Toilets
Fitting toilets to handle 280 pound people and 16 pounds of water
When you consider that an average family of four will use the toilet at least 15,000 times in ten years, the fixtures take a heck of a beating and you should bear this in mind when you fit new or replacement toilets.
First of all, always use the largest waste pipe diameter possible. Never reduce down in size to save cost or make fitting easier. The only exception here is for special units that are designed to pump the waste through small bore pipes. Modern plastic pipe-work makes this task a simple one but be careful not to strain joints as this may open up the rubber seals and cause unpleasant leaks of liquid and gas.Your toilet needs to be stable, even for the 280 pound dinner guest, so seat the toilet bowl into a bed of sand and cement or specialist hard setting resin and use a spirit level to check that it is square. Wall mounted toilet bowls should be fitted to a solid structure with no air gap between the plasterboard and the underlying block work or timber structure.There are many different designs of flush mechanisms available these days but they all share the same design weaknesses. Somewhere in the system there will be a rubber or neoprene seal to shut off the water flow. These seals age and need replacing every so often. When they fail you almost never have a replacement handy, so it makes sense to fit an isolating valve on the cold feed right next to the toilet. That way you don’t need to cut water off to the whole house to stop the overflowing or dripping cistern.If the toilet cistern is to be wall-mounted, ensure that it is solidly fixed. Most cisterns hold around two gallons of water which weighs 16 pounds so your screw bolts should be at least three inches long.When using compression fittings for the cold feed to your toilet, always make sure that the threads are treated with PTFE tape and sealing compound to guarantee a water tight seal first time.Before you make the final connection it always pays to flush the pipe-work through to get rid of any small pieces of debris that might have been trapped. If these get into the toilet cistern’s valve mechanism they can shut down the water flow just when you thought the job was finished.