Saga of the B & Q Bog - Part III ...

So last night, I came to fit the bog to my daughter's bathroom - you remember, the Barcelona whose bag of bits had been missing, and were replaced by the erk in the shop nicking a set from another box on the shelf.

My son-in-law had done a nice job of fitting the syphon unit, and the inlet float unit, with a wipe of silicon rubber here and there, so we were all ready to go. When I came to secure the pan down to the floor, the screw holes went straight in, parallel to the floor, so there was no way to put screws straight down into the floor. I ended up screwing a block of wood to the floor, and then screwing horizontally into that, which has not given what I would consider to be the 'normal' solid fix. The bottom of the pan is not particularly straight, so there is some movement when it is sat on. Any thoughts on that part ?

Anyway, we then went on to fit the cistern and connect up the water. All of that went without problem, and when the water was turned back on, it all started to fill with no leaks. I gave it a test flush with it about 3/4 full, and that was fine, so I let it fill again, and it filled, and filled and filled .... No sign of it cutting off, even though the float was fully up. So, cut the water again, and removed the valve cover / float arm attachment point. No diaphragm in there ...

Son-in-law then comes back with one in his hand. "Is this it?" he says. The instructions claim that this is a spare, so where was the original? I put it in without looking too closely at the rest of the assembly, and screwed back up. Water back on and filling, I lifted the float. No sign of even the slightest reduction in water. So out it comes again for a closer inspection, and it is at this point that I notice that the float arm, when it comes up, pushes on a solid plastic pin at the back of the valve. This part of the valve fits solidly onto the front of the valve assembly, and is then firmly fixed there by the screw-up collar, so cannot move itself. In every valve of this type that I've seen, that pin which is solidly part of the moulding on this one, is a moving pin, which pushes on the diaphragm to close the water off, when the float rises and the arm pushes on it. Interestingly, the 'spare' diaphragm also had a neat hole in its centre, as though it was meant to loacate over something. It does actually fit exactly over a raised lip around the removable part of the valve with the solid pin.

Trust me, nothing does, or can move on this valve, as a result of the float rising. Am I missing something here ? Apparently, even the replacement bag of bits that my daughter was provided with the first time, was open, so maybe that doesn't bode well for the contents ... She's off back down there after work today to demand an unopened bag from the exact same model bog. I don't fancy the chances of anyone there who crosses her on this one. She is mad enough to start screaming and shouting at the store manager now :-)

Arfa

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Arfa Daily
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I don't have one in front of me to check, but these valves actually use the mains water pressure to seal off, not pressure from the float. That tiny hole is part of the method for applying mains pressure to shut off the inlet. IIRC, the float pressure just needs to seal that tiny hole.

I would just buy a fluidmaster valve, and chuck the supplied one. That's what I do in any case when the original one fails.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

OK, that sounds reasonable, so there must be something wrong with the way this one has been made, as the float moves nothing at all other than itself, and the arm attached to it.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Yes. There should be two plastic fitments. They are L shaped, the base screws to the floor and the rising part has the form of a rectangular area predrilled with an array of holes. This fits just inside the edge of the pan base and, once the pan is in place you screw into the nearest hole. The riser is angled a bit so you are pulling the pan down to a certain extent. I have these on mine and they work well. I would imagine the wood block you have would be an adequate replecement but I would angle the screws down a little.

Difficult to tell without looking but the Torbeck type valves operate differently. You might be better just buying a new one from B&Q - they aren't that expensive!

Reply to
Bob Mannix

Like what he said...

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Reply to
John

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> John OK, I guess that's just another set of bits that were missing then ... Update on the filler valve. They went into B&Q this morning, and the erks just gave them another whole set of bits, in a sealed bag this time. Having examined the internals of the new valve, there was indeed a piece missing from the original. There is a little plastic 'piston' which sits behind the diaphragm, and locates in the hole in the diaphragm. I haven't quite figured how the valve works, but it is indeed reliant on water pressure, as someone else suggested. There is a tiny hole in the body behind the diaphragm, and when the float comes up, the attached arm presses a little rubber pad against this hole to seal it. If you blow into the connector end of the assembly, the air escapes at the top, as you would expect. As soon as you block that little tiny hole, you can't blow into it any more, as should be the case, so I guess that the little hole is a diaphragm bypass, which allows it to sit off the valve seat by virtue of its own springiness. When the little hole is blocked off, the water pressure must then press the diaphragm against the seat, cutting off the water.

