Can I move this toilet? (With diagram!)

[HMArsey]

The black outline is where things currently are, and the red is where I’d like them to be. The soil pipe is boxed in within the room, rather than built into a wall, IYSWIM.

How complicated is it to move a toilet by 90 degrees?

That should be fine, we’ve had new toilets put in a fair bit further from the soil pipe without too much hassle.

How does it work, do they have to bash a new hole into the soil pipe and patch up the other one?

That should be relatively easy. I think they will just replace the part in question. We are having ours moved onto an entirely different wall and it took about four different plumbers before one could come up with a workable way to do it (and we don’t have any quibbles about cost - we just need it moved!). 90 degrees was one of the ‘simple’ fixes offered to us, but unfortunately it won’t work with what we are aiming to achieve...

From memory I think you need 150 gap between loo and wall then gap other side too ( 800mm gap minimum overall for loo ) have you got that between wall and end of bath ?

Oh that’s interesting. What’s the gap for?

Big bottoms ? I don't know I'm guessing ! Think it's a requirement for building codes or whatnot ?

Ah right. It depends on whether the gap has to be by the cistern or the bit you sit on. The cistern could fit nicely by the boxed in soil stack and the protruding bit would still have thigh and shoulder space next to it.

how difficult it is depends on the age of your plumbing, and if you are in a block of flats or a house.

If in a flat, the neighbours upstairs may be flushing waste down the soil pipe while you are trying to work.

The soil pipe appears to be in a duct in the corner of the bathroom so it is likely a house less than 50 years old, so the pipe is less likely to be cast iron and more likely to be PVC. have a look.

150mm space to the wall is rather tight. You might do better to move it a bit towards the bath. You can put a bin and a bog brush (if you use such things) and a tower of bog rolls in the corner. You will need sufficient room to get into the corner for cleaning and to repair the plumbing. if you are becoming aged this is a good time to put a grab rail on the wall. They are surprisingly cheap.

Where is the extractor fan?

Ah, PigletJohn, I was hoping you’d pop in.

House, about 20 years old. Extractor fan is ceiling mounted, about 50 cm in front of where the toilet is now.

It’s a bugger about the clearance distance, it could rule out the whole plan. There would definitely be enough room at the seat part, just not at the cistern part due to the duct.

And yes, I have a toilet brush.

Baths are available in different lengths. How is your tapwater heated?

Combi boiler. I was thinking of a 1600 bath, but wonder if it will be too tight.

The purpose of this is to put a shower in the space at the bottom right of the diagram where there is currently an airing cupboard.

Where is the window? What about swapping the bath and shower round in your plans? A 1200mm long shower enclosure is a decent size and shorter than the vast majority of baths.

Here is diagram #2!

There is a weird duct in the airing cupboard which seems to be a continuance from one in the downstairs toilet, it’s plastered over so I can’t see what’s in it, but the downstairs one has what look like round air holes on it, and the duct casing is wooden. That’s presuming that’s what it is, I’m not 100% certain they line up.

I’m trying to avoid leaving the bath where it is and butting a shower up against the end of it, I’m not sure it will look right. We’d have to bring the back of the shower forward in any case due to weird duct #2.

Excuse the mixture of cm and mm.

Would a corner toilet work? Or is there enough room to fit a smaller sink in between the shower and the bath, then move the toilet a little towards the door?

I don't think a corner toilet would work, as the soil duct is in the corner. That could be a good idea though about putting a sink in between the bath and the shower, and bringing the toilet towards the door. There would be room for an 80cm sink.

Moving the toilet towards the door would increase the amount of boxed in waste piping along the floor though. Which could be ugly.

Any ideas for what to do about the duct at the back of the airing cupboard? I suppose if the bath and shower weren't meeting it wouldn't look too weird if the back of the shower started 6 inches forward of the wall (we'd box in behind, obv).

Another issue that is there is currently a light above the sink, so if we were moving the sink we'd either need to move that or get rid of it.

I think we'd have to get a double end bath, otherwise the head of the bath would be right by the toilet.

The round air holes are probably holes that pipes used to go through. Post some photos please.

Mice like holes.

I'm not at home at the moment, but I will describe what it looks like. This is the duct thing in the downstairs toilet, that I think could continue upstairs through the back of the current airing cupboard. The stretch running through the airing cupboard is boxed in completely. The bit in the downstairs toilet looks like this:

It sits in corner of room, runs floor to ceiling, about 8 inches away from the downstairs toilet

The toilet doesn't connect to it, at least not above floor level

It is about 6 inches square, encased in wood. There are about 8 circular holes spread along its length that are machine cut and covered with plastic vent covers, the holes are about 1.5 inches in diameter.

Could it be anything to do with gas? Or as a source of air? There is a ceiling mounted extractor fan in that room, but no window.

Two ideas:

1. move the sink between the bath and the shower, so you can move the loo along the wall. Not my favourite idea, as you'd end up with longer boxing up to the soil pipe.
2. Build the a half wall out so that it is flush to the front of the boxing for the soil pipe and get a new loo with a concealed cistern. Then you could centre the pan between the bath and the wall, rather than the bath and the edge of the boxing. If that doesn't make sense I can draw a picture. You could also go for a shorter bath, say 1700mm, to give you some extra space.

Yes please to the picture, Quantum! I've always been suspicious of concealed cisterns in case there's a need to get access to fix a problem, am I worrying unnecessarily?

If we went with moving the toilet nearer to the door, I wonder whether we could do something with a tall slim cupboard between it and the soil stack, to disguise it?

If you have enough space leaving the bath where it is and building a narrow partition wall (tiled) at the end would look good and make the most of the space. Our plumber did this for us in a previous house.

Bit like one of these . Wall can be much narrower if space is a problem.

I prefer the full wall as less glass to clean and you can get a spot near the shower for light

Thanks, Wing, I wondered about that, if we had a 1600 bath we could do that (the current one is 1700), but I wondered whether the shower would feel claustrophobic as it would have solid walls on 3 sides and still only be 90cm wide. Can you remember how wide yours was?

The other option of course, is a shower over the bath, but I'm thinking of resale value and I know people like shower cubicles.