Jeff in Ottawa, Ontario wanted to put a toilet in his basement but was worried about the slope required from the toilet exit to the floor drain. He was even looking at an expensive toilet pump.One easy solution for basement toilets is often overlooked. Drilling through a concrete floor is never...
Our viewers have been recommending products of late. Here are three that my staff tested and I really liked.The Quiet Fill toilet valve from Korky does in fact fill a toilet differently. A regular toilet will fill with a full flow for a while then slowly the valve closes down and it gets noisie...
Stephanie from Kitchener, Ontario wants to know how to cap off a toilet drain once you have removed the toilet. Well Stephanie, it all depends on what the drain pipe is made of, and do you want to temporarily or permanently close it off.The first photo shows a temporary rubber cap with metal str...
In this TV segment I talked a lot about the latest research designed to identify which low flow toilets work and which do not. For the details of that story, read through my database entry on the low flush toilet controversy and the update at the bottom of the entry.The very reason for low flow ...
Garth is complaining that his upstairs toilet has started making a lot of water noise as the flush flows down through the walls. What do to?If the noise was there from day one, about the only thing you can do is to open the wall and wrap the pipe in sound blanket insulation to muffle the sound. ...
Janice from Clarenville, Newfoundland has a toilet that has a mind of its own. Setting aside the possibility that it is not a toilet at all but rather one of those strange European bidets, my best guess on this one is a partial blockage that is interfering with one of the jets of water that serv...
My renovating buddy Mike Holmes of Restovate in Toronto (before he went on TV) was into the creation of a new basement suite so I asked him to show us as he cut in for the rough plumbing for the toilet. So he jack hammered up the floor, then dug a bit more (as is common), then he discovered that...
One viewer bought a cottage to discover that the septic system consisted of a tank in the basement that had to be pumped out all the time. They were on rocky terrain so a traditional septic tank and large leaching field would not work. Pumping out that tank, like with a house trailer, was a real ...
When you find that floor modifications, like new tiles, have raised your toilet above the height of the original drain ring, what do you do? asks Cliff.There are several solutions to extend up over a 1/4 to 1 inch gap.First there is a wax ring, the kind with the plastic funnel down the middle, th...
