What Is The Minimum Wall Thickness For Wall Hung Toilet

Wall-hung toilets are great because they save space by not having a tank on the floor underneath them. But if you have an older home or apartment with thin walls, then there’s no way to install a wall hung toilet without drilling into the adjacent walls.

The good news is that it is possible to hang a wall-mounted toilet as long as your adjoining walls are thick enough to support and conceal the wall hanging toilet tank and waste pipes. The challenge for many DIY enthusiasts is figuring out what minimum wall thickness is for a wall hung toilet.

As a general rule, the minimum wall thickness for a wall-hung toilet is 10 inches thick. The 10 inch wall thickness anchors the toilet seat and conceals the water tank cistern and the waste sewerage pipelines to your local authority’s waste mainline.

If your home or office were built in the last 30 years, it’s likely that your walls are at least 10 inches thick. This is because modern homes have thicker walls to give them extra insulation against winter weather and summer heat.

The minimum wall thickness for a wall-hung toilet is 6 inches thick. However, older structures often have much thinner walls. This is why it’s important to check your walls before buying a wall hung toilet.

If you are planning on installing yourself,there are plenty of downloadable step-by-step instructions and diagrams on how to choose and install a wall hung toilet. The majority of them will also explain in detail the different parts of a wall hung toilet and what each part does.

Suppose your existing walls don’t meet this requirement. In that case, it will be necessary to add some additional framing around where the new plumbing lines will run from behind the bowl through to behind the back of the tank before installing a conventional style toilet instead.

To do this properly requires hiring an experienced plumber who has experience working with these types of installations and knows how much additional support needs to be placed behind the walls. 

Another option is to pay a contractor to do this for you.

The cost of hiring an experienced plumber with the required experience will be quite expensive but it’s definitely worth it if your goal is to have running water at your sink or in your shower without an unsightly mess on the floor beneath them within just a few days.

Another option is not to install a wall hung toilet and instead go for a conventional toilet instead. If you don’t mind drilling holes in your walls so that the water tank and waste sewerage pipelines can be run outside through your exterior walls, then it might be easier to just hire a plumber or contractor who knows what they’re doing to do it for you.

If your goal is to save money, then getting a conventional style toilet with the same dimensions as the wall hung toilet will require some trial and error of measuring, cutting and inserting temporary supports until everything is level. 

The good news is that at least this way you won’t have any plumbing lines running behind your walls as long as the floor is deep enough to make this possible.

If you want a wall hung toilet, but your walls are too thin to support them then there’s not much you can do except perhaps having a plumber install additional struts or supports around where the water tank and sewerage pipelines will be run through from behind the bowl before they run through the exterior walls.

How Much space is required for a wall hung toilet?

If you install a wall-mounted toilet, there is a minimum requirement for space in front of and behind the bowl. In many cases, the minimum space requirement is 24 inches from the center line of the bowl. 

This means that if you have a wall hung toilet, there should be at least 24 inches from the centerline of the toilet seat to any side walls or other obstruction in front of it and there must also be a minimum of 24 inches from the centerline of the toilet seat to any obstructions in back.

A wall hung toilet can be installed with up to 6 inches on either side of the bowl, but this is at the installers discretion and may not always be possible. You should take into consideration that if you are using a round or elongated bowl, you may not be able to position it next to an obstructing wall.

Suppose you cannot meet the minimum requirement of 24 inches on both sides of the bowl. In that case, a conventional style toilet will probably be easier and cheaper to install than a wall mounted one because there’s no need for additional framing to support plumbing lines running through behind the walls.

Do I need a frame for a wall hung toilet?

Wall hung toilet framing requirements is one of the most common questions that anyone considering a wall hung toilet will have. The good news is that the answer to this question is not as difficult to figure out.

As a general rule, wall-hung toilets do not need to install framing specifically for a wall-mounted toilet. Instead of requiring additional framing, all modern wall-mounted toilets use an anchoring mechanism (usually bolts and washers) that attaches itself directly to the existing studs.

A wall-hung toilet comes equipped with larger bolts if the studs are too far apart to make this possible. It should be noted that older building codes may require additional framing around where the bowl will be installed because of stricter building requirements for older construction, but even in these cases, most architects and designers agree that it’s not absolutely necessary and will not compromise the strength of the wall where it needs to be mounted.

It should also be noted that because a wall hung toilet does not need any additional framing, they are also easier to remove in cases where you are selling your home or if they are ever damaged. 

No one wants their toilets to break, but even when they don’t, it’s much easier to remove a wall hung toilet if you need to replace them because there is no need for drilling into the studs in your walls.