Period Toilets (Rant)

[DJH]

J Wright Clarke in his Second Series of Lectures to Plumbers Series II 1905 condems the use of 'rimless' type closet pans which when flushed the water swirls around the pan in an effort to cleanse the walls but the vortex formed by the swirling action causes the contents to spin but not discharge completely.

There was also a time when drains were oval shaped rather than round, as Bazalgette's oval shaped sewers in London are. This shape was thought to help propel solids along with a deeper depth of water below it. I was taught when fixing or laying soil pipes that they be laid to a fall to allow a self cleansing velocity discharge. Some of the modern 'pan connectors' available now the outlets of which fit internally into the soil pipe instead of a socket don't help matters. The ? shaped connector comes to mind. When asked where a drain pipe should be fitted in the oversite of a new build house we aske for it to be placed 6" centre from the back wall where the wc was to be fitted.

Whatever happened to syphonic pans?

Doug

 

[Penners]

J Wright Clarke in his Second Series of Lectures to Plumbers Series II 1905

What a riveting programme of entertainment that must have been!

And what a learned thread this has turned out to be!

I was taught when fixing or laying soil pipes that they be laid to a fall to allow a self cleansing velocity discharge

Yes, I'm sure the UK building regs call for this. If memory serves the minimum fall must be 1:100.

 

[DJH]

Hmm... 1:80??

Good bedtime reading.....



Got the date wrong though.

 

[Penners]

Hmm... 1:80??

You may be right - my razor-sharp memory could do with a good stropping.

 

[Juju]

What you need is two teenagers in the house who don't believe in flushing the loo. That saves water. Well, of course only if the next person uses the loo as it is without flushing first...

And I can't believe how much loo paper they use! I always buy recycled loo paper - someone will probably tell me that it takes more energy to produce it but I just can't believe anyone needs new paper for wiping their bum.... But I'm probably never going to resort to using bits of newspaper like in the old days...

Juju

 

[agbagb]

Having spent the best part of a year without a flushing toilet I'm making up for the water savings. The Jap Pak is now refitted and I've have been flushing it just for fun. A "victoria falls flush" down the Victory pan. The Misses and kids are so excited.

On the fall subject I seem to rember longer runs need lower falls. Shorter runs can be steeper. If too long and too steep the floaters get left behind, high and dry as the water travels faster. Raising another question might lower flush volumes of modern toilets end up causing more blockages in old sewer pipes.

 

[Penners]

Sir...please sir... Juju said "bum", sir!

 

[agbagb]

Wash your mouth out and stand in corner both of you! and as for your tell tales tittle tattle....

 

[Lime]

..............
Raising another question might lower flush volumes of modern toilets end up causing more blockages in old sewer pipes.

With the modern fad for fast foods without the roughage, probably not.

 

[Zebra]

Well, having spent almost three years now with a pan but no cistern, I have to say, I've rather got used to the system of recycling old washing-up water and hoof-washing/teeth-brushing water into the toilet-flushing bucket, and almost never using clean tap water to flush the loo. It's a very efficient system. Never mind the colour of the pan.
Consequently, my thoughts have turned to hoping to be able to install some sort of grey water recycling system when I install a proper bathroom, as it seems ludicrous to use clean tap water which has been purified to be safe to drink, just to flush away my muckings-out. Haven't researched it at all yet, but it just seems that it must use less energy for me to pump a bit of old shower water into the cistern, than it does for Thames Water to take it away, clean it, filter it, and pump it back to me through the tap.
The question of whether or not this option is cheaper to me is not really a concern. As long as the whole process uses less energy overall.
So how would you do it? Anybody got any ideas for a home-made DIY grey water recycling system? It would have to have an overflow back into the drain or the pan in case the cistern got too full. It wouldn't necessarily have to have a back-up mains water fill in case you hadn't got any grey water to use. If there were no water in the cistern, tough! You'd have to run the tap for a bit or go back to the bucket! It would be good to keep the system simple rather than have lots of valves and controls that might fail or leak. Any ideas?

 

[Penners]

Zebra - you may find this an informative read:-

http://www.highland.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/4F44CF29-5BC5-43FD-A68F-EF390F972B45/0/GreywaterRecyclingInfoGuide.pdf

 

[Lime]

Zebra - you may find this an informative read:-

http://www.highland.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/4F44CF29-5BC5-43FD-A68F-EF390F972B45/0/GreywaterRecyclingInfoGuide.pdf

That is a good guide.
Two important points that I draw from it are these:

1. Greywater from showers, baths and washbasins will often be contaminated with human intestinal bacteria and viruses as well as organic debris such as skin particles and hair, which would be a worry to me.
Many people's level of care and hygiene are not high and their disregard for safety could easily cause other people to be affected/infected.
If the greywater is of good quality, i.e. clear and without a strong smell, the probability for misuse or of mistakes are higher IMO.

