We have a plan. At the front of our house is a tiny room, it could fit a bed in but we want to convert it to a shower room and toilet. Problem is all the services, water and drainage, are at the back of the house.
One solution seems to be to employ a Saniflo device to transfer all the waste up and across the attic, then down into our existing bathroom to join the waste there. The water supply will follow the same route (in reverse).
Are there any horror stories we need be aware of before committing ourselves to this project?
They're noisy, unreliable, and when it goes wrong, you'll have a pipe full of sewage under pressure waiting for you to open the top to deal with the blockage.
When you use any fitment in that room after bedtime, *everybody* in the house will know about it. Just don't ask how I know, okay?
So when it blocks, note "when" not "if", you have at least a 8' head of mashed up poo and loo roll etc just dying to escape out the bottom and into your room. How much "fluid" does an 8' plus long bit of waste pipe hold? One 5 litres, 10?
I'm not totally averse to Saniflos but I'd make sure that there was only minimal lift required (preferably none) and that the slope on the outlet pipe was correct for it to drain naturally without leaving bits behind and only use the absolute minimum of swept bends.
They work most of the time. You may want to take out a service contract so you don't have the sh!tty job of fixing them when they break.
Its far better to have normal gravity drainage but its not always possible.
If you do fit one make sure you put drainage holes in suitable places so you can drain it down for repair, etc. Somewhere high enough to get a bucket under.
I've had one for more than 20 years (loo / shower / basin in, effectively, an en suite). Not right up and over, but in a place which would have involved major digging of drains *and* running a soil pipe in front of a main window. Really.
First one (Wickes) had a condenser fail (fixed by service guy), an ST blockage (fixed myself) and failure of an internal silicone hose (also fixed myself). I replaced it after about 12 years with a different Wickes model, I forget why but perhaps the board failed. That has had one ST blockage, and the "level sense" switch went erratic. Couldn't find an identical switch (board was ~£100) but replaced it with a spare boiler fan switch.
Personally, I consider that to be acceptable performance particularly as the loo and shower get a lot of use, and it would really have been a horrible job to plumb conventionally. The one time I had the service guy out he said stick with genuine Saniflo's as the rebadged ones were less reliable in his experience.
A lot depends on the reliability of wives and daughters.
They are not *that* difficult to service. A wet and dry vac lets you empty a full basin, and then drain the pump chamber. The older one had an awkward and messy seal, the later one is better but you have to figure out how to disassemble the pump chamber to get an ST out.
You are going to pump effluent up the side of the house, across the attic over you bedroom and down the other side?
Noooo. I mean what can possibly go wrong with a French designed lavatorial device pumping 10 litres or so of minced shit over your bedroom ceiling? That is assuming yo use 40mm pipe, if you are daft enough to use 22m you will soon become very friendly with sewage.
The French are of course renowned for the quality and reliability of their engineering. Renault, Citroen and Peugot regularly top the reliability lists (at least if you hold them upside down). In particular they are known for the excellence of their innovative lavatorial engineering - such as the pissoir.
Now when this device fails (which it will, you can absolutely guarantee that) you will have 10-15 litters of fermented minced shit with nowhere to go but downwards. When you undo the coupling - where do you think it is going?
Plumbers charge less to service gone critical nuclear reactors than they do for Saniflos. The only ones willing to do it are the alcoholic ex axe murderers who can't find employment in sewage works or as rat exterminators.
There are certain steps you can take to minimise the potential problem. The ideal solution is to fill the room with the Saniflo with concrete. Failing this fit a female detector to the door to exclude all females. Secondly fit a fine wire mesh over the toilet bowl to exclude anything which won't pass through a 1mm square sieve.
Make the floor of a completely sealed construction (as for a wet room) and put a 12 inch threshold at the door to contain the effluent. With the aforementioned precautions you should only ever have to be on your hands and knees dealing with 10 litres or so of several days old fermented pee when it breaks as opposed to well fermented , well, let's not go there.
Fortunately you don't have to fit any warning lights. With the pipe run proposed everyone in the house will know when it is used. Someone I used to know (they now live on a small island off the Outer Hebrides with a long drop toilet and any mention of plumbing causes a relapse) installed one of these devices and connected their washing machine (which they ran overnight) to it. For the first few nights they were kept awake simply by the house shaking as the washing machine emptied (quietly) and the Saniflo burst into (not very quiet) life.
Then one day then had a good nights sleep because, unbeknown to them, cotton strands from the washing machine has jammed the Saniflo mincer. (This mincer can be jammed by moonlight falling upon it at the wrong angle. Anything more fibrous than a (small) spiders web will stop it working. )
The next morning as they sat on the throne their feeling of euphoria at having slept the night through was replaced by horror as nothing happened (other than the bowl overflowing) when they tried to flush the loo. They had of course fitted carpet in the bathroom so this helped soak up some of the less lumpy bits.
23 frantic calls to plumbers later they found a poor gin sodden wretch willing to clear the blockage for only £500 and a crate of potato vodka. As he set to work and sewage swept down the hall they bitterly regretted fitting only a threshold strip instead of the Berlin Wall at the toilet door.
It would be more hygienic, and much easier for the occupants, to knock a hole in the wall and simply put a bucket on the other side.
Ha. I've seen in other places your contributions to Saniflo's share price! So far it's about 10:1 AVOID Saniflo at all costs. I guess I'll have to listen.
Now what else is out there on the market to do this job?
I think you should do it. We had a Saniflo for years and the only time it blocked was when wetwipes were put down it. They're just too fibrous for the mincer. Admittedly, we didn't have the "pump up and over" type so there was less to go wrong.
Even so, I reckon if it's rated to pump through 22mm pipes, your best plan would be to use 22mm up to the loft and the use larger bore tube sloping down towards the drains at the back so that once up, it can drain by gravity. This way, if you do have a problem, you'll only have a 22mm length of pipe to drain. Do ensure that you install a drain point at the bottom of the 22mm section that you can get a bucket underneath though.
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