Wall Mounted Toilet Moving

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Howard Hendler

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Hi All,
First post, hoping to get some help to pass along to my contractor. Geberit 2x4 carrier and Toto wall mount toilet...is moving, along with the wall, enough to crack the grout. Here's a short video (full screen shows it better).

Maybe the carrier, studs and plywood are not completely flush with each other, so that movement is possible?

First experience with this kind of setup for my contractor and plumber, it's just not common where I live.

Contractor is coming back Friday to open up the wall and see what can be done, hoping to get some suggestions here to pass along.

Thanks for any input.
Howard
 
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Howard Hendler

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Just to follow up and close this thread out...

We opened up the bottom half of the wall and saw that the sheetrock was slightly 'bowed' forward, so there was a gap between it and the carrier, allowing the movement shown in the video. The carrier itself was otherwise solid. Contractor replaced the sheetrock in that area with 3/16 steel plate and 1/2" cement board with construction adhesive. No more gaps, it is rock solid.
 

Terry

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Howard,
Thanks for the update. That makes me feel better. It seems like a good system, and the ones I've seen and worked on were solid.
 

Keith B.

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Hi Howard,

Likewise, I also just installed Gerberit 2x4 carrier with Toto Aquia wall-hung toilet, and I have EXACTLY THE SAME wall movement on the bottom half of the toilet as in your video. My tile baseboard under the toilet has broken grout lines on the bottom edge of those tiles (like I saw in your video, as well). My contractor friend and I used cutting tool yesterday and carved out two vertical shapes to drop-in two 3/4" plywood plates:
IMG_3274.JPG


My wall is fresh blueboard and plaster (installed about 4 weeks ago). I installed the Geberit carrier frame myself, it is installed very well, I used 4x4's instead of the required 2x4's, and additionally I added beefy brackets to the feet (as well as using the included lag bolts directly into the floor, and large bolts through drilled holes directly through the 4x4's in the top mounting holes. I am certain that my wall flex issue is not the carrier. You may notice in the photo that we had to cut a notch in the top edge of one of the baseboard tiles, as the bottom of the Toto bowl was just barely resting on top of it. The wall movement is not related to this, because the bowl now does not come into contact with the top of that baseboard tile.

After we installed the two plywood plates that appear in the photo, I was very optimistic that this tweak would resolve the issue. I was sorely disappointed when we re-mounted the toilet, and those plywood plates resolved nothing. We did not attach those two pieces of plywood with construction adhesive yet, so our next step is to pull them off, and reinstall them using Loctite PL Premium construction adhesive. We did not fabricate a 3/4" plywood plate like this to run horizontally under the waste outlet, because the majority of the space between the plywood plates have no carrier frame there and contain the waste pipe, albeit a horizontal frame member directly under the top of the waste pipe:
111798001_width_N_height_612.jpg


Howard, do you have photos of what shape custom reinforcement plate your contractor installed? Did he do two vertical pieces like in my photo, or did he bridge that gap across them, thus connecting to that horizontal frame member under the drain pipe? Any additional info you may provide (or pics of that customization), would be incredibly helpful, as your solution/fabrication may very well solve my seemingly identical issue. Advice from Howard, and anyone else, is greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance,
Keith
 

Reach4

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Likewise, I also just installed Gerberit 2x4 carrier with Toto Aquia wall-hung toilet, and I have EXACTLY THE SAME wall movement on the bottom half of the toilet as in your video.
That video shows flexing along the whole bottom part of the wall including the baseboard. The flexing shown includes places far from the toilet and carrier.
 

Howard Hendler

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Hi All, my flexing was caused by the gap between sheetrock and bottom (blue) section of the carrier where the weight of the bottom of the toilet resides. Any slight variances between studs, carrier and sheetrock that keeps everything from being 100% flush (no pun intended, ok maybe a little). that allows this gap to occur will allow the toilet to flex, by the exact amount of said gap.

Keith, I'm relatively certain but not positive that my contractor used one piece of steel plate (and then cement board on top of that), and he definitely worked only below the drain pipe, not from the studs down as in your picture, because that's where the gap and flex were happening,

Bottom line, fill the gap between carrier and back of wall with as solid a material as you can, eliminating any gaps, and the toilet will have nowhere to go.

Hope this helps.
Howard
 

Keith B.

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Howard,

Thanks for your reply. I also have a very, very, slight gap (less than 1/16") on bottom of toilet area between wall and Geberit carrier frame, which is causing the wall to flex.

