Terry wrote:


"xrongor" wrote in message
...
it sounds to me like when someone redid the plumbing they didnt vent the
stack through the roof properly and you may simply find an open vent pipe
in
the wall.... this is somewhat common with do it yourelf plumbers who
realize too late they are going to need to put a hole in their roof.

something to look into anyway..


There's a curious smell in the
between-wall spaces under the bathroom that I assume is fecal in nature
but
doesn't exactly smell like the 'real thing' [or Coke].

The pipes for the toilet are at this point ABS.


To dou ga:
Or slight leakage of moisture is causing mouldiness? Worst case you might
have some rot within the floor which might cause a mouldy/musty smell?
BTW there may be enough play in the pipe that to you can pull up the
flange up slightly to get it at floor level; and/or also you might be able
to use two wax seals, messy but doable, if it is a bit uneven?
Putting something hot down toilet it can soften wax seals and then they
can leak.
Last time we 'did' our toilet, we used, for the first time a sponge rubber
seal about $5, instead of wax; so far (about a year) it's working fine. It
was easily reusable because we had to remove and reinstall our toilet
twice more while otherwise rebuilding our one and only bathroom!' When you
gotta go, you gotta go'.
Mention this also; the plastic floor flange of our ABS pipe has slots into
which heads of the two bolts that hold down the toilet are fitted. Slot on
one side of our flange was broken. Fortunately, with an unfinished
basement ceiling we can get at the underside of the floor; so we have
fitted longer stainless steel bolts up through the plywood flooring and
the flange and have used stainless steel washers and nuts on the toilet
base. Stainless seems to corrode less than even brass.
Any help?
xrongor comment about a missing vent is also a good suggestion. Seen that!
With apologies for length of this post; our first house did not have
sufficient thickness in the wall between kitchen and bathroom to run a
three inch vent up to the roof. So at floor level we adapted to one and
half inch pipe, actually a ten foot length of heavy galvanized and ran
that up and through the roof., it worked fine for over 12 years and AFIK
it's still there venting away!

thanks for all the information.
I'll investigate the newfangled seals