Updated 1-12-23
Phil shows you how to replace the bathroom floor. Mobile home bathroom that was damaged by an overflow air conditioner leak.
⏱️⏱️Chapters⏱️⏱️
00:00 Bathroom damaged from a/c leak
00:15 Check your over flow line at least once a year and blow out
00:25 Drain line needs to be on the other side of the house on the downhill side
00:55 The leak could come from anything
01:05 What all we’re going to do today
01:40 We’ll pull back the carpet checking for damage
03:03 Toilet has been taken up. Why you might not want to caulk there.
03:41 Tank bolts, what if they won’t come lose?
04:20 Before you move the toilet and tank back
04:37 You will want to block the septic drain
05:25 Inside the AC
06:02 Brought the trim back in to show you why you want to caulk the bathroom trim
07:05 Want to break a hole in the floor along the edge
07:50 Floor is out, and we’re adding wood along the edges to support the floor
10:17 Where we put the wood supports
10:50 Measured for the flange
11:35 Shut offs and water lines
11:49 Why we cut the plywood the way we did
12:29 Showing how we pieced the plywood for the floor together
13:10 Supporting the cabinet
13:49 Cutting the two by
15:08 Back inside with the 2 by
16:56 Starting the tile
17:22 Tile glue and what you need to think about
17:49 An alternative to tile glue
18:15 Floors in, we sealed the trim bottom and top
18:43 Fast grab saves you some time, but costs 3 times as much
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And this is another example of a bathroom that got an issue with the air conditioner. The overflown on the a-coil, spilled over and then ran inside the bathroom of the bathroom and into the hallway some too. That’s very typical. What you want to do is every year, sometimes twice a year you want to blow out that line. That goes for a drain, and it’s uh…
I’ll talk about that another time. But that drain line needs to go to the other side of the house. Not on the uphill downhill side. Otherwise, that water can literally make this house settle because that moisture underneath the piers make the house settle down. So this is an important thing maintain your drain line and clean your a-coils.
A lot of people don’t know how to do that, but there’s plenty of maybe at some point I’ll show you how to do that. You can buy a little aerosol can that sprays and cleans it all up. I’ll show you all that another time. Anyway, that’s what happened here. But it could be a leak from a cabinet, sink cabinet, or from a tub overflowing.
It could be this issue. So what we’re going to do today is tear out this floor. We’re actually going to leave this time, leave the cabinet in. We’re going to pull the toilet, remove the trim, and put in a new door. This actually is not a door that came from the factory it’s been put in. We’re going to put in the doorjamb jamb.
Of course we’ll have to widen this out. I’ll show you all that. We’re going to put new tile down. I’ll show you two different methods of glue and then we’ll put the toilet back down. We’ll put new tile in new trim, and we’ll pull the carpet back because we have a split there. In the carpet, it’s from the factory.
You don’t normally have the split right here. So this is probably a big carpet that’s been replaced. We’ll pull this back and we’ll look and see if we have any damage here that we need to work on because particleboard deteriorates slowly, quite often, and you might have a bad area and it take another year or two for a totally falls through.
It’s all held together with glue. Everybody says, well, you should always use plywood instead of particleboard. Sort of. The issue is water soluble glue is put in plywood that puts in layers. So if water gets on that plywood, it’ll be laminate and it will not fall through like particale board does, but it will rollercoaster and the layers will come apart So water is a bad thing for wood.
So if you know and have time, we won’t have time on this one. When you put plywood in a kitchen or in a bathroom, if you have the time, paint it. And that way you can resist a lot of the damage. It might happen from an overflow of a sink or an overflow the toilet or an overflow tub or people stepping out of the tub. So just for your information, this is what we’re going to do and I’ll guide you through it.
Hey, the toilets being taken up. It had some caulking around it, which is not a bad idea. It’s just not a good idea if you’re thinking that it’s going to keep it from leaking out, what it’s doing is forcing it to hit the floor there and it’ll come out anyway.
Anyway, what we did was shut the water off because if you don’t have a shut off there, you have to shut the whole house down. Do it because you have to remove the toilet to do a good job. Now, whenever you do that, then you flush your toilet and then you disconnect your line and there’s going to be water coming down.