So I guess that we've now won a complete 'spare' set of valve and flusher components, less the little plastic part that was missing from the original ... ({:-)

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

There's probably a bracket and screws to fasten the pan down to the floor missing too. THe block of wood will probably be better though.

Reply to
<me9

Last B&Q bog I fitted also had bits missing. It had two metal brackets which screwed down to the floor & two horizontal holes in the pan base. The brackets were threaded & two machine screw held the thing in place. No measurements or template supplied, real fiddly to get lined up.

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Arfa Daily" saying something like:

Sometimes, you gotta think outside the bogs.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

.....and consider bedding it all down onto silicone to make it really stable. The base is rarely 100% flat. Inject a bead whilst wedging it up slightly. Inject - release wedges and then insert screws - leave to set.

Reply to
John

Talking of Barstow, I passed through it driving to Vegas a few years back. It *is* a very 'edge of the desert' sort of place ...

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Yep, those are the bits that were missing also. I fixed a piece of studding to the floor, and then screwed into the ends of that. What was ever wrong with simple holes that pointed down at the floor, at an angle ?

I begin to understand now why the pros on here, have such a cry about clients who supply their own goods ...

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Yep, that too !! It rocked fore and aft so badly, that I had to wedge some pieces of 4mm tile under the front and front/side edges, which I then buried and hid in a silicon rubber fillet. Update also on the new filler valve. That is now fitted, and works, so the whole bog installation is mercifully now complete. All I can say is that I'm glad that I am an 'experienced' DIYer, otherwise, I would have been right in the crap - literally !!

Arfa

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Arfa Daily

ge

Hi Arfa,

So did the cistern fit flat against the wall? Sounds like the Barcelona bog has changed a little since I bough mine

- the pan has 2 holes for screws which screw down into the floor.

Mark.

Reply to
mark.hannah

Hi Arfa,

So did the cistern fit flat against the wall? Sounds like the Barcelona bog has changed a little since I bough mine

- the pan has 2 holes for screws which screw down into the floor.

Mark.

Hi Mark. Well, hard to say really. Because of the existing 'boxing in' of the soil pipe where it ran along the floor, the position of the bog pan with respect to the back wall, was pretty much fixed. As the outlet of the new pan was at exactly the same height as on the original, I was able to just leave the existing straight collar, which was in good condition, in place, and plug straight in. However, from this location, the original cistern was right against the wall, even though on a later examination, it was in fact no 'deeper' than the Barcelona's cistern. The Barcelona's was about 3cm off the wall, so the only explanation is that it is mounted to the pan about 3cm closer to the seat back which, together with the lack of mounting holes, might go along with this ludicrous contention of the manufacturers, that it is intended to be "free-standing".

Now I don't know about you, but I'm not going to trust two flimsy bolts and a soft rubber donut, to keep that cistern attached to the pan, in a secure and leak-proof way, when 'users' are just gonna lean against it ... So I fixed an appropriate sized piece of wood - which happened to be some off-the-shelf planed size that I had a lump of, and which also happened to be exactly the right thickness - to the wall, and then silicon rubbered the back of the cistern to it, before finally screwing the bog pan to the batten of wood that I had to put under it, because the horizontal screwing brackets were missing ...

Which brings us back to your original question. So no, it didn't fit flat to the wall for the reasons given above, but also, it didn't *look* as though it *leaned* forward by any significant amount, as yours did, either. Clearly, it is mounted to the pan some distance further forward, and also, it would not have been possible to screw it to the wall due to a lack of holes in it, but if the pan had been able to go back far enough, I think it might have lain fairly flat to the wall. If all that makes sense ... :-\

Arfa

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Arfa Daily

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