Dual-flush toilets are disastrous - official

As I've written before, I'm on the trail of what looks like either a conspiracy against the great British toilet or a vast mistake - with disastrous consequences for the environment whichever way you look at it. (Indeed, I made a short film.)

In 2003, I bought an expensive dual-flush toilet for my downstairs loo. It didn’t take long before it started to leak, but the water ran into the pan, not onto the floor, so I tried to ignore it.

Eventually, ignoring it became impossible: the odd drip had turned into a fountain. I stopped the water at the inlet, using a screwdriver, and set out to fix the problem - only to discover that a discredited flushing mechanism, banned for nearly 140 years, was quietly legalised in 1999 on advice from a committee whose members included individuals and representatives of businesses who stood to gain from the change.

As a result, householders across the country are finding themselves at the receiving end of water bills amounting to thousands of pounds a year.

Ann Simpson is one such householder. As a result of her toilet leaking, water consumption increased tenfold – from 351 litres to 3,364 litres a day, for a full six months. The combined bill for water and sewerage was likewise ten times higher than normal – equivalent to roughly £3,600 a year.

Mrs Simpson, who works in care for the elderly, lives with her husband and two daughters in rented council accommodation in Christchurch, Dorset. The house was new when they moved in. After she queried the bill, the water company sent somebody to carry out an inspection. He laid a piece of loo paper on the back of the pan. It was immediately drenched. “We hadn’t noticed a leak,” says Mrs Simpson. She got in touch with the landlord, who fixed the loo but refused to pay the bill. Her insurer, likewise, said it couldn’t help. She received a series of reminder letters and ultimately a notice that she would be taken to court. “It’s not very nice to get one of those,” she says. “My husband’s a policeman.”

Still she refused to pay for water she’d not used deliberately. Eventually the sewerage and water companies backed down, canceling the charge – but making clear that it would not do so again.

Another customer hit by those huge bills was Rev Melvin Williams, who lives with his wife in the same part of Dorset. He’d noticed water running into his toilet but not thought about it till he heard from the water company that his bill was going to be high. “I’m in my 80s and I’m not really with it on these matters,” he says.

Julia Arden, who lives in nearby Bournemouth, has a dual-flush loo in the home she shares with two daughters. “I would hear this constant trickling, and the water bills were getting terribly high.” The meter showed that daily usage had risen rapidly from 373 litres a day to 886.

“It didn’t make any sense. They sent someone round to look. It was the toilet. So I got a plumber in. He said he couldn’t do anything, because he couldn’t find the exact part. He would need to replace the whole loo.” She still hears the trickling, and her bills remain high.

It’s important to emphasize that the problem of leaky loos is not confined to a small part of southern England. It just happens that one of the few water companies to have carried out research into the problem is based there. But householders all over the country are wasting water as a result of fitting faulty toilets.

The environmental impact is horrendous. The average person in the UK flushes 60 litres of water down the toilet every day. With a leaky loo, as we’ve seen, it can be ten times as much. And as well as treatment to drinking-water standards, all this water needs pumping from reservoirs to homes and offices, and then through sewers – at vast cost in energy and CO2 emissions.

Save the siphon - before it's too late!

(Postscript, mid-May. Or move directly to composting your wee and poo.)

Comments

[Ash the Plumb. in Southampton]

What a load of old twoddle, the water running into the pan is from the internal overflow which is just a safety feature on the newer siphons, but the water shouldn't be getting up to that height any way as the whole point a dual flush siphon so you can have a four litre flush and a six litre flush so it's at your own discretion to use the appropriate flush to the job in hand, as it were, when the water starts geting to the height of the internal overflow point it'll be about 9litres of flush which is wasting alot of extra water as it is and that's before it even starts pouring into the pan and the reasons internal overflows are better are for the fact that you can actually see the overflow is in use, whereas the old style will usually take the overflow outside where your less likely to notice the fact that it's being used. and you don't even need to go to the expense of buying new washer kits either as by law the makers of the filler arm has to make the water level adjustable, which should've been Adjusted by the plumber that installed the system, as for the plumber that said he'd need to change the whole cisterne and pan he needs to be put on rogue traders because he was trying to have the lady over! and the type of siphon that was banned years ago is a totally diferent kind of siphon and they don't actually do them any more apart from one very large DIY merchant and they've actually changed the design, so they aren't illegal at. all. alot of what I have said in this comment is just common sense, and it annoys me how people can write a whole story on something they clearly know nothing about, thanks for reading my comment and if you need help knowing how to adjust the height at which the water comes up to don't hesitate to post a comment and ask (you shouldn't even need any tools for the job as it's a very simple thing to do)

