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The following are pictures of the bathroom floor in our 2001 Holiday Rambler Endeavor motor home that I just finished replacing, I thought it might be an interesting project for someone else that might be looking at having to do the same thing. While the project is somewhat time consuming because of all the different steps that are required it is not a very difficult project and could save a lot of money if you felt this is something that you could do.
The original sub floor was particle board and you know what happens to that when it gets wet, it just falls apart. When I pulled up the tile a lot of the particle board came with it as you can see in the first 2 pictures. After trimming out the bad section of sub floor (particle board) I replaced it with CDX exterior plywood so if it leaks again maybe I won’t have that large of a problem. The third picture is after the new tile has been put down and is ready to have the toilet reset. The last picture is the finished project with the toilet back in place.
While I had the toilet out I replaced and rebuilt the entire slide sealing mechanism, (the unit that keeps the water in the bowl between flushes) and also replaced all the seals and o rings through out the toilet as well as put hose clamps on all the water hoses as they had none from the factory, they just slipped over the fitting. We also replaced the floor seal that I believe was the problem. Who ever set the toilet, either when it was originally placed or when some work had been done over the years did not have the seal in the correct location and that is what was causing the leak. I did find some paperwork in what I received with the coach when we purchased it showing that the previous owner did take it in for a water hose leaking in 2005 so I would guess that is when the problem started. The work order showed that the toilet was removed and replaced but there was not a charged for a floor seal so I guess that they used the original one and according to everything I have heard that is a no no. This is not a wax ring as we know toilet seals to be, it is somewhat the same shape but on a smaller scale and more of a rubber type material. The entire kit to rebuild the working mechanism on this toilet was $79.00 including the floor seal and the floor seal alone is somewhere around $9.00, so I don’t understand not replacing it. Especially by a service center.
As you can see we had to change the tile as a few of the original ones had broken because of the soft and bad sub floor. The company that made the original tiles, KPI in Indiana, went out of business around 2000. This tile was made special and only for Monaco so unless you could find someone that had some extra tile from a repair project the chances of getting tiles like the original was next to impossible. When I talked to Monaco they said that it was no longer available, however, I was fortunate enough to find Monaco’s supplier of the original tile and they confirmed they knew of nothing around. So in order for it to not look like a patch job we decided to go with the one inch square tiles to really make it different.
I knew that a special thin set was used for the floor as well as a special grout as it has to be flexible so that it will not pop up when the motor home floor flexes. When we were talking to the supplier they told us that the name of the product we should be using for the thin set is called Karabond / Karalastic and is made by Mapie. The grout is a two part epoxy called Karapoxy that is also made by a Mapie, because both are specialty items not a lot of places carry them. Even if they are a distributor for Mapie they may not have this product in stock because of the shelf life. Case in point, the first gallon of the grout we received was solid as a rock when we opened it as was the replacement product for the first shipment, they had the third gallon shipped direct to us from Mapie so that we could be sure it was useable. The other thing is that you can only buy the thin set in 50# bags and the second part that is a liquid that only comes in two gal containers. I only needed enough for about 4 sq, feet so I have a lot left and that material has a shelf life of about 12 months. The grout is also a two part system and that is sold in gal. containers and that was way more then what I needed, the entire container had to be mixed in order for the two part system to work, again a lot left over. These two items are also expensive, both items where around $125.00. The good news is that the color match was so close you can not tell the difference between the old and new grout in the hall way where I also had to remove some sub floor and tiles.
One of the problems that I ran into that I did not realize when starting this project is that before the walls are build the tile floor is put down and then the walls are installed on top of them. This became a problem in trying to cut some of the tile in that confined area without destroying the walls or cracking the tile and having that crack extend into the hallway. I was able to cut the tile with a small Dremel blade that works great and lets you get right next to the wall for a close trim.
The entire project including the parts to rebuild the toilet was done for less the $250.00
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