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Spent 9 hours on a 20 minute toilet flange job, keep telling myself the shims were the smart call
Everyone on the forums says pull the toilet and slap a new flange on, easy Saturday morning job. Not for me. My flange sat a half inch below the tile in a 1950s bathroom in Akron and I refused to cut into the floor to bring it up to code height. Spent 9 hours total. Three trips to the hardware store. Tried a spacer ring, it cracked. Tried stacking wax rings, it leaked. Finally used a set of plastic flange extenders with silicone and a stack of stainless shims under the toilet base. Everyone said just replace the flange, but that means cutting the cast iron and I was not about to open that can of worms in a house I'm selling next spring. The flange extenders cost $14 and held on the first try. So the advice to just rip it out and start over would have cost me a plumber and two days I did not have. Anyone else here skip the full replacement and make a low flange work with shims? Curious how long it held for you.
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the_brian8d ago
Why would you shim a toilet up off the floor when the flange was already too low? That gap under the base is just a place for water to sit and rot the subfloor, and you are selling this house next spring. A half inch of shims means an inspector or a buyer's plumber pokes at it and now you are pulling the toilet anyway, except now you have silicone smeared everywhere and a flange that still does not meet code. Cutting out a cast iron flange is not that scary, you can get a socket flange or a repair ring that bolts right over the pipe without touching the iron. You spent 9 hours and three store trips to save yourself two hours with a grinder or a drill. The smart call was fixing it once, not stacking plastic and hoping the wax holds until closing.
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