bowl. I do not know what the flange locations were for those antiquites. My grandparents house in Brooklyn, NY had one.
 
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Jadnashua

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You are not going to find a new, code compliant toilet with more than a 14" RI...they do not exist as new. The best you are likely to come up with is a 14" RI toilet that you cheat as much as you can when attaching the bolts while keeping the outlet pointing down into the toilet flange without obstructions and then live with the extra space behind the toilet.

The advantage of a TOTO that uses their proprietary UniFit adapter is that a 10, 12, or 14" Unifit, on a 10, 12, or 14" RI flange position are exactly the same toilet, and will stick out into the room the same exact amount. Most others sold as 10 or 14" use the same bowl, but then make different depth tanks to fit the space behind , meaning, the toilet could stick out much further from the wall than one that can use the UniFit adapter and no, it doesn't work on just any toilet...the toilet must be designed for it.
 

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Dang.. doesn't look like the Geberit Monolith is an option in the US anymore.

A heavily modified Duravit rear discharge with floor adapter might work..

Nah.. too weird and hard to work with..

Go with the TOTO 14" rough and the modification that Reach4 shows..
 

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You could make a floor to maybe 30" or so fake wall behind the toilet, and the top could be a shelf to hold whatever...that would minimize the space behind the toilet. Other than aesthetics, the extra space behind the toilet isn't a functional problem...it might be because it sticks into the room more than you want, and often, in a bathroom, extra space is worth it.

If you opt to modify the Unifit adapter, you could gain a little bit, but there's a limit on how far you can shift the toilet and still have the adapter fit under the toilet...you can only move the front back so much before it will hit the inside front of the toilet.
 

Reach4

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If you opt to modify the Unifit adapter, you could gain a little bit, but there's a limit on how far you can shift the toilet and still have the adapter fit under the toilet...you can only move the front back so much before it will hit the inside front of the toilet.
You don't move the Unifit with respect to the toilet.
 

Jadnashua

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The TOILET moves relative to the unifit...the 10" RI will move the toilet 2" further out from the wall than the 12" RI and the 14" one will move the toilet back towards the wall.

If you extend the length of the Unifit, the front, relative to the part that fits over the flange will move towards the front of the toilet. The toilet in the front tapers and the shape of each varies some depending on model, so there's a limit on how far back you can move the end that the toilet fits down onto. https://terrylove.com/pdf/ms614114cefg_spec.pdf I haven't looked under one in awhile (I have two that use the Unifit), but as the Unifit gets 'longer', it will move further towards the front of the toilet...don't know how far you can go.

Print (totousa.com) shows that the 14" Unifit is 2" longer (moving towards the front) versus the 12" one, so if you wanted the same 3/4" nominal space behind the toilet, and had 15.5", and modified the Unifit, it would now move another 1.5" further towards the front of the toilet. It probably will fit, but you'd have to check carefully.
 
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Reach4

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If you opt to modify the Unifit adapter, you could gain a little bit, but there's a limit on how far you can shift the toilet and still have the adapter fit under the toilet...you can only move the front back so much before it will hit the inside front of the toilet.
You don't move the Unifit with respect to the toilet.
The TOILET moves relative to the unifit...the 10" RI will move the toilet 2" further out from the wall than the 12" RI and the 14" one will move the toilet back towards the wall.
Really?
 

Jadnashua

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If the back of the toilet stays 3/4" from the wall, where is the front of the Unifit? On a 10" rough, it will sit further from the front of the toilet, than it does if the longer Unifit is fitting for a 14" RI. Sorry, if you can't see this, there may not be any hope. There's a limit on how far forward you can extend the Unifit's length while keeping the design distance from the wall...the toilet is only so long, and it does taper towards the front, eventually, you'd be setting the toilet down on the front part of the Unifit rather than the floor.

I have not looked at the bottom of the toilet for years, mine went in in the early 2000's, so don't have a good feel for how much room there is on the bottom that is open enough to allow the Unifit to be modified to make it longer so it can fit on a longer non-standard RI. It might fit fine...my point was to carefully measure before you start modifying things!
 

Reach4

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There's a limit on how far forward you can extend the Unifit's length while keeping the design distance from the wall
You were proposing to lengthen the 14-inch Unifit? I doubt that would be successful.
 

Terry

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TOTO makes a 15-3/4" toilet.

g400-rough-in.jpg


g400-install-05.jpg


Adjusts from 12" to 15-3/4"

g400-install-12.jpg


g400-spec-distance.jpg
 

Jadnashua

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When you get into the esoteric line, you get the situation where people expect perfection, and are willing to pay for it...that one lists for $3370...not something the average homeowner would want to spend on a toilet...but, it works! In more affordable toilets, though, you'll find 10, 12, and 14" rough-in toilets!

I knew the Neorest line existed, but never really got much beyond the price...thought they'd be interesting if I ever won the lottery, but otherwise...
 

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OH wow.. I didn't even think of being able to use the G400 as an above floor rough in toilet!! Thanks Terry!

I had to reset one of those when the installer somehow messed up the wax!
 

Jadnashua

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Now, if Toto would make that adapter work with some of their other toilets, that would be a big marketing and convenience enhancement!
 

Dana

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Architecturally & aethetically the G400 may be a hard fit for a 100 year old house in MA (just sayin'...).

My house is only 98 years old, and while some 2-piece toilets don't clash with the Arts & Crafts Bungalow interior finishes, I would never drop in a G400- that would clash about as much as Tesla parked next to an Amish buggy.

My original first floor toilet was 14" rough antique American Standard, replaced a dozen years ago by a 14" version of the American Standard Cadet 3 that didn't clash too much with the enameled cast iron sink & tub. The old toilet had a direct tinned copper vent connection from the bowl to the plumbing stack in the wall, which needed to be capped and finished with an aesthetic repair.

The original toilet in the upstairs bath in was 16" rough, a 1920s German import where the tank was bracket mounted to the wall rather than supported by the bowl. With no repair parts available for the somewhat unique flush mechanism which failed a couple of years ago I ended up settling for early 2000s 1.6 gpf 14" rough American Standard Colony(?) salvaged from the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore - not the greatest low flush toilet design in the world to be sure, but the curve radii & color were a reasonable match for the antique sink next to it.

The 2" gap behind the tank looks a bit off but proved to be somewhat functional. The cast iron baseboard behind the toilet no longer pre-warms the tank as much. I'll eventually get around to narrowing the gap to about an inch with a custom built wall hung shelf trimmed to match the room moldings, but that project has yet to bubble up to the top of the priority list. (Houses are really never done are they?)
 

Jadnashua

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If you wanted a big shelf behind the toilet, you could always put in a 10" toilet RI, then, you'd have about 5" of width for the wall/shelf behind.

What you have to look at is how much room do you want the toilet to take up. Something like one of the Totos that use a UniFit adapter won't stick out any further from the wall, but many other toilets will.
 

Dana

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A simple shelf with roughly this topology can work, if the back board of the shelf dips behind the tank lid to slightly below the top edge of the tank proper:

dana-04.jpg


dana-07.jpg


There has to be enough depth to reasonably remove the tank lid, of course.

With a back board filling in and the shelf a few inches above the tank lid and the back board filling in the gap the additional 1.5" of space when mounting a 14" rough toilet on a 15.5" rough closet flange becomes less of an issue.

Adding a decorative 1.5-2"deep piece of crown molding at tank top-edge level to an open backed version can work too:

dana-06.jpg


(Use your imagination to see the spreader bar or ledger at the bottom.)
 
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