What's the deal with wall hung toilets?

A few quick questions:

I see wall hung toilets at work (a hospital) sometimes. Why would anyone want one? Is there some advantage to them? It always seems to me that they will break off the wall! It amazes me that they can handle the weight of people sitting on them, knowing that they're china. Recently, the plant ops people at work had white pvc pipe wedged between the bottom of the bowl and the floor, as if they were trying to reinforce the toilet. I think there might have been a problem with some of the wall mounts. Does that happen?

Why use one when a regular toilet rests on the floor and would seem to make a lot more sense for someone to sit on!

Lee

We have them at work. No issues. There was an employee here that was ~ 350 pounds if not more and other than the toilet seat breaking, the wall hung toilet itself was fine.

I think airport toilets are wall hung too (LAX and MSP) - and they see a lot of abuse without issue.

Most wall hungs are rated at 500 pounds. And some bariatric models are rated higher.

In homes, I have only seen them in high end homes, and the advantage is usually stated as easier cleanability for the floor. Some models area available with tank flush, so you do not have to have the institutional flushometer look.

In commercial buildings, a wall hung toilet hanger is a big cast iron thing that is anchored to a section of 4" cast iron pipe anchored to the concrete block wall. We have hundreds of these and have no problems with them. In fact, we have less problems with leaking seals with our wall hungs than we do with our regular floor mounted toilets.

But in a home, there isn't much concrete and steel to hang from so I don't know how well they hold up.

The advantage is that it makes the bathroom easier to clean. You can mop right under the toilets.

A coulple of the negative things about wall hung are there are very few models or styles to choose from and many people consider them to look like a public restroom. Properly hung, they seem to stay put pretty well, and the easy of mopping is an obvious plus although that may be somewhat over hyped for a single toilet in a home.

Thank you for answering my question everyone with really good input!

I don't know for sure, but I think the toilets at work had defective mounts of some kind. There have been some "quality control" issues in the new building...

There should be no reason for them to have a peice of pvc pipe under the water closet. The carrior has 5/8" bolts coming out of the wall and these bolts have back up nuts and washers where all the weight of the water closet rests on, not the wall it self. Alot of maintance guys do not know this and do not adjust these back up nuts proper and assume the wall will hold it up.

There is a few styles of wall hung water closets.

carriers

IF not properly anchored, the inside the wall carriers can flex, especially with No-Hub cast iron systems, and give the impression they are going to fall off or break when someone uses it. The toilet and carrier are a single unit when properly installed so the movement does not create a leak, but can be somewhat disconcerting if it is not reinforced to eliminate the movement.