ArcaMax

I’ve shared in past columns how I’ve been blessed to help my son complete a massive remodeling project. He purchased a new single-story three-bedroom home four years ago. This house had a massive, wide-open, full basement beneath all the upstairs living space.

He decided to carve this space up into a fourth bedroom, a TV room, a workout/storage room, a game room, a speakeasy, and a full bathroom. I was excited to start this project for a host of reasons, not the least of which was to expose him to all of the aspects of building and remodeling.

When I think about it, while my son and I didn't build the foundation of this house or install the windows, siding or roof, we did almost every other aspect of building a home in this basement project. My son never got to see me build anything. I stopped the day-to-day job of building and remodeling for paying customers when he was a 1-year-old lad. He has no memory of me leaving the house with a lunch cooler. His only memories as a child are of me tapping away at a keyboard in the basement, creating Ask the Builder columns and website pages.

I knew early on that the plumbing aspect of this project would be burned into his memory forever. I lost count of all the new basement bathrooms I installed in customers’ homes. These always involved breaking into a concrete slab, locating the main sewer building drain, and then tying in all the new drain pipes into this buried 4-inch pipe.

Some houses have the building drain exiting the house up high on a foundation wall. In those cases, I had to install a sealed sewage-ejection sump in the basement. The new basement bathroom would drain to this sealed sump. The sewage would then be ground up by a pump inside the sump and lifted up 8 feet or so to dump into the elevated building drain.

Sewage ejection sumps are future headaches, in my opinion. When the pump fails, and they do because they have moving parts, you can visualize what has to happen to get to the pump and install a new one. Yuck!

My son’s building drain was not under his concrete basement floor. It exited the house just an inch above the concrete. The sewer line out in the street was shallow. The plumber had no choice but to bring the pipe into the house at this elevation. I was bound and determined to take advantage of gravity so we could avoid installing a wretched sewage ejection sump pit.

I went online and downloaded the specifications and technical cross sections for a few wall-hung toilets. My guess is you’ve used these in airports, hotels, or other commercial buildings. They have a rich history of flawless performance, and some of the residential ones are very sleek.

Lo and behold, it turned out that the centerline of the building drain as it entered my son’s basement was at the perfect height. It would connect to a wall-hung toilet as long as we had the toilet just 5 or 6 feet from where the sewer pipe entered the house. It was easy to adjust the floor plan to make this happen. We also put the speakeasy on the other side of the bathroom wall to keep all of the plumbing together.

A wall-hung toilet is connected to a substantial metal support frame that’s bolted to the wall studs. This is why the toilet doesn’t crash to the floor when you sit on it. In our case, the water tank for the toilet flush was built into this metal support frame. It’s very innovative, and I love how the gravity-fed tank is completely hidden from view in the bathroom.

All you see in the bathroom is the actual toilet and above it on the wall, two paddle pads. You press the larger one to get rid of solid waste and the smaller pad for liquid waste.

It doesn’t require any special skill to install a wall-hung toilet. You just have to be very aware of the centerline height above the floor of the metal support frame. Install it too high, and it’s very awkward to use the toilet. Install it too low, and your knees will be in your face when using the commode. The instructions are crystal clear as to exactly where the centerline must be. You then just have to do whatever is necessary to make the drain pipe connections satisfy both gravity and the plumbing code.

I love how easy it is to keep the floor beneath the toilet sparkling clean. The fancy new mops that have a pad are able to get under the toilet with no issues. The toilet flush is vigorous because the water in the hidden tank is about 30 inches above the toilet bowl. Keep in mind you don’t have one of those ugly chrome exposed flushing valves you see in the airports, hotels, and commercial buildings. You just have the two flat pads on the wall.

Talk to your plumber before you get too far into your planning for your project. You can incorporate a wall-hung toilet on any level of your home. I think you’ll be amazed at how sleek the residential models are. I know my son loves his!

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