Ah, that must be why you hear so many stories about women complaining about the positioning of the seat/lid. If they walked forwards to the toilet, they'd see what state is was in, and adjust the settings appropriately :)
-- JGH - Et Ovum Excoxi
The overflow and warning pipe are two different things. It is only in cisterns of under 1000 litres that they may be combined into a single pipe, when either name is then correct.
Colin Bignell
4" soil pipes!
If don't use a septic tank or similar then it goes to the waste water treatment plant - or it should do!
Depending on where the plant is located, the treated waste is either 'dumped' into a stream, river or sea - but it ultimately ends up in the sea - and as you say the water table. All good clean stuff though - and according to some, fit enough to drink as it comes out of the plant! Yuk.
When it's not treated and ends up in the sea - and when you're swimming in the sea on your hols, you are 'nutting' the hard stuff out of the way as you're proceeding - I did a bit of that as a lad many years ago and it wasn't pleasant!
Not quite true - but when the ice-caps melt, then there will be more to play with but getting it to the right place will still be the problem!
If you're interested, have a read here for some info on the subject:
On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:26:46 +0100 someone who may be Mike Barnes wrote this:-
I think it far more likely that someone will notice water flowing out of an external pipe than flowing into the bowl. However, there are people who will do nothing about it no matter how obvious an overflow is.
gets. Either that, or it's the usual media s**te.
MBQ
Experience says it does work, but that it's not dual flush (which TNP was obviously referring to by "small amounts of flush").
Won't work at all with cisterns designed for a top-mounted dual-flush push button which most of the designs being complained about in this thread have. Plus it's so cranky-looking it wouldn't get past the door in most SWMBO-dominated homes :-)
Any idea how they work? Presumably it's all patent-protected so that no-one can make an acceptable-looking alternative version.
It depends where the external warning/overflow pipe is situated: if it's in an out-of-the-way place and/or it's winter and no-one goes out where it's situated then it can piss away for months before anyone notices. OTOH as people have pointed out the equivalent of a slow drip from a pipe is all but invisible when it's down the pan, but when/if it gets to a higher rate it's more likely to be noticeable.
I think they let air into the syphon. If you look at page 18 (or 15) of the report on
Tim
3000 litres/day == 125l/h == 2 litres/minute. A fair flow, but running evenly down a WC bowl could be missed by someone of the in quick, do business, out quick school.
And I wonder who cleans the lavatory in his house ...
Mary
There are many examples of that round here. Some don't even notice turds escaping from manholes either. They just hope others will sort (and pay for) it being sorted. Blinkered when it suits.
But for 6 months! At 2L per minute you'd have thought the flow noises in the pipework/ballcock/torbeck valve would have alerted someone.
Tim
I reckon I could ignore (but not fail to notice) water trickling down the back of my pan for quite a long time but then I'm not on a meter! ;-)
Tim
Ah yes, it says the device has 3 tubes (not visible in photo) which let air into the syphon at various levels. Similar to the Mecon device. THey speculate that much of the device's savings was because users tended to leave the flush volume control on the middle setting, in which case a brick in the cistern would be just as effective.
I like to think it would have alerted me, but to a person not technologically attuned (possibly of the venusian rather than martian[1] type) it might just become part of the background of living with technology.
[1] to borrow a metaphor which is surely from Uranus
It needs FOGB electric pumps to move it through the treatment process and through the mains. More water = more electricity. That is assuming the existing pumps and pipes are big enough to cope with the added demand. In some cases they aren't, so you get huge disruptions and costs whilst roads are dug up to lay newer, bigger pipes and install more, bigger pumps and processing plants.
That is also ignoring the fact that there is a finite amount of fresh water available and we're using most of it. Reservoirs run dry, water tables drop. Some UK rivers are 60 or 70% treated, discharged, water near the sea (sewage with the lumpy bits removed) ISTR. It's pumped out upstream, goes around the mains, back through the sewers, treated and discharged back into the rivers.
Or ten or so of miles of river or water way to clean it up a bit more before being absracted and cleaned again for some one elses drinking water. "What Reading drinks today, London drinks tommorow".
I get a lot of calls (& jobs) reported as 'toilet won't stop flushing'. What they mean is that the internal overflow is operating. Reports of water from an external overflow are much less common, so I'd say internal overflows are much more noticeable.
With a syphon and high pressure mains you /can/ get repeated cycling when the ball falls off the arm, even with an external overflow. Our upstairs bog did that once. At least it keeps the floor from getting flooded.
How about the little wheels in the water meter whizzing around at high speed even when all taps are supposed to be off? Would that alert anyone?
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