[Oliver Chettle]

Bill, you may be a keen DIYer who enjoys servicing loos every year, but most of us are not, and we shouldn't be expected to be.

[Bill]

Jeez! What a hullabuloo about nothing! Toilets need maintenance just like anything else. Our house has 3 drop valve dual flush toilets. Once a year I go to the local hardware and buy new seal kits for the drop valve and ballcock. It takes me about 10 minutes with just a pair of pliers and a screwdriver to replace them both and costs less to do all 3 toilets than a 20 pack of cigarettes. Our toilets never leak!

[Kate]

After a bad drought three years ago the city I live in came up with this little jingle to remind us not to waste water in the toilets. It was posted in all public washrooms.
"If its yellow let it mellow"
"If its brown it goes down"
The drought is over but we still follow this advice!!

[DeeBee]

With only about 5% of household water being used for drinking/cooking, has anyone costed the option of distributing water of lower quality for washing and having bottled water delivered for drinking ?

[MJ]

I am an expat Brit living in New Zealand.

Sounds to me like the problem is with the installation of the loos in the most part ....

Where I live the whole community relies on rainwater from tanks .... I have a dual flush Toto which I installed myself ... never had a problem .....In my last house the single flush toilet started to leak .... but as we have limited water supply ... I HAD to fix it ... not let it leak for months and months listening to it trickling away ..... DOH .... some people are just REALLY STUPID !!!!
I wonder how many people find (and I quote) : " Eventually, ignoring it became impossible: the odd drip had turned into a fountain." and then wonder why their bills have increased ...... and then try to blame someone else .....

We had to learn to become MUCH more water aware after moving here ... your reference to Julia Arden living in Bournemouth using 373 litres a day normally ..... would see my rainwater tank empty in 21 days ..... It has just lasted us 4 months through the dryest
Summer anyone can rememeber .....

Maybe habits need looking at in General !!!!

[Kevin]

The problem, it seems to me, is not malfunctioning loos, but a sicking dependence on the state to solve all problems.

[KR]

Court action over a leak? How about applying that to the water companies themselves. No other industry can lose up to 30% of its product in transit leakages and get away with it. Anyone for a payment strike until they sort their own act out?

[Loo Man]

As an engineer who has been involved with the manufacture of loos in all parts if the world, I have this to add. There are well designed non syphonic flush mechanisms which dont leak. These come from Sweden, and Japan. I will leave you to guess the names. You buy no-name products and you get no-name performance. There are a myriad of poorly flushing toilets about because the government standards are so lax and generally only monitored by the manufacturers themselves (would a turkey vote for Christmas). If you want a product that works well, buy a brand name product, and test it yourself using the sawdust/dye test and send it back if it doesnt work- some info about toilets here-->
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/water/industry/wsregs99/wcspec/01.htm

[Peter Brooks]

Like everything else in life, one has to check out the various brands and models of toilets before having them installed. I have found that just because Manufacturer A Model C is good doesn't mean that the same manufacturer's model F is any good.

Besides the ability to get rid of the solid waste (there are special tests to verify this), one must see if spare parts are generally available ,so you can fix the toilet yourself later on.

[Peter Brooks]

Like everything else in life, one has to check out the various brands and models of toilets before having them installed. I have found that just because Manufacturer A Model C is good doesn't mean that the same manufacturer's model F is any good.

