How to Get Started on Toilet Installation
If you’re contemplating a new toilet installed in your home or business, then chances are it’s a replacement job. The existing toilet that you have is now either malfunctioning or outdated.
Or, according to the folks at Kwiatowski Plumbing, one of the most recognizable names in Pittsburgh plumbers, who we dialed up at 412-681-9525, another common reason is the ready availability of all the new technologies, colors, and design options.
A new toilet is easily one of the most practical upgrades that can be done in a home and also one of the most affordable when the wow factor is gauged against the money spent.
How long does an average installation job take?
If all goes well and there are no problems, any qualified Pittsburgh plumber can usually be in and out in a couple of hours or so. What you need to keep in mind here, though, is that this is only the installation. This is because there may be problems if, say, the toilet has been leaking over time, leading to perhaps dry rot.
And then again, there’s the selection and planning process that precedes the installation of a new toilet. This is the time that it takes for, among other things, to sort through all the options and decide on what style, color, and features you’re going to go with.
Then something else that has to be factored in is the disposal of the older toilet because it won’t fit in your trash can and your waste disposal service provider won’t cart away refuse from a remodel project anyway. It has to be taken to the dump.
What’s the final cost?
There’s several factors that can make you or break you when you are attempting to forecast a final cost of a toilet installation in Pittsburgh PA. You can pick up a toilet at Home Depot for under $100 now.
Then if you’re a veteran, they have a 15% discount. That’s pretty cheap, and then if you do the work yourself, you can save even more. Fees at the local landfill have gone up in recent years, so it may cost you as much as $60 to get rid of the old one.
But if you’re not going to do the work yourself, the best thing you can do to keep your costs down is to go with a reputable Pittsburgh plumber because Pittsburgh plumbers aren’t all the same.
How soon can you use your new toilet?
Here again, who you go with when you sort through your options for plumbers in Pittsburgh PA can have a significant impact and how soon you can use your toilet.
If you only have one bathroom in your home, then a problem that’s discovered after the old one is removed needs to be addressed promptly. The last thing you want is the toilet in your bathroom out of order, possibly four days.
If it’s an older home, old iron coupling under the toilet may be out of commission due to extensive rust issues, for example. So the company that you hired to do the job has to be willing and able to make these types of plumbing repairs on the spot to get your toilet up and going on the very day it’s installed.
One-piece or two-piece toilets compared
One of the decisions you will make is whether or not you’re going to opt for a one-piece toilet, where the tank on the back and the bowl are manufactured as one unit. Or to go with a two-piece toilet.
This would be the type that you’ve grown up with, where the tank on the back is bolted onto the lower bowl portion, with a noticeable gap between the two. That gap that makes a thorough cleaning difficult is eliminated with the one-piece toilet.
One-piece toilets are also taller and sturdier. There is no risk of the tank on the back leaking or becoming wobbly, because here again, it is an integrated part of the entire unit.
What about tankless toilets in a home?
Tankless toilets have some great benefits. For starters, they can be mounted directly to the wall rather than the floor, eliminating that mysterious area behind a toilet that needs to be cleaned.
Then there’s no wait time for the tank to refill between uses because the water for the flush comes directly out of the supply line in the home or business.
There are, however, some adaptions that need to be made to move away from relying on a tank and onto a steady water supply line, and that’s why you should only go with a qualified expert like the folks at Kwiatowski Plumbing.
The tankless toilet is an excellent addition to a bathroom upgrade, but there may need to be plumbing changes to provide the greater volume of water that they require.
What upgrades can you expect when going tankless?
You have no doubt used a tankless toilet in a commercial setting. Perhaps a restaurant where you couldn’t help but notice the powerful gush of water that shoots across the bottom of the bowl when the flush-handle is pulled.
What you should know is that the powerful jet stream of water is coming directly from the plumbing system installed in the wall of the home or business.
So installing a tankless toilet in a residence most often involves an adaption to the supply line to provide this greater volume of water.
Also, if the toilet is mounted on the wall, there may need to be some framing work in the wall, so the toilet has something solid to bolt to. Also, if the toilet is bolted to the wall rather than the floor, a new drain will have to be rerouted up into the wall.
What about the cost of going tankless?
So, needless to say, retrofitting a tankless toilet into a home or business that has an existing standard toilet in place is obviously not the cheapest option.
In many cases, it’s the construction and plumbing adaptations to the building itself that make for a significant percentage of the overall cost of the project. So when going tankless to deliver real value, the work must be done by a reputable company.
Also, in a commercial setting, a tankless toilet will eliminate problems revolving around clean up, maintenance, and wait time between flushes as they pretty much eliminate the nightmare of toilet clog problems.