A Pro Plumber Critiques A DIY Toilet Installation
Remodelers often end up installing more toilets than they will ever need. It is a simple task, but remarkably, many are installed poorly—especially the first five that I installed! This YouTube video features professional plumber Roger Wakefield as he watches his buddy, Jeff Thurman, a DIY Ranger, remove and replace a toilet.
Video Transcript:
Seriously. All right—this is my buddy, Jeff Thurman, home renovation DIY. And I gotta tell you, I love Jeff. He's doing great things out there. He teaches me a lot of things. But plumbing? Wait, wait. What are you doing?
Wait—this video, he's got: “90% of toilets are installed wrong. And here's why.” So I want to see what he's got to say, because—well—most toilets are installed by plumbers. At least the last time I checked. Let's jump in here and see what he's doing, what he's talking about.
“90% of all toilets installed in remodels or renovations are done incorrectly.” Okay, so there—he said it. So let's see what he's talking about. “This video: learn how to do it my way, and you'll be successful every single time. Cheers.”
All right, all right guys—time to remove the throne.
Two secrets for removing a toilet
Here's the deal. Two little secrets we're going to show you right now. One is this: you take a pail of water. Make sure you get this before you turn the water off. And you—you—you basically shock the system by adding too much water too fast.
That helps clean it out. Creates a vacuum. There you go. Gets a lot of water. Your toilet line is somewhere down around here. Okay—down around here. And that's a lot of water removed from the situation.
Use a shop vac to remove the last bit of toilet water
Then you grab your shop vac. Now remember, the back of the tank is actually pretty clean water. And then—I love having my Milwaukee portable tank. I like my little one. Now I can actually reach in and take off those two bolts and separate this from the bowl. Now, the toilet itself weighs about 50 lbs.
So let's get the rest of this water out and get it down to almost as close to zero. Now look at this, because we're working the valve that they've got here in—Canada—'cause Jeff's up in Canada.