Replacing your bathroom toilet is not a particularly difficult project and well within the skill level of most home DIYers. When looking at new toilets, you will quickly see that these are not your fathers toilets. They come in a variety of designs and colors to fit your bathroom decor. But most importantly, the toilets of today are low flow. This means they use far less water per flush than the older toilets. Some of the new toilets use as little as 1.4 gallons per flush, compared to the 3.5 to 5 gallons per flush of older models.
While you are out picking up your new toilet, you will also want to buy a new wax ring. You will need this for the installation. You will also need a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, a crescent wrench, a putty knife and some rags.
The first thing you will need to do is shut off the water supply to the toilet. The supply line is located behind the toilet and under the tank. There is normally a shut-off valve in that line. Once the water is shut off, flush the toilet to evacuate the water from the tank and bowl. Now, using pliers or a crescent wrench, remove the water supply line from the tank.
To make the old toilet easier to remove, you should take the tank off first. Do this by removing the two bolts that hold the tank to the toilet base. The bolt heads are inside and on the bottom of the tank. The nuts to these bolts are located outside and under the tank. Once these are removed, the tank should simply lift off the base.
Next, you need to remove the actual toilet bowl. To remove the toilet from the floor you first need to remove the nuts located at the base of the toilet. A small cap that simply pops off when pried with a screwdriver may cover these nuts. With the nuts removed from the toilet base, the bowl is ready to be removed. Before you lift it from the floor though, have some rags available. Even after evacuating the tank and bowl, there will still be some water inside, so have some rags ready to mop up the water that will invariably spill to the floor when the bowl is pulled up.
What you should be left with now is a hole (the sewer drain), a wax ring and a couple of thin bolts sticking up. First, remove the bolts. Next, remove the old wax ring. Use a putty knife to remove it easily. This should now expose the mounting bracket that sits under the wax ring.
To install your new toilet, you need to first install the new wax ring. Remove it from the package and handling it as little as possible, place it over the mounting bracket in the same position as the one you removed. Next, place the bolts that hold the toilet base to the floor into the mounting bracket. If new bolts were included with your new toilet, use those instead of the old ones. They will be held in place by the wax ring you just installed.
The next step is to set the base of the toilet onto the floor. If your new toilet has a tank that separates from the rest of the toilet, removing the tank will make installation easier. Carefully lower the toilet into position, making sure that the bolts protruding from the floor are lined up with the holes in the bottom of the toilet base. Once you have the toilet settled into place, finger tight the nuts over the bolt hold the base to the floor.
Now, sit on the toilet facing backwards. What this does is settle the toilet onto the wax ring and creates a seal. Now that the toilet is settled into place, tighten the nuts down on the toilet base. Be careful not to tighten too much or you may crack the porcelain.
If you removed the tank to install the toilet, then re-attach the tank at this point. With the tank installed, re-attach the water supply line to the tank. Now turn on the water to the toilet and check for leaks in the supply line and where the tank meets the bowl. If there are no leaks, flush the toilet and check for any leaks or seepage around the base of the toilet.
The final step is to make any adjustments to the float inside the tank to achieve the water level you want for flushing. If you need help in making adjustments to the workings inside the tank, watch for an upcoming article I will be writing about repair and replacement of the toilet tank mechanics.
