Replacing toilet on older house(late 60's), broken and strange toilet flange

[New2plumb]

Hello All,

So, I'm doing some remodeling on our bathroom and next step was replacing the toilet. I removed the toilet and found the flange(I believe is cast iron) had one side where the bolt attaches to the flange had broken off. It seems like a lot of space between the flange and the actual pipe, and the pipe opening is ~2.5", so really wasn't sure how/if I could removed the old one. I showed it to the plumber at Home Depot and he said he hadn't see anything like it. I was trying to use the danco HydroSeat Toilet Flange Repair, but it didn't fit flat around the old flange. i could bend up two of the places used to bolt to the floor and try to use the holes on the actual ring to attach to the old flange, but wanted to see what others would do and not sure that would screw into the old cast iron flange? This is a link to the pictures of the flange with the old toilet removed. And of course to make matters worse, its on top of tile.

toiletflange - Google Drive

drive.google.com

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Gene

 

[Terry]

The old flange can be used. You do need the closet bolts on the two sides though. Sometimes they have one screwed into the floor. If you want to secure to a flange, then a repair flange would hold it.
I would set with wax, and skip the rubber seals.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Reach4]

Danco HydroSeat should have worked fine. If one or two of the feet sat high, you could shim under the high feet.

 

[New2plumb]

The old flange can be used. You do need the closet bolts on the two sides though. Sometimes they have one screwed into the floor. If you want to secure to a flange, then a repair flange would hold it.
I would set with wax, and skip the rubber seals.

Thanks for the reply, so are you saying to use a different repair flange, like maybe https://www.amazon.com/Danco-88904-Toilet-Flange-Repair/dp/B00IA3QIGO? This is on the second floor, so can't really get under it unless opening the ceiling to push a bolt through. Also, with the repair flange how would u attach to the floor since it's tile and then I assume concrete below that? Would use tapcon screws and how deep do you think would be good to attach?
Thanks again for the help
Gene

 

[New2plumb]

Danco HydroSeat should have worked fine. If one or two of the feet sat high, you could shim under the high feet.

Thanks for the reply, it wasn't that they sat high, but you can see how they are suppose to wrap on the outside of the old flange, but the original flange it too large so the feet don't wrap correctly, hope that makes sense.

 

[Reach4]

Danco feet are not meant to wrap. On a typical installation, they would fit flat atop the floor tile. There can be screws thru the holes in the feet or through holes in the ring.

 

[Jadnashua]

What you likely have is a 3" pipe with an internal fit flange. Since the wall thickness is normally 1/4", that makes sense.

FWIW, the proper place for a toilet flange is on top of the finished floor with no gaps underneath it. Now, there are millions of them where the flange is installed prior to the finished floor, but that's not how they were designed.

You may be able to remove the existing flange and use a new one designed for an internal fit on a 3" pipe. IMHO, though, none of those are ideal. It depends on the design of the toilet. If the toilet tries to make a tight turn right at the outlet, it can be a source of clogs. If it's a better design that turns the waste prior to entering the flange, it should be okay since the trap way in most toilets is slightly over 2", so going into 2.5" isn't a problem unless you're trying to flush a log.

 

[New2plumb]

What you likely have is a 3" pipe with an internal fit flange. Since the wall thickness is normally 1/4", that makes sense.

FWIW, the proper place for a toilet flange is on top of the finished floor with no gaps underneath it. Now, there are millions of them where the flange is installed prior to the finished floor, but that's not how they were designed.

You may be able to remove the existing flange and use a new one designed for an internal fit on a 3" pipe. IMHO, though, none of those are ideal. It depends on the design of the toilet. If the toilet tries to make a tight turn right at the outlet, it can be a source of clogs. If it's a better design that turns the waste prior to entering the flange, it should be okay since the trap way in most toilets is slightly over 2", so going into 2.5" isn't a problem unless you're trying to flush a log.

Danco feet are not meant to wrap. On a typical installation, they would fit flat atop the floor tile. There can be screws thru the holes in the feet or through holes in the ring.

