flooring for small bathroom

[benpost]

in the process of doing up the bathroom and floor will probs be the last job, but undecided whether to stick with lino (currently a wood effect to it), and just get a new bit cut off and fitted. or whether to put down tiles. in the kitchen i went with laminate, and have not regretted it, but in a bathroom it's going to get a lot wetter.

with regards to fitting the toilet and sink would i have to have the flooring down first , or could they be lifted up when laying a flooring afterwards? currently the lino is cut around the toilet and sink but id rather have a solid floor without any cutouts. especially with tiles!

[Anna Kettle]

I like to empty the room, lay lino (not actually lino, but you know) which curls up the walls a bit and is siliconed together at the corners. Then put in skirting and porcelain. That way the floor is slightly tanked except by the door which feels safer to me when having water slooshing around on the first floor (exaggeration)

Anna

-- Anna Kettle Lime plaster repair and conservation Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc Tel:    (+44)  01359 230642 Mob:  (+44)  07976 649862 Please look at my website for examples of my work at:

 

[stuart noble]

Think you've answered your own question here

[benpost]

yeah i often do that lol just like to double check. so i'll make sure the flooring is down fully and not have any cutouts like is currently there!

changing the subject to a towel radiator (definitely want one, bathroom doesnt really need heating anyway). i just measure the distance between pipes which is about 89cm (35"), any ideas if this is a standard towel rad size or will i need to adjust pipe lengths to accommodate?

later planning to remove the current rad... my plan is: close manual valve, take top off LSV and close it noting the number of turns. then slowly unscrew one of the nuts holding the rad in with a bucket for leakage. to fully drain the rad, open the bleed valve to let air replace water. have i missed anything?

[The Medway Handyman]

Any standard towel rail will be either too big or too small to fit any existing pipes. This is an unwritten & inescapable law of the universe :-)

Wet vac

makes things sooo much easier.

[kent]

Do you bed the WC onto the flooring with silicone or secure it in some other way?

[sm_jamieson]

When I use cusioned vinyl flooring, the flooring has enough give to support the toilet without any bedding agents. Use non-slip vinyl, which is important for bathrooms anyway. The pan will compress the vinyl slightly, which will hold the thing solid. My current bathroom is only fixed at the cistern - the floor holes just did not need to be used. Simon.

[Dave Liquorice]

I wouldn't effectively stick a loo or pedestal down. Right PITA should you need to move it for some reason (recalcitrant blockage?).

Loos have floor fixing holes. Use them with large brass(*) screws and plastic/lead washers to spread the load onto the porcelain.

(*) Brass or stainless steel. Ordinary steel (plated or not) will corrode remarkably quickly, combination of cleaning agents, damp and human waste products. Brass may corrode a bit but nothing like ordinary steel.

[Rod]

Understand exactly what you say, but...

Where I stuck the WC down (with silicone), I could always access the waste pipe behind and handle an extreme blockage that way. (It is a back-to-wall with a cupboard thing so this is quite easy.)

I feel that some sealant is appropriate to avoid any liquid from going under the WC. Of course, it would be possible to do something like cover the silicone with cling film so it doesn't actually stick to the porcelain but does help keep stuff out.

[Dave Liquorice]

How would gain access to the interior of the pipe, is there a rodding eye there?

That is an idea. Might be better to put a bead of silicone a few mm high on the base of the bowl say 5mm from the outside edge and screw holes to the inside. Let it fully cure before fitting, this bead would seal against the floor and still allow the WC to be removed. I've done similar with an inverted U of silicone around the hole in the wall where the supply and power emerge into the back of a shower unit in the hope of keeping the worst of the wet out of said hole.

I'm not quite sure how you'd actually get the silicone and cling film in the right place without the risk of it squidging out and becoming visible.

[Rod]

I ended up using a flexible pan connector - straight to the stack pipe. (I had used one as a temporary measure but as it worked so well, I decided not to replace it.) So I could disconnect it from the pan if really needed. Yes - a bit of mess might ensue, but I actually think it very unlikely to go wrong. The stack pipe itself could be rodded from immediately above on teh first floor.

As I explained some time ago, what I actually did was to squidge some Gripfill/Pink stuff onto the concrete floor, lay cling film over and place pan on top. When it had hardened, I removed the pan, and the cling film, and put a thin bead of silicone onto the Gripfill. Then simply placed the pan back. So it actually ended up not a million miles from the old fashioned lump of cement - but with a softening layer of silicone. I think I could get it off again quite easily - but haven't needed to so haven't tried.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No probs. Rip it up.

Hah. You try that on 5mm thick tiles on 6mm bedded flexible cement ..no screws are long enough that I could find!

[Dave Liquorice]

Eh? Screwfix have stainless up to 6 x 100mm (12 x 4" in English) (OK that is one of those fully threaded jobbies but they have 5 x 65 (10 x 2 1/2" plus a bit) as a traditional wood screw or brass to 12 x 3".

It does depend on the design of the loo, and how much screw is taken by the thickness of the porcelain but 1" of pot, 1/2" of tiles and cement still puts a good inch or more into floor.