Yeah, I think having a hole directly under the toilet is an American thing.
Comment on Toilets: to caulk or not to caulk?
Iconoclast@feddit.uk 2 months ago
We don’t use “wax rings” here. Leak from the sewer connection is virtually impossible. I’ve been doing plumbing for 15 years and I’ve never seen or heard it happen.
The toilet is attached to the floor with adhesive and then it’s made pretty by caulking the seam. In some apartment buildings they want a little gap left into the adhesive and caulking to let out any water that might get under there when washing the space but this is rare and is almost never done.
MurrayL@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Iconoclast@feddit.uk 2 months ago
Well even that’s not untypical. The standard way to do this is to just have a 110mm sewer pipe sticking from the floor. You then cut it to a floor level and install the toilet on top of it. The difference is that in the US they use this “wax seal” which is a complete mystery for me. Here we just take an adapter that’s pushed to the inside of the sewer pipe and then the toilet is lowered on top of that one. Water would need to climb uphill past the seals in order to leak.
bizarroland@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A few years ago I replaced all of the toilets in my house simply because they were blue and 40 years old and just kinda crappy.
I live in America and I use a rubber seal since if you need to remove and reposition the toilet you can reuse the rubber seal instead of having to clean potentially poop and other bacteria laden wax out of a hole and replace it with another wax donut.
The waxed donuts were three to five dollars a piece and the rubber seals were ten.
JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
Yeah here in the EU, new, they are mostly hanging toilets with a sewer connection via rubber sealed PP pipes.
Then you caulk the top and sides and not the bottom (which is more open) so that any leaks leak onto the back tiles and are immediately noticeable and not into the subfloor (which here in Belgium is usually screed + brick/concrete)
Also extra benefit is that there is no toilet connection with the tile to clean around, you can just mop directly under it and any kids “missing” will be easily cleanable.