I should have explained it better, so with the danco it has the ring and the four feet which drop about 1/4" below the ring at a 90 and are suppose to sit flat on the floor to screw it in. If I try to put the danco overtop of my flange so the rings are touching flat to each other, I can't do that because the ring is too small so 2 of the feet get hung on the flange. I can bend 2 of them to get the ring to sit flat and then possibly use the holes in the ring, but not sure about screwing into the old flange since I think its cast iron and not sure if tapcons would work? don't think there is much meat below the original flange if I wanted to drill through that and attach it to the floor. Thanks for all the replies and hoping I'm giving enough info that if you had this situations, what would you do in your house?

 

[Reach4]

PASCO 21013, Jones Stephens C85000, Oatey 42775, and Superior 21015 are repair rings with mounting tabs outside.
https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/rusty-toilet-flange-repair.89805/#post-644551 shows some repair rings.

On the Hydroseat, if you bent the legs out, bent the tips to be horizontal, and put spacers (stainless steel washers) under the feet, you could run screws thru the tile area. Drilling into the cast iron... I am not sure how that would work, but I think it would be easier than drilling porcelain. Maybe comparable difficulty to drilling ceramic tile.

 

[Gagecalman]

This won't help with the broken flange but it does explain why the gap is so big and how I fixed it.

https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/5-flange-too-big-for-supplied-wax-ring-now-what-help.42310/

 

[New2plumb]

Thanks for all the replies, hopefully getting closer to taking the plunge and trying the fix.

So, I now understand the bending of the danco and using washers as spacers and THEN securing it. Or using another type of flange repair that is just the metal ring and securing that to the floor(I think I'm going to try this one). I was wondering what people use to secure the repair flange to this type of floor(tile with I guess concrete under?) Do people use tapcon screws or maybe anchors? Any advice, links to screws/anchors that people use would be helpful, thanks again all for the advice.

FYI......This is the toilet the wife picked out.

KOHLER Gleam 2-Piece Chair Height Elongated Skirted 1.28 GPF Single Flush Toilet in White with Slow Close Seat K-31674-0 - The Home Depot

This WaterSense-labeled high-efficiency toilet delivers water conservation and easy installation in a sleek, skirted design. The Gleam two-piece skirted toilet utilizes Kohler's patented new ReadyLock

www.homedepot.com

 

[Reach4]

Some like Tapcons. I would use Tapcons. I have only done it into a wall. Others like anchors better, but it seems to me the anchors take drilling a bigger hole, and getting the positioning just right.

With Tapcons make sure the pilot hole is deep enough and that you blow the dust out.

 

[New2plumb]

So, the saga continues, I found a repair flange that seemed to fit over the old flange, but there is no meat to put a screws in the four corners. You can see in the picture I put blue tape to mark the holes, but I was basically drilling into nothing.

I'm thinking I can silicone the repair flange to the old flange and do you think I can use stainless self tapping screws to screw the repair flange to the old one with the provided holes? Any suggestions?

 

[Reach4]

What is under there? concrete? Crawl space?

 

[New2plumb]

What is under there? concrete? Crawl space?

This is on the second floor of our house, so can't get to it from underneath unless I cut out the ceiling. It looks like the tile was put down with concrete, not very thick and since the outside holes are very close to where the pipe is, there is either no flooring or it just crumbles because its on the edge of where the floor was cut out for the pipe

 

[Terry]

You could try to drill and tap threads into the cast flange you have for securement.

 

[Reach4]

You could also try using a moly anchor or a toggle bolt. Those go into the space below the subfloor, and expand.

 

[Jadnashua]

On an older home (and still used today in some circumstances) they set tile onto what is referred to as a mud bed. This is great in compressive strength and makes leveling a floor easy if you know what you're doing, but is not like a poured concrete slab, and would have NO holding power for probably either a tapcon or an expanding insert. A moly bolt long enough to get below the subfloor would work, and depending on what the subfloor is, maybe just a wood screw into that.

A mud bed is mostly sand with enough cement in it to hold it together (typically 4-5:1 sand:cement).

 

[moscott75]

Mom has the exact same cast iron toilet flange. Her house was built in the 50s. How did you fix the problem? What repair flange did you use?