A: Hi, Kathy. I have noticed a lot of people with bidets want to remove them in favor of more space. However, in your case you may want to rethink your remodeling job unless you're ready to spend some money. Here's why.

Every plumbing fixture has a DFU number. DFU stands for "drainage fixture unit". Basically it lets you know the amount of water that may pass through the fixture trap. With that DFU figure, a licensed plumber can correctly size the drain lines for a new home. A standard bathroom vanity sink may be sized with a 1-1/2" drain line, while a standard bidet may be sized with a 2" drain. (These are just examples and local codes must be followed.)

Anyway, you can see that a bathroom sink should be able to use a bidet drain line, because in many instances the drain may be large enough for the sink. This is why the bidet-to-vanity-sink question was not a very big deal, since walls and floors may not have to be opened up.

However, most toilet-drain lines are sized up with 3" to 4" drain lines. This is a very large drain line; the smaller bidet drains will not handle the flow from a toilet. Plus, the location of the bidet drains usually will not line up with a toilet. Either way, you are not going to be able to replace the bidet with the toilet unless you do a major remodeling job to your bathroom. Both the bidet and toilet will have to be removed, then the floor and/or walls may have to be opened up to expose the drain lines.

Once you have access to the drains, the larger toilet drains will have to be re-piped to the new location to "rough-in" the new toilet drain. Also, the water lines will have to be altered and capped off where necessary. Then the floor and walls reinstalled, and finally the toilet is hooked up.

As you can see, this is now some heavy-duty work. A less invasive alternative may be to leave the toilet alone and remove the bidet only and cap off the water and drain lines.

Bottom line is that anything is usually possible when it comes to remodeling, but will it be worth the costs? You don't want to do an unnecessary toilet removal just to end up flushing your money down the drain!