Install a unifit on a tall closet flange?

[Coherent]

I have a closet flange that sits high because there's a closet flange repair spacer on top since the original cast iron closet flange rusted away. It's one of those red metal brackets that hugs the rusted closet flange. When I attach the unifit adapter, the end that's supposed to bolt down is up in the air rather than sitting on the tile. It's about a 1/2" gap. Is this something I can just add spacers for? This is for a vespin II toilet. I'm not sure if there are problems with the place that makes a seal with the unifit has play to be further stuck in the unifit adapter.

Thanks!

 

[Reach4]

You have spacers above a repair ring, or you have a repair ring above a stack of spacers?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Coherent]

Sorry for saying that confusingly, the repair ring is elevating the height of the closet flange, I don't have a separate spacer that I could just remove. When I put the unifit adapter on top and tighten it down, I see that the back legs aren't sitting on the ground and are raised up.

I tried to answer my own question in a way by on a flat floor just trying to see how far I can push the unifit adapter into the toilet, and it looks like you can only get 3/16"of space before the plastic legs of the unifit adapter hit the porcelain base of the toilet. I think I'd need closer to 1/4-1/2".

Unifit adapters can't be tilted front to back on the spot over the closet flange right?

 

[Reach4]

The part nearest your photo seems to have some ability to take some tilt. That gasket seemed pretty forgiving.

How about a photo of your closet flange? Remove the rag for the photo.

 

[Coherent]

At first I was thinking that I'd be limited in the back by the plastic ears that pop out each side of the unifit adapter and hit the toilet at the points marked by the red arrows below. So even though it looks like the unifit gasket could continue up the porcelain tube, it gets blocked by the ears.

You were right though that even with those ears, I do have some play where I can push the closet flange up into the cavity of the toilet. It looks like I can do it up to 5/8" before the ears again get in the way of tilting further. Are wax rings generally tolerant to having a little bit of an angle between the unifit and the closet flange or do those seals need to be pretty parallel? I tried to simulate this idea of the angle between the unifit and the closet flange with the red lines in the pic below.

I'll get back to you on the closet flange pic- I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture when the toilet was removed. In the past, I installed a unifit toto toilet and it went great but got cold feet with this one because I knew there was a higher-than-normal closet flange to contend with and hired a plumber. Apparently, he also got cold feet too having not really worked with toto toilets and put the old toilet back on after he ran into this stumbling block. I'll post some pics as soon as I take it back off again.

I'm half thinking if the height is really an issue, switching to a thinner repair flange kit like this might make it easier on me.

Thanks so much for the help!

 

[Coherent]

Just as an update, here's what the bare closet flange looked like. You can see there's the adapter ring sitting on top. Unfortunately, the screw holes for securing it down to the floor overlap with the outer lip of the unifit flange. I knew there was a chance that I could use a wax seal and be okay, it made me worried that the unifit adapter bottom would be on top of the closet flange rather it being inside the unifit adapter.

So, instead I decided to use the danco hydroseat converter because although the 4 screw holes for attaching it to the floor still overlapped with the outer edge of the unifit flange, they were recessed down a little bit so now the rubber gasket is inside the unifit adapter and presumably making contact with the rubber gasket. It does appear that I can get the back legs of the unifit adapter to sit more comfortably on the floor, so that's a win I think.

Per the instructions on the hydroseat, you put a wax seal between the old closet flange and the hydroseat and then you actually don't have a wax seal at all between the hydroseat and the unifit because there's the plastic seal on the hydroseat that will deform to make the seal. I test flushed the toilet and I didn't see any water leaks but I'm not entirely sure how this will hold up over time. I tried searching for other folks who used the danco converter and the unifit but came up short.

Also, I don't know who else needs to hear this, but my water line was a bit tight at 6" from center and unfortunately the bidet tee hits where the hose comes out. I bought a 7/8" to 7/8" 6" hose which should allow me some flexibility so I can connect the bidet tee at the end of the extension hose and comfortably away from the water line coming in. Unfortunately they don't sell these at Home Depot or Lowes but Amazon has them so stay tuned for how that piece goes. I hope I'm in the home stretch but let me know if there are any suggestions for how I approached this. Thanks for the help!

 

[Jeff H Young]

dosent look too high if every thing mates up well shim where bolts go to floor should be good

 

[Reach4]

Good plan. I packed wax (from rings) into my Unifit, shaped that by gloved hand, and put that over my cast iron closet flange.

Question: How will the space between the back of the tank and the wall end up? Ideal, or substantially not ideal?

 

[Coherent]

Thanks, I'm glad I was on the right track! The space between the tank and the wall ended up being ideal. Also, the 7/8" to 7/8" adapter worked perfectly too- such a great way of avoiding the pipes hitting each other. One toilet down, one to go. The last one is one of those old toilets where the reservoir is mounted on the wall and there's a pipe that goes to the bowl on the floor. Keeping my fingers crossed that I don't have any surprises but at least I feel good about repairing closet flangs now. I'll follow up if there were any interesting lessons learned.

 

[Coherent]

The second toilet went in even better. It was one of those old ones where the tank was mounted on the wall. I was able to cut the bolts and pull the tank off from the wall and then the bowl popped off the closet flange just like a modern toilet. The one thing that tripped me up was the ceramic closet bolt caps. Hopefully, my experience below will help someone. I was a bit timid to just commit to cracking them off but it went fine.

How to remove ceramic closet bolt caps:
New caps can just be popped off with a scraper but mine were so old that there were these ceramic caps on top. I wasn't sure how to get them off until I realized that how these old caps worked was that they are initially hollow and then they are filled with plaster before that was pushed on the bolt heads and allowed to dry. I had to just crack the closet bolt cap with a hammer and then chip away the plaster to reveal the bolts. In my case, the plaster actually protected the nuts from corrosion so I could just screw them off rather than sawing them off. Yay!