Monday, December 7, 2009

Lesson 03: Toilet bowl hole distance

Among all the lessons we're learning, the one about toilet bowls may not be the hardest to learn, but it definitely stinks the worst. Here's how it goes.

You can't just buy any old WC, shove it into your half-renovated bathroom and force the holes to align. Each toilet bowl comes with a certain measurement that relates to the distance between the wall and the center of the hole in your floor. That's the hole where all the brown stuff goes, so buying a commode that doesn't align is bad news.

On most toilet bowls, this measurement is something like 7 to 18 inches. It's not entirely hard to shop for a toilet bowl if your hole ... ahem ... is that far from the wall. But our toilet bowl hole (this is getting tiring) happens to be a whopping 22 inches off the wall. And nobody sells toilet bowls 22 inches off the wall. Nobody except one shop, selling it in one brand, one model, one colour.

Other than that, we had a grand total of zero options.

It helped that it didn't cost a bomb, cos if it did, we'd still have been robbed into picking them up. So the lessons learned are manifold:

(1) Know the distance of your hole from the wall
(2) Get your contractor to measure it - we measured 20 inches but Ah Yaw measured 22
(3) A toilet bowl that doesn't meet the wall may be funny, but only for a while.

There are more lessons to be learned from this ill-fated WC campaign. Cheap things bought with no viable alternatives can and will turn out nasty. More on this in the next post.

7 comments:

NickTay said...

We had the same problem at our home! The WC that Sara liked didn't come in the size for the plumbing at our home, so we got the contractor to build a little extension to the wall to make it fit. It also makes a nice place to put shampoo and bath gel :)

Vernon said...

2nd post!

Athalia said...

Nick: Yeah, I heard of that fix, but sadly it couldn't be used for us.

Vernon: Loooooser.

Jeanie said...

Oh dear, you two are learning things the hard way.

Genusfrog said...

Yeah, but it's fun. I'm loving it, and wouldn't trade it for anything else. Process-wise, this has been exactly how I've been wanting to do the house actually, and I wouldn't trade it for the easier route!

CW said...

came across your blog about this 22 inches hole from wall. Is giving me alot trouble now also for the WC.. all new model is not applicable but manage to find old fashion unit which fit the size..
mind i ask have you fix the WC problem?

Genusfrog said...

Hi CW. So glad to be of assistance! Yes, we've solved the problem by finding the a WC with the right measurement - 22 inches from the wall. The shop is in PJ, near old town/Section 1. If you live around these areas and wanna go by there to have a look, email me at fergusong@gmail.com and we can chat about it further!

Thanks for reading!

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