Under every Highland bathroom floor is a drain you never see
Bathrooms are where most people meet their plumbing up close, usually as a toilet that will not stop running or a shower that drips all night. We fix the fixtures and the valves behind them, and when a floor comes up we look hard at the old cast iron underneath, because that is the cheapest moment you will ever get to replace it.
A toilet that rocks is telling you about the flange
Most toilet trouble is small and cheap to fix, as long as nobody lets it sit.
Our bathroom plumbing work covers the whole room: toilets, sinks, tub and shower valves, and the rough-in pipe behind the walls that feeds them.
A running toilet is usually a flapper or fill valve that has worn out, and it is worth fixing quickly because it sends water down the drain all day and all night. A toilet that rocks when you sit on it is a different animal. The movement breaks the wax seal between the toilet and the flange, and once that seal is gone, every flush pushes a little water and sewer gas out under the base.
Sinks have their own short list. A slow bathroom sink is almost always hair and soap caught in the pop-up stopper or the trap, and a drip under the cabinet is usually a loose slip nut or a supply line that has started to weep.
Signs it is time to pull the toilet and look underneath:
The toilet shifts or rocks when you sit down
Caulk at the base that keeps cracking
A stain or soft spot in the floor beside it
A sewer smell in the bathroom with no clog
Water on the floor after flushing
Resetting a toilet on a fresh wax ring is a small job. What we sometimes find once it is lifted off the floor is another story.
Pulled from under one toilet, packed solid
Older bathrooms can look fine from above while the iron under the floor is nearly closed off.
Older buildings often have cast iron drain fittings under the bathroom floor, and they age from the inside out. Corrosion and years of use build a crust of rust and scale on the inner wall, the opening shrinks, and eventually the iron cracks where it has thinned.
The fitting in this picture came out from under a toilet during a bathroom rebuild. You can see the crack running through it and how little room the scale left inside. From above, a fitting like that tends to show up as a toilet that is slow or needs the plunger more often than it should.
A crack like that does not always leak where you can see it. It can drip into the crawlspace or the soil under a slab for a long time, and the first clue is often a smell or a floor that feels soft near the toilet.
When a fitting like that comes out, new drain fittings go in its place and get joined to the sound pipe that stays, using couplings made for joining old iron to new pipe. If the camera shows the iron is in bad shape farther down the line, we will show you that too, because one cracked fitting is sometimes the first of several.
You can see more of our work in the gallery.
Remodeling soonWhile the floor is open, fix what is under it
If you are already gutting a bathroom, the floor is coming up anyway, the toilet is off and the tub may be out. That is the one time the drain fittings are sitting in plain view with nothing in the way. Replacing old cast iron fittings then is a small add to a job that is already happening. Doing it after the remodel means breaking up the floor you just paid for.
So if your remodel has the floor open, call us before the new floor goes down. We will look at the fittings, run a camera down the drain if it helps, and give you a straight answer on whether they can stay or should come out while they are easy to reach. The contractor doing the rest of the bathroom can work around our visit, and fitting into a construction schedule is something we do all the time.
The same goes for the shower and tub valve. With the wall open, swapping a worn valve body costs a fraction of what it would once the new tile is up, and it means the trim you pick can actually fit the valve behind it.
If your remodel is coming up, send us the details through the contact page so we can plan around your contractor.
We have been taking calls in Highland for years, and the Highland page covers the other work we do in town.
Old fittings are cheapest to replace while the floor is already open.
Scale on the shower head, scale in the cartridge
Inland Empire water is hard, and in a Highland bathroom you can see it. Shower heads clog until they spray sideways, faucet aerators choke down to a trickle, and the white crust builds up on anything chrome.
Aerators and shower heads can usually be soaked or swapped. The parts you cannot see take longer to complain. Scale gets into the cartridge inside a single-handle faucet or shower valve and makes it stiff, drippy or hard to set at a comfortable temperature.
Shut the water to the bathroom
If the fixture has its own stops we use those; otherwise the main goes off for the length of the repair.
Pull the handle and trim
That gets us to the cartridge or stem and lets us see how much scale has built up around it.
Replace the worn part
A matching cartridge goes in, and if the valve body itself is corroded we tell you before going further.
Test hot, cold and everything between
The water comes back on and we run it through its full range to make sure the drip is gone and the temperature holds.
Usually that is a short visit, and the drip you have been listening to at night is finished.
The bathroom is where a lot of people first go hunting for a shutoff, usually with water already on the floor.
Each toilet and sink should have its own small stop valve at the wall, and giving those a turn once a year keeps them from seizing.
The main for the whole house is usually outside near the front of the property or in the garage, and if it will not turn by hand, get it fixed on a calm day.
The rest of what we do in Highland
- Sewer Line Replacement
Laterals past patching.
- Leak Repair
Drips, stains and wet drywall.
- Emergency Plumbing
Trouble that cannot wait.
- Copper Repiping
New copper for tired supply lines.
Everything else we cover in town is on the Highland page, and the bathroom plumbing page covers this work wherever you are in the valley.
Which bathroom problems can wait, and which can't?
Remodel or repair, ask about your own bathroom when you call.
Why does my toilet rock when I sit on it?
Usually the flange it bolts to has loosened, broken or sits below the finished floor, or the floor under it has gone soft. Rocking breaks the wax seal, which lets water and sewer gas escape under the base, so it is worth fixing before the subfloor starts to rot.
Is a running toilet a big deal?
It will not flood anything, but it pours water down the drain every hour of the day, and that shows up on the bill. Most of the time it is a worn flapper or fill valve, which is a quick repair once somebody takes the tank lid off.
Should I replace the drain fittings during my remodel?
If the house has old cast iron under the bathroom, the remodel is the best chance you will get. The floor is already open and nothing new is in the way yet. We can look at the fittings, tell you what condition they are in and replace them before the new floor goes in.
Why does my shower drip after I turn it off?
A drip that keeps going is almost always a worn cartridge or washer inside the valve, and hard water speeds that wear up by scaling the moving parts. Replacing the cartridge usually stops it, and we check the valve body while we are in there in case it is the bigger problem.
Can hard water damage my toilet?
It can. Scale builds up in the fill valve and around the flush holes under the rim, which leads to slow refills, weak flushes and a valve that never quite shuts off. Cleaning helps, and a new fill valve is a simple swap when the old one is crusted over.
Can a toilet or shower drain be moved during a remodel?
Often, yes, as long as the new spot can still slope back to the main drain and be vented properly. On a slab that means cutting the floor along the new run, and on a raised floor it usually means working from underneath. We look at where the drain runs now before saying how far it can go.
Which fixture is giving you trouble?
Call the shop and tell us what the bathroom is doing, whether it is a toilet that rocks, a shower that will not quit dripping or a remodel that has the floor open. We will come look, explain what we find and give you the number before any work starts.