WC cistern & cold tank overflow destination?
Anything with a ball-c*ck needs an overflow. What are the UK legal and other requirements on WC cistern & cold tank overflows, including where the overflowing water goes?
Most cisterns these days are "internal" - it overflows down the pan - rather than "external" - down the outside wall.
Do many houses even have cold tanks these days?
still at least 50% Id say.
So leaks in unused toilets do not show :-( - I've never knowingly seen one like that.
I'm interested in flats. Ours have cold tanks; and many of the houses hereabouts are old.
On Monday 28 October 2013 14:16 snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in uk.d-i-y:
Cistern overflows are often inbuilt (down the pan) these days.
We got rid of ours last year - no pipes in the loft any more.
An internal overflow? We had two in our last place, and have three here...
For flats, even fewer would have cold tanks.
Perhaps so. But I'm asking about properties that **DO** have cold tanks with overflows and WC cisterns with external-to-room overflow, because these ones are like that.
I would recommend not overflowing the WC into a porch loft space :-(.
I take it you've BTDTGTTS? ;-). Pitched roof conversion on a previously flat roofed porch?
Tim
Indeed. I think the porch was added on later - so the overflow was originally to the outside. A few years after we moved in I noticed a mouldy ceiling and wall. Had been dripping for months. Fortunately that toilet has now gone, although the damage is still present. I'll get a round tuit eventually!
Was somewhat surprised this morning that a colleague had no mains water this morning. Seems to be a regular event for her. Used to have a water tower which was totally reliable, then switched to another source which has proved not to be very good. And the water tower has been demolished.
She was quite pleased that she could stop thinking: "If onl they'd reconnect us to the water tower."
You can hear the water going into the pan, and through the pipes for that matter. It's a very neat and effective solution - for a start a slow leak into an external overflow can freeze up, block the overflow and cause a flood.
I first saw a toilet like this in 1990, when we bought one in France and wondered at first why there was no hole in the cistern for an overflow. They seem to be very common here too now.
SteveW
It's not so neat and effective for small leaks past a "flapper" valve. It can be very hard to see any flow down the back of the pan and if you're on a meter, you're paying for all that wasted water. An external overflow is
*usually* more visible.Tim
We've got exactly that problem at the moment. It's not a permanent fault, hitting the button a few times seals it fully. It is definitely noticeable when it is trickling - more audibly than visually. I'm ignoring it for now, as I put a new mechanism in the other bathroom a few months ago after the diaphragm split, but I am re-doing that bathroom completely and will transfer the mechanism when I change the toilet.
SteveW
I had a slow overflow and couldn't hear it and, even when I'd realised why the water useage was a bit higher than expected and had found the cause, couldn't really see it - just left the pan to drain down after flushing and a bit of loo paper was soaked in about a second by the flow.
Around late '80s I changed the flush from high level to low level and piped the overflow via a 90deg. elbow into the downpipe. People thought it was 'naughty' - nowadays they don't.
Silliest overflow I saw was in a mate's house. Bothe cisterns in the loft were piped to the gutter; the downpipe went underground (no gully). So much for a 'warning' pipe.
A few days after I'd moved into this house, about 15 years ago, I noticed water on the wall of the downstair cloakroom. Investigation showed that the original plumber had run the overflow from the en suite WC above into the integral garage ceiling void but hadn't bothered to extend it to the outside. I sorted out the valve and extended the overflow, work that was redundant when I had the en suite redone, with an integral overflow WC, a few years later.
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