So that put a towel down and then you’re going to try to loosen up your tank bolts in this case, like many, many cases. Tim, he’s operating the camera and had to cut off those bolts where the sawzall or you can take a hacksaw on turned. There’s a way to change blade to a sideways. You can cut that off real slowly and cut those bolts off.
Then you lift that toilet up. And in my case, we took it and put stuff to cover up, the toilet, uh the tub because we don’t want to skin up or dirty up the tub and put it inside there and then put the tank in here. Now, before we put this tank back I don’t want water to come out of that trap, which is right here, what we’ll have to do is rock that tank backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards and more water come out.
Hopefully we’ll have very much come out before then. Whatever we pull the toilet and put it in there. You better put something inside here because if you don’t, you end up savoring the smells that come out of a septic tank because the trap is in the toilet, not in the floor. Like in a sink the trap is underneath the sink.
So you will not have a trap to stop the, to the water is what in the bottom of that trap, stops the smell from coming up. The trap, that’s what that’s for, is to stop the smell. So put something in that hole and we’re going to cut out all this area and we’ve also got the issue with the jam right here.
It’s been all rotted out from the air conditioning unit. Not having the drain. And this is the drain.
“Good save.”
This is the drain line. This is a cool mess that gets clogged up here. Or if it gets clogged in that drain line all the way out. It’ll overflow, drop down into your air conditioning vents and all over onto the floor. That’s what happens. This is not unusual at all. It happens a lot. And before you know it, your floor is rotted out.
You don’t even have a chance to fix it. So once or twice a year, you need to clean that up. We’ll clean this up. Alright?
Hey guys just let, we brought the trim back in so you can see this is very typical. It’s nothing unusual. Water might have overflow from here or the shower came down from here. Some people stepping out from here.
The toilet could have overflowed to sink, kind of overflows. But when the water comes up here against this drywall, there’s no caulking right here. It’ll go underneath the trim and then hit that drywall and it will come up. And that’s what you see right here. It’s coming up the drywall and it stains the trim at the same time.
“It soaks into the drywall, right?”
Soaks into the drywall, comes up here quite often. You can literally see stains. And these have been painted over but it’s been a while since it’s had an issue. But you can have the evidence right there in front of you. And so what we’re going to do, whenever we get through with all this, replacing the floor and everything we’re going to caulk the front side and the top side of that trim. So and not that it’s going to make it a pond in here, but it will stop it from running hitting the wall and whicking up.
And I recommend you do the same. So what we usually do is when we’re getting ready to may replace the floor is this is going to be tough, but we… This has actually got particle board that has been replaced before. There’s been tile put over the top of linoleum. But we do that so that we can start to sawzall up against the wall and cut along that edge.
And sometimes it’s real easy, like, like there easier to get. So that’s what you do. You start and then you put your sawzall and cut it in an angle and cut it out.
OK, This pretty thing is not as pretty as it was. We took out the floor, which is a bit of a chore, we had chisel around the edges, get everything cleaned up We were fortunate enough to have wood on the outside. Quite often you have to build it out.
One point I guess I’ll have a job where I can show you guys how to do that, but a lot of times you can just fashion it to there, underneath here. This cabnet is a point. We’re literally going to go from here to there underneath the cabin. We’re going to crawl underneath there and fasten that to the floor joist over there.
But I’ve already got that cut. Put one piece in, and now I’m using pressure to the wood, not because I have to, but because it’s left over from a deck that we did. So it’s just a plus for the customer, and I fit them in there tight between. So you cut them tight and then I So I’ll put 3 inch screws in, now in reality, I could actually like, say for here, go like this and I want to make sure the set good and so on that twisted down. That always runs an issue so you can actually go through the side also.
But in this case I’m going to go as long as and I put one on at least two per end. Now, I’m not using any coated screws they’re just more expensive, doesn’t do any better job. Do not use torks if it’s more expensive. So that way there’s something for the plywood to be at that won’t move. You put weight there, it won’t move. We’re going to put one here and here on both sides of the toilet so that I can cut and go underneath the toilet flange, which I’ll show you that.
So here we go. I’ll try to cut you here in there as I go along.
All right. So in this situation, we cut wood along side the tub, with screws fastening it, one on each side of the toliet flange itself and then one underneath the cabinet kind of out. So the edge of the cabnet will be done and then one underneath the counter, whick had to climb underneath and fasten to the floor joist. So we fastened it here and then crawled underneath it and fastened underneath the cabinet.
