Fixing WC on tiled floor

[magpie999]

Hi all,
I have just finished tiling my bathroom and I decided to tile under the WC instead of tiling around it (worked very well as there was enough clearance to get the tiles under without having to remove the bowl completely).

My question is: how do I secure the WC to the tiled floor, is drilling the only option? In the past, it was simply screwed to the wooden floor underneath. I tried drilling a spare piece of ceramic tile but it seems very tough and brittle and the drill bit hardly scored the surface (perhaps I need a better drill bit?). I want to secure it without having to move the bowl but I am afraid that I will crack the tiles already in place. Any advice appreciated!
Cheers.

 

[lancenotalot]

Have a look at the drilling tiles section in the sticky.

 

[Symptoms]

magpie - assumming you sort out the correct drill bit for the tile (ceramic or porcelain) I would advise marking the hole positions on the floor through the WC, then remove the bog, drill the floor, use a fischer WC Pan fixing kit - get it from plum merchant or Screwfix for £4 to re-install the bog. Failure to do it this way will, with 99% certainty, result in you cracking the pan basewhen drilling through it's base.

 

[chappers]

As sytoms says your best bet is to really remove the toilet, but in all reality if you squirt some silicone under and finish it off with a neat bead around the base of the pan it won't go anywhere

 

[timbook]

Christmas week, we had a man in to put down a wood effect tiled floor in our WC. It was the 22nd when he started but it was a small room so I figured he could get it done in a day. He agreed, and said a few hours would be enough.

As always happens, he didn’t finish it on the 22nd and he said he’d be back on the 23rd to finish the job.

I explained to him that we had guests coming for Christmas and that our other WC is one of the old ones and the flush isn’t as powerful and that we REALLY need this room finished for Christmas. He guaranteed us that he’d finish on the 23rd.

Needless to say he didn’t turn up on the 23rd and we had an argument on the phone.

To cut a long story short, he came back on the 27th and finished the job and we paid him and the job looks ok.

The problem is that the WC itself is not fitted tightly to the floor. It is screwed down to the floor at the back where it is supposed to be but it can be pushed back and when that happens it lifts the front of the WC off the ground. This surely isn’t correct and needs to be fixed. It never moved before. I have no intention of calling this guy up again after the arguments we had over this.
He did put some silicone down underneath the pan as far as I can tell.

Is it a handy fix? Could I do it myself?

Strangely there is a bad smell coming from that room ever since. Would that be caused by the ‘loosely’ sitting WC? Or is there something else he messed up on? I have attached a couple of pictures in case it helps.

 

[lostinthelight]

Did plumber use a new connector/seal between the pan and soil pipe

 

[HERTS P&D]

1. Tim you should of started a new thread.
2. Was the toilet removed and refitted by the floor layer?

Andy

 

[timbook]

Thanks guys. I'm not sure if he used a new connector/seal. I suppose I trusted him enough at the time not to observe. Not that I'd know much about that either. And yeah, the toilet was removed and refitted by the tiler. He insisted on fitting the tiles under the toilet rather than cutting around it.

 

[HERTS P&D]

Toilet needs removing and fitting a new pan connector.

Andy

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Christ on a bike, WTF did he do with that silicone around the base!

 

[timbook]

Pan connector looks new. I just had a close look. However, the boxed tiling around the waste tube is broken. Perhaps that is causing the septic tank type smell. Another possibility is the shore/drain cover on the floor in the bathroom. I opened it and because it was tiling on top of tiling, it doesn't sit as tightly to the floor the way it used to. I really think that is where the smell is coming from because it gets stronger when I open the drain. I'm going to silicon any gaps in there and see if that solves the smell issue and if it does, I will also try to silicon the toilet pan to the floor again and hopefully that will be the end of the problem. If I need to open the drain at a later date, I can remove the silicon and then do it again when I'm closing it up. It's the easiest solution I can think of. Does this sound like a good enough plan? Thanks

 

[timbook]

Christ on a bike, WTF did he do with that silicone around the base!

It was cleaner before the pan moved, but I guess that is the least of my worries.

 

[timbook]

Have this sorted more or less, apart from the fact that even with the 2 back screws in place the toilet bowl moves. I can clean off the old silicon and go again, but will silicon around the edge of the bowl be enough? Are these toilet bowls flat underneath? If so, I'd also add some silicon in under the bowl, but I don't think they are flat underneath. I don't want to disconnect it all again given that the smell is now gone, and the positioning all seems right.

 

[mrrusty]

Don't use silicon - use a proper grab adhesive like Geocel "Theworks" or CT1

 

[cdbe]

Jeez! I wish I was nasty enough to be a conman plumber/builder.