Dale's Ramblings

I want to meet the fools who design residential toilets. I suspect they are all long dead though.

25 years after men walked on the moon the USA still has toilets that must have been designed in the dark ages before simple engineering principles were adopted.

Here is why I have come to this conclusion. For some months we have been woken at night when a toilet cistern decided it need to top up, so the filler mechanism open the water valve and for about 3 seconds the night silence is punctured by the sound of water filling the tank and then it slams shut again when the water level is high enough. This symptom is a result of a slow trickle of water past the flapper into the bowl. Eventually the water level in the cistern is low enough to trigger the refilling. Apart from the wasted water, the noise during the night is annoying. (Of course it also happens during the day but it goes unnoticed because of other noises.)

I replaced the flapper. A couple of times. Within a few weeks or months we were back to hearing night time fill ups.

Let me explain a bit how it all works. The cistern (or tank above the toilet) holds water ready for use. There is a rubber or plastic flapper in the tank that covers large hole in the bottom of the cistern. When you push the flush lever, it pulls a chain which lifts the flapper and the water rushes out and into the bowl. Then the flapper returns and the water is refilled by the filling mechanism which is usually some sort of float connected to an inlet valve. When the water rises to the desired level, the float pushes a lever which in turn shuts off the valve.

Sounds simple enough, but there are way too many moving parts and points of failure and the whole system essentially cannot be properly maintained.

Instead of using the water pressure of the water supply to hold the flapper valve closed, the design relies on the weight of the flapper itself plus the pressure of the water above it to make a seal against the hole in the bottom of the tank. Any wear or deterioration of either side of the seal calls for replacing a part. I expect rubber or plastic seals to need periodic replacement (say every 5 years). I furthermore expect that replacing such a part should be achieved with a minimum of tools (if any) and the operation should be possible in about 10 minutes. I also expect any adjustments to be able to be performed in a positive way. By positive I mean that adjustments should be done by means of a threaded (or equivalent) part that will not corrode in a wet environment. It simply is not so, and it gets worse...

Since replacing the flapper did not solve the problem, I decided that the part onto which the flapper has to seal needed replacing.

In order to replace the lower part of the flapper seat you have to remove the entire cistern from the toilet! This is because the think is fastened on from below. In order to remove the cistern it has to be unbolted from the toilet itself and guess what... the bolts go through the bottom of the tank, below the water line. This means that you have to disturb 2 or 3 water tight seals to remove the cistern. not only that, after some years of being in place the bolts corrode and get cemented together with lime deposits etc. The lower end of the bolts are down behind the toilet where they sometimes cannot even be seen, you have to feel about to find to the lower end.

In my case I could get one of the bolts undone but the second one simply would not budge. I got vice grips onto the wing-nut below and held the other end with a large screwdriver from above. No amount of straining would turn the wing-nut. I was forced to insert a hack saw blade between the tank and the toilet and cut through the bolt that I was not even able to see.

In addition to these bolts, there is also the issue of the water inlet. The water supply comes out of the wall to a shut off valve and then up into the bottom of the tank. Yes, the underside, below the water line! The underside of the tank has 4 or 5 holes that are below the water line when at maximum, only one should be there. To remove the tank, the water supply also has to be disconnected. The hose that goes from the shut-off valve to the connection on the underside of the tank was in my case also cemented up with lime so much that the top could not be unscrewed from the fill mechanism that is inside the cistern. To disconnect it I had to unthread the filler inside the tank while the hose connection below remained stationery. This breaks the last of all the seals on the underside of the tank.

After some back breaking hours I was able to remove the cistern. Of course every seal on the underside now has to be replaced because the old seals (rubber) are now hardened and will never go back in exactly the same place and so will never make a water tight seal again. In addition the connection line from the shut-off to the tank inlet will also no longer make a good seal ever again so that also has to be replaced. Another trip to the hardware store.

I had bough the Fluidmaster replacement kit from Home Depot for the flush mechanism It consists of a new flapper, flapper seat, new bolts and seals for the tank and also a large seal to seal the underside of the tank to the toilet.

Since the filler mechanism was working just fine, I had not bought a replacement for that, but now since I had removed it from the tank (to undo the supply line) I needed a new seal where the filler penetrates the bottom of the tank, and guess what, you have to buy the whole filler mechanism to get the seal. So a third trip to a hardware store was made to get a new filler kit.

So in order to replace a single part that one expects needs periodic replacement, I had to remove the entire tank and replace everything inside it plus the supply line. You cannot find a better example of something that is not maintainable. It seems that people no longer care about maintenance, everything simply gets replaced if anything needs attention. How many thousands of plumbers do this job every week? I suspect most customers never know what is going on.

And for crying out loud, what are these confounded things made out of china? China is fragile. It is nice and smooth which aids cleaning but we have mastered numerous types of materials (plastic, stainless steel, etc) that would be way better.

Have you noticed that nonresidential toilets do not have these ridiculous mechanisms that are so prone to failure? They have a decent water main that delivers water as needed. No tank, no connections, no floats, no stupid flappers.

One may argue that residential homes do not have a big enough water main supply, but all new buildings could simply insist on having a 2" water main and thus be able to install better toilets. For existing installations, much of this nonsense could be solved by intelligent design of the system....


Tips for toilet designers
For one thing, make the tank and toilet out of a single piece of material. This would remove the need to bolt one part onto the other. It would also remove the need to create water tight seals between the two parts. If people insist on having a separate tank, then do one of two things: (1) attach the tank to the wall up high, where they used to be - it provides a much better head of water (pressure) when flushing, or (2) make the attachment system external to the tank, so that the attachment system does not breach the tank. Bolting a water tank down through the bottom is one of the most stupid designs I have seen in a long time.

Next, bring the water into the tank above the fill water line. This is so damn obvious. There is absolutely no sane reason to bring this up through the tank below the water line. Doing so simply creates another point of failure (leak). When we lived in the third world (South Africa) the water supply came in from above. It seems that while the USA was putting men on the moon, Africa was forging way ahead on toilet design.

Use the water line pressure to hold the flush valve closed instead of relying on a few inches of water pressure.

Finally ensure that all seals that are non static can be replaced without replacing or removing anything significant. Even better design a maintenance free system.