Best Of

1. Heavy drop cloth or moving blanket
2. Empty tank and bowl
3. Slice old nuts off closet bolts
4. Pull Bowl & take outside.
5. Clean underneath
6. Check flange for breaks, holes
7. Install New BRASS Closet (Johnny bolts) bolts . Center of pipe east & west. Use an extra wax ring & pinch some off. Mold the wax around base of New bolts to stand them.up like soldiers.
8. Carefully place New bowl over bolts & stand up & make sure bowl is not skewed.
9. Use a fat pencil & outline the bowl on floor.
10. Pull bowl & set on heavy blanket
11. Use a Deep Seal Wax Ring over flange
12. Mix a Large can of Plaster of Paris to a pudding like thickness. If you have the grout that you used for the floor mix that in to.
13. Have a large bucket w Clean water ready & a Large sponge.
14. Place Plaster all around the outside of the wax ring & the pencil mark outline.
15. Set bowl over bolts in to Plaster & put full body weight w knees.
16. Make sure it's straight.
17. Quickly throw the washers & nuts on bolts, handtight .
18. Work fast & cut all excess plastic away & dump in garbage.
19. Run the damp sponge all the way around the base & fill in any gaps
20. Keep rinsing sponge & getting all.plaster off.
21. Tighten nuts very gingerly with crescent wrench.

Hard parts over.....Use a nice hard, chrome played Tank supply with a Ridgid Bender for a Truly neat & professional look. Use a flex otherwise.

Dont forget a toilet seat! Mad Dog

While I am not a huge sharkbite fan I had a leaky solder joint on a new water heater install at my house many years ago, cut it out and replaced it with a sharkbite since I wanted it done quick and had the fitting. Told myself I would change it out when the sharkbite started leaking, it lasted longer than the tankless water heater it was hooked to.

I say the odds are greater by far that you will have a failure trying to sweat a pipe as a beginner as compared to a SharkBite installation.

I put a few 3/4" SharkBites into my system as a temporary situation, but now I am leaving there just to see how they do. Not one drip yet after 5 years.

This is totally anecdotal, but also anecdotal is all the fear mongering you will likely see in later posts in this thread against SharkBite fittings.

But I would wager that even for most plumbers they would see more sweat fitting failures than SharkBite failures.

Confirmation bias is a thing

I mean compression fittings have been around for like 100 years.

There are places where Sharkbits are not just a good temporary fix (if the pipes are prepared well — square cuts and no burrs — they are a good bit better than temporary) but a perfectly valid permanent fitting.

I've use them, for instance, in settings where I am doing domestic water — and am MUCH too close to highly flammable wood to even consider heat, never mind a torch.