Plumbing – How to replace this cast iron toilet flange

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I have a big old gawd awful cast iron (at least I think it's cast iron, the house was built in 1940) toilet flange that is in sorry shape.

See?
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There will never be a better time to replace it – as we have the floor above and ceiling below it open, and it desperately needs it, obviously.

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I have never done anything with cast iron before, however, and do not know how I should proceed. Should I break the pipe back on the long straight stretch and connect to pvc using a rubber connector like this?

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Or should I focus on just trying to replace the flange (which seems much more difficult to me…)

I know cast iron is hard to cut – is a grinder going to be more effective at cutting this stuff? (Huge mess for the kitchen below 🙁 – but I can hang trash bags or something underneath I suppose…)

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UPDATE 5 Nov 2012

The end result:

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Best Answer

For cutting the pipe, go rent a chain pipe cutter (aka soil pipe cutter). It will make short work of the pipe and not be too messy. It will make a clean enough edge that a Fernco coupling (like you have a picture of) will work fine.

Obviously you will need to add some strapping to secure the horizontal run of iron pipe if you go this route because you don't want to put any extra strain on that rubber coupling.

I would not mess with trying to remove the flange. I think it will be easier to just cut the pipe.

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