How Much Does It Cost To Replace/Fit a WC/Toilet?



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Cost To Replace/Fit a WC/Toilet





Job
Description
Labour
1Replace an existing bathroom lavatory and cistern with no extra tiling or any other “making good”. That’s one man a nice leisurely day (by the time he tips the old toilet) and he will spend £50 on tipping and incidental materials
£225

Plus the new “close-coupled” pan and cistern supplied by you.
£100
2If he also has to adapt the soil stack and make internal plasterwork good, this will take an additional day and a half plus incidentals and tipping.
£325

Plus materials etc. relevant to the above
£150
3To fit a new toilet in a room which has never had one before, (let’s say the utility room) which has a nearby external soil stack and an adjacent cold water supply. This will mean adapting the stack, fitting the toilet and making good the hole inside and out. This will take 2 men, 1.5 days plus incidental materials etc.
£475

Plus materials etc. relevant to the above
£300
4To fit the new toilet and new plastic soil stack (connected to the one WC only) connected with a new manhole to the existing sewer line and all made good internally. This will take 2 men 5 days plus incidental materials and a skip.
£1650

Plus materials etc. relevant to the above including the building inspectors fee.
£700

“Labour” at £175 a day (tradesman) £100 (labourer), includes incidental fixings etc. and tipping. “Materials” if mentioned, are larger things (a boiler) and stuff only you can choose (tiles etc).  Also VAT must be added all round.

Information Sheet on the Cost to Fit a New Toilet


Taking the old “pan and cistern” out is a simple job but the “making good” you may be looking at can be a bit nasty.

There might be a cistern shaped “hole” in the wall tiling. This will be the case if the wall was tiled after the old cistern was fitted. Unless it was tiled last Wednesday, you won’t be able to buy matching tiles any more. Consequently, that wall, or even all the tiles in the bathroom, will have to be removed and re done.

If the floor was tiled after the old “pan” was fitted, the same will apply.
Even if you are lucky and the floor and wall tiling was done before the old units were fitted, there may still be the old fixing holes exposed after the new units are fitted. I don’t care how good a grouter he is, they will always show!

The same applies to any carpet, lino, wallpaper and even plaster. There will be far more making good than you imagine. We’re not going to get involved with the extras for tiling or new carpets etc. in this article. Besides, floor and wall tiling and plastering are dealt with in other sections.

Next comes the plumbing….
Now, that was the easy bit! The chances are very great that the new pan’s spigot, (the small rear projection which connects it with the waste pipework) will be at the wrong height to fit into the existing 100mm (4”) diameter fixed waste pipe. This means either raising the new pan on a silly little plinth (if it’s too low) or fitting a new waste pipe, because there’s no way of lowering the pan if it’s too high unless you want to start messing with floor levels.

There are “offset” connectors which can get you out of trouble if the differences are negligible (1½ inches maximum) so let’s hope you get lucky.

If not, what is your (hopefully external) soil stack made of? Plastic ones can be adapted but that’s not always easy by any means. If it’s cast iron, bits can be cut out and plastic sections fitted but that’s not a job for the faint-hearted. (Have you ever tried using an angle grinder 8 foot up a ladder? No, thought not)

Soil stack?…..That thick black pipe fixed to the outside wall which takes away the “night soil” and dumps it on a beach somewhere.
Night soil?…You can only take me so far you know, I’ll say what I really mean in a minute, I will!

Old v Modern
Now we have the water and overflow connections. Apart from aesthetics (smaller, neater etc.) modern lavatories can’t compete with the good old-fashioned ones. Back in the days when we couldn’t have cared less how much precious water we used, the equivalent of Angel Falls used to be dropped from a cistern just beneath the ceiling to flush away the nasties.

Now, however, the EEC Johnnies have got their way and the cistern allows about a cupful of water out to do the same job. And quite frankly it doesn’t! So we have to flush twice and that negates the whole conservation process. My children press the little button for number 1s and the big button for number 2s. Is this kids just being kids, or nihilistic irony? Don’t ask me, I’m just a builder.

BUT the new “khasis” are now mostly “close coupled” (pan and cistern are one unit) and do have an integrated internal overflow and that is a good idea.

So, the plumber will very probably have to redirect the cistern’s supply pipework to a new inlet position. Make sure he does it as unobtrusively as possible and also fits an in-line isolation valve. This will make future maintenance a lot easier. However, if your water pressure is low, this may restrict the water flow. In this situation he should know to fit one that is “full bore”.

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