Besides the ability to get rid of the solid waste (there are special tests to verify this), one must see if spare parts are generally available ,so you can fix the toilet yourself later on.

[rmac]

I installed a Toto Aquia dual flush a year ago and it works perfectly, first flush every time.

[rmac]

I installed a Toto Aquia dual flush a year ago and it works perfectly, first flush every time.

[Richard]

I am relieved to see this article!
We have had a leaky toilet for a few months now - not a dual flush one and it is only 2 years old. I have gone out of my way to find a replacement plug thingy, but no joy yet. What can we do to about it?
I believe that some far better quality standards are needed to prevent these poor products from reaching the UK market.

[glen cheney]

there are several comments on this article that say that USA toilets are great - RUBBISH ! this is the only place I have lived where a "plumbers friend" (aka plunger) is standard equipment in the bathroom. There is an episode of the TV show "King of the Hill" where the theme is low flush toilets are useless.

[John Cullen]

What a lot of information! I'm going upstairs to wire up the ball-cock and check for a significant leak. Our water isn't metered but it's the eco-friendly thing to do.
John C

[Ben]

My tiny Swedish duel flush is a real pain in the rear! I have to flush several times to flush normal waste. This wastes so much time and WATER 6 x more water use than before, that it defeats the object.This is also my forth Gustavberg toilet in as many years,they crack and leak because they are not made for a normal sized person.Over 80 kilo watch out!Give me an Al Bundy old English/US bowl any day.
Oh why don't we have small no1 loo's for male's in homes.Only requiring a light flush like in hotels etc.Also more hygienic and no more leaving the seat up ladies.

[Jeff]

sounds like a piece of crap toilet you got there. All I know is, we in the U.S. need to start calling them "loos". We've got so many names:

crapper, shitter, toilet, pot, head, etc.

None of these compared to loo. I'm going to start using it from now on. The others have gotten old. "I'm going to poo in the loo!"

[Davide]

What Helen said is just disgusting.
In Itlay we have Dual Flush toilets and they work perfecty. Full stop.

[helen]

An irresistible subject! At our home, we don't have a dual flush loo, but we don't flush the loo if we just have a wee, we leave it for four or five 'wee goes' then flush. We reckon that saves lots of water.

[tyson]

In Australia, I hardly know of a non-dual flush toilet, and if it isnt dual flush, it only flushes for the duration you hold it. I have a dual-flush, my work has one, the pubs all have them, pubs, hospitals- all are equiped with dual flush. If a dual flush toilet does not leak, is it a better option? the answer must surely be 'Yes!'. Then leaves this article as just rediculous, its like saying leaky taps are bad, well obviously anything leaking is bad regardless! I will die to protect dual flush!

[Tobias Morborne-Wensum]

Be eco friendly once more. Do away with flush toilets. Revert to the thunder box and grow bigger and better Tomatoes!

[Gil]

Once again we are being sold rubbish in the plumbing field. These systems have worked very well for years and years overseas. Why is it that they break down in the U.K. Our plumbing and plumbers need retraining.

[pete]

Dual flush cisterns are mandatory in Australia where water is a premium. They have worked properly for decades without issue. I know cause I've installed heaps. Maybe these are the cheap Chinese ones made in backyard factories rather than the proper factories which make export quality goods. Sounds like a few slimy limeys selling dodgy goods.
The author of this article is an idiot! Go pay the proper price and get a real plumber!

[Joe Noory]

Sandy: that's hooey. I'm an architect. We're required to specify the awful, kcomplicated low-flush things. Too bad they will never benefit anyone or anything.

The density of silids in the effluent as a reuslt of these things forces the waste processing plent to add potable water to activate digestion. Moreover, what these overzealous, well-meaning bufoons without engieering degrees don't understand is water is the most recycled thing that ever was. The only reason some US cities and the entirety of the UK are worried about water conservation is because they let their water distribution networks decay into a state of disrepair.

Apart from parading their "virtues" it has absolutely nothing to do with the environent, and just forces people to spend an extra $100 on a toilet.