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rwiegand_gw

A fun project--with some hot heavy metal!

rwiegand
9 years ago

Re-doing the bathroom in our house finally and re-tiled the upstairs bathroom floor, including new and sufficient sub-flooring. When I took the old toilet off I discovered that part of its unsteadiness was due to a broken flange and one of those flimsy repair brackets that had, not surprisingly, bent. Since I needed a height change anyway I decided to swap in a new flange. After getting blank stares at the HD and Lowes when asking for a cast iron closet flange (and being shown quite a few horrifically nasty and almost-sure-to-leak or break plastic replacement flanges I went to a real plumbing store and got a proper flange.

Then the fun part-- after cleaning up the pipe, locating the flange, stuffing it with oakum I melted a ladle full of lead and poured the new joint seal. Lots of excitement and a bit of trepidation as the old lead melted and various impurities burned off. Skim the slag and good to pour. It was really shiny and pretty. I modified a chisel on the grinder to make a caulking iron and caulked the joint. The whole process only took about 20 min once I got going and I'm pretty sure I have a repair that will outlast the Chinese plastic fittings by many decades.

Try it, you'll like it!

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