So the cabnet is supported. In a minute, I’ll show you how we’ll put in one right here. But right now, we’ve measured the center of the flange and then measured the center to here and then mind you, that sits on top of the plywood. So it’s actually it’s actually about an inch back in here or more that the plywood needs to be cut in a circle around it.
I guess I’ll do a tutorial on how to cut toilet flange. And when you don’t have the tools, all the different ways to do it. And then we also have the water supply line. So, this is CPVP which will freeze I generally encourage everybody to do pex. Um, the shut-off is leaking but I think we can, but I think it’d be alright.
I usually use quarter turn shut-offs and this one’s shutting off most of the way we marked where the floor joist is here, where it is here and where it is here. We got the plywood cut and the piece go round now means we have one on each side. Not only does this give support to the toilet. But also it allows us to cut the plywood where we can go like so and have pieces instead of one solid piece meant to cut the pipe, put it back together, which just causes more grief.
A lot of times there’s multiple connections and it goes on to somewhere else. So you don’t want to do that. So that’s why I’ve always added this, because it makes a better job. And then I guess we choices as to where to cut the wood and I have screws underneath, screw it all together and be all nice together. So that’s what we’ll be doing next.
All right. What we’ve done is went ahead an cut this all way down this floor joist. It was right here. Then we slip this piece in and then we put this piece in the top slipped it underneath. We’ve already got this piece cut. Quite a jigsaw puzzle. But after you had the centers and you got that cut, then you decide, hey, I can, I can make that little distance right there.
Or I could have went from here to over to there and then try to wiggle around this one to allow myself that much work and quiet often scratch the cabnet. But before I put this piece in, I want to support right here in front. So to show you what I do.
I know that in between these two 20 and quarter it allows room but I want to have at least two inches, two and a half inches on each side. So I’ll have notch the 2 by turn it on edge and notch the two by on that side with 20 and a quarter in between two and a half inches on each side. Then I’ll put screws through here and I’ll show you that when we come back.
We’re trying to get that two and a half inches in this case we cut down an inch and a half, my drywall issue. You can do this with squares, but I can do it real quick. I’m going to cut that section out. And then I’m going to have 20 and a quarter over two and a half inches from there.
Inch and a half inch and five eighths down so I cut this section out here and cut that off. Alright ready to go. Well, we’re going to go inside and.
Here we cut that like we showed you put a little screw in here so I can hold it and I’m going to drop it down through, and guess what I need that screw to hold it. Well, I could do in my hand, I guess if you needed like a pry bar or anything else, you can hold it pretty steady right there. And I need three inch screws. Thanks.
“Yep.”
Well that didn’t last Now. We have something solid for the floor to sit on and we’re supporting both sides for the cabinet. Cabinet won’t move. Now, guess what? Now the next piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
“Which can be quite puzzling.”
This looks like we have to do some cutting. Just. As you want it to be. Correct. Ten and half insert. We’ll have to cut this and we’ll be right back.
What we did is when we walked in. I would want, since I’m doing 12×12 tiles. I would want the full pieces on this side so that would be what you would see and also like starting from this side. So the cut edges would be over there and the cut edges over there.
So, I marked 24 inches over. So I’ve got a line. That would be where I would want it to have enough to get up against the wall over here. So again I’m going to put glue down. Normally you would put a commercial VCT tile or glue or other kinds of glue. All there’s a lot of different types, but I like the commercial, but normally you would need anywhere from an hour and a half to a day depending on the humidity in the air for it to dry, and the temperature.
So, I’m going to show you guys an alternative. And it’s not something you see all the time, but this is a fiberglass resin panel adhesive and it grabs fast. But guess what? You can use it on tile too. So, I’m going to show you how to do that. It’s just basically the same as regular glue. But we’re going to do it and away we go.
OK, guys we’ve got the floor in the first grab. We put the trim in, resealed it. Now, this is important: we sealed at the bottom and the top of the trim. So if anybody steps out of here or splashes off, the shower comes down and we’ll go behind that and it won’t go underneath there and we rebuilt all that floor, including where he’s standing over there and sealed everything all the way around and using the fast grab saves you some time.
We cost three times as much as the glue. And that’s a fiberglass resin panel. That dog is not happy. Anyway. So there you go remember your Americans not American’ts.