2. Using greywater to water the garden immediately after cooling down seems a good option.. but not fruit and veg...
However if the greywater is stored and the "greener" option for cleaning is chosen, i.e. to use a bio-mechanical system to treat greywater, it will generally use more energy than if mains water was used instead.
And the energy use and added costs does not include the initial installation either.

You have to consider the added risks that greywater brings with it all the time.
It is never safe and any illness or damage to health has to be considered and weighed up in relation to savings/greenness when contemplating its use when other people, particularly children, are involved.

 

[Penners]

That's an excellent distillation of the key points about using grey water.

When Mrs P and I moved into our current house, four years ago, I installed a complete new bathroom in an upstairs room. She was very keen for me to incorporate a system for grey water capture and storage, for use on the garden. After reading up on the pros and cons of this, we reluctantly abandoned the idea. Lime's analysis highlights the exact points that brought us to this conclusion.

 

[Flyfisher]

I've thought about a rainwater collection system for flushing the loos. Because of the layout of our roof, it would be possible to collect rainwater from one roof by gravity into a holding tank in a lower roofspace. This could then be easily plumbed to supply the toilet cisterns. The holding tank could also be topped up with mains water when very low. A good overflow mechanism to route surplus rainwater would, of course, be essential.

Such a gravity system is only possible if the holding tank can be located below the guttering but above the toilet cisterns. But, even if this is not possible then it would be fairly simple to arrange to pump collected rainwater up to a dedicated tank that only feeds the toilet cisterns, albeit at a slightly increased cost of operation.

I would avoid using grey water for such things because of the issues that Lime mentioned above. I'm sure it would be possible but I reckon that things like filters and UV sterilisation would be needed for a safe installation.

In the end I didn't bother (or haven't bothered) because our water bill is only about £120 per year, so there's little financial incentive, and there were plenty of other priorities for the house.

But I do collect rainwater for use in the garden using a series of linked water butts and old water tanks for maximum capacity, which works very well.

 

[Penners]

I do collect rainwater for use in the garden

We do this, too, with a series of the scruffiest old recycled drums and barrels you've ever seen. They were inherited with the house, and I've no idea what most of them originally were. They do the job, though.

 

[DJH]

During my years as a 'country' plumber I often came across the system of roof run off rainwater being stored in tanks/cisterns in the lower roof spaces, and from there on connected to either taps over sinks in kitchens and sculleries and occasionally from taps marked as 'soft ‘water'.

This water was never in my opinion potable and in fact the tanks often contained the grossest of 'wildlife' in them fertilised of course from bird droppings on the roof and in gutters so the points Lime raises could equally apply to the quality of water saved using this method of saving water.

As a boy my brother and I had to fill the storage tank in the roof from the well using a semi-rotary pump. Hard work at 4 years old!

I've just changed the filter on our feed from the well. It is its usual rusty colour... :roll:

Doug

 

[Zebra]

Oh I see. Thanks for the guide, I haven't read it yet, but will do. I didn't realise there were health hazards in using grey water from the bathroom or kitchen.

Such a gravity system is only possible if the holding tank can be located below the guttering but above the toilet cisterns.

Rainwater for flushing the loo is a great idea, but unfortunately I am struggling to think where I could put a holding tank. My bathroom has a flat roof. Surely though the cistern is a holding tank...?

 

[Penners]

Surely though the cistern is a holding tank...?

Indeed it is, but one with only enough capacity for one flush. So unless you can ration yourself to only visiting the loo during or just after rain, it's not very practical to use it as a rainwater holding tank.

As FF suggests above, your holding tank would have to be below roof level, so that gravity can feed surface water into it from the guttering, and above cistern level for the same reason. It would also need to have a diversion valve to prevent rainwater from entering it when it's full, and you'd need a supplementary water supply to the cistern for use when the holding tank is empty.

I don't think it would be a particularly difficult setup to install, provided you have (or can create) that critical below roof/above cistern location for the tank.

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes, exactly my thoughts.

I suppose there is another possibility. One (or more) water butts could be arranged to collect rainfall from an existing downpipe in the usual way. Water could then be pumped from the butt(s) directly into the toilet cistern as required and no other holding tank would be necessary. However, I'm not entirely sure how the pump could be controlled - perhaps some sort electrical float switch within the cistern? Plus, there would still be the issue of a fall-back mechanism for when the water butts are empty - not an insurmountable problem, but is it really worth it?

Such a scheme would certainly save some mains water, though it would also consume electricity for the pump, so goodness knows if it would really be environmentally beneficial.

 

[Zebra]

Yes, I'm rapidly coming to the same conclusion, that it probably isn't worth it. I read that article, I liked the hand-pump and hosepipe arrangement with which you siphon old bathwater out through the bathroom window to use on the garden. That's perhaps more my level of technology than the advanced filtration systems the article described. Oh well, just a thought. I'll carry on with my bucket for now, and in the future will get a rainwater butt, and leave it at that.