Since I last posted on this thread last week, I downloaded live CAD schematic from Toto website of the rear view. I simplified the CAD drawing into a simple cut file: outside "hour glass figure" shape of outside rear of bowl + 2 bolt holes + water supply hole + waste hole. I then had a co-worker use the cut file to make a custom 3/4" plywood backer plate.


My wall is 1/2" Blueboard with skimcote plaster on top. Looks like my plasterer went heavy on the skimcote, because those small 3/4" plywood vertical plates shown in my former post, were pretty much flush with the wall. I agree that the suspect area where the unfortunate gap-enduced flex is originating from, is under the waste pipe - which is the area that my former small plywood plates did not touch, and this is likely why I still had flexing after I installed those two initial small vertical plywood plates.

Regarding the new full-shape backer plates, I had it cut three times, based on the "Raised Bead" that is cast in the back of the bowl and indented about 3/8"-1/2" from the outside perimeter of the rear of bowl. I believe that this Raised Bead is what is designed to make contact with the wall so that the bowl purposefully does not install flush on the wall, but instead provides the 1/16" gap between toilet and wall which the Toto Aquia wall-hung requires. Here are the three plywood plate sizes I made (hopefully one of these will "fix the flex"!):
- Small: inside Raised Bead
- Medium: flush with Raised Bead
- Large: flush with overall outside perimeter of toilet rear

I will be installing this next weekend. My plan is to start with the "Small" plate, by placing it on the wall through the mounting bolts, tracing with pencil around it into the wall, removing it from wall, cutting out the wall material around that pencil path to expose the Geberit frame, then mount the plate inside that template-shaped void and re-mount the toilet.

I suspect that the "Small" plate will be the one that works. I also had two 1/16@ thick solid polystyrene plates cut for each of the three sizes, to make sure that my custom plate slightly distances the back of toilet off the wall like the factory Raised Bead does.

I am crossing my fingers, and will post the outcome next week.
 
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EIR

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Any update on your fix?

I posted a thread regarding concerns about my installation around the date of your orginal posting regarding the possibility of point loading the wall finish at the bottom of the toilet with their design.

The fact that the manufacturer recommends numerous approved surfaces between the carrier and the toilet goes to show they don't care about longevity of the installation. I feel a plywood template or a modification of their carrier to include a horizontal steel member to which a solid piece of wood or metal could be attached to take the load from the bottom of the toilet is necessary if they intend to continue to sell this product.

With only the two carrier bolts to pin the toilet to the wall, any weight on the toilet is acting like a lever pushing the bottom of the toilet backwards into the wall finish.

While it's not carrying the full weight as the carrier bolts do carry most of the load in the downward direction, as the carrier bolts sag a little due to them being thinner then they need to be in addition to some slop in the size of the threads cut into the carrier, there is definitely a point load developed from the flexing of the carrier bolts when loaded. If the material behind the bottom edge of the toilet gives at all, you get a flex at the bottom and then you get the toilet pulling slightly away at the top.

Despite using 5/8 dens armor (fiberglass faced paperless Sheetrock) in the denser fire rated variety and having a full covering of 1/4" plywood behind the sheetrock (I know it doesn't stiffen much for deflection but needed to shim the wall anyways to plane out my wall finish with the tile substrate) I just had the caulk at the top of the toilet crack at some point in the last couple days. It's been 2-3 years since it's gone into service.

My wife's mother has been watching our child over the last year for a few hours once a week while my wife goes good shopping. She's a bigger lady at close to 300lbs probably and due to age and weight probably doesn't sit down so gracefully.

I have been racking my head as to how much wall I need to cut open to resolve this.

I'd prefer to only do this once as we only have one bathroom in the house and with other projects slated and in motion and with me working overtime and Saturdays, I have no desire to be taping, patching and painting at midnight during weeknights.

My thoughts are to make a template similar to yours out of plywood and a steel back plate to utilize the carrier bolts and the clamping force of the toilet.

Ideally I think I'd have to install a 1/4" steel plate roughly 3-4"x 25" from stud to stud across the point where the bottom of the toilet contacts the wall and then install a wood or plywood block to flush out with the wall finish to make the actual contact with the bottom of the toilet.

My issue with that is I have no desire to cutopen the wall that far on either side of the toilet and then having to float those patches out. I'd prefer to try keep any wall opening to the area directly behind the toilet where it won't be seen.

I've considered merely trying to loosen the carrier bolt nuts and slipping in a +/- 1/16" steel plate shim as a bandaid. However I feel like the drywall behind the plate will still eventually fail from repeating loading and I'd be essentially kicking the inevitable can down the road.
 

Tuttles Revenge

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I'm curious how the extra shims and plywoood look when the product is finished and painted?
 
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