saniflow toilet problems

[mike1978]

hi,

I`ve just bought a house which has a saniflow toilet - its the only toilet in the house and is positioned in the centre of the house. Is this right?

The real reason i`ve coem on here is that we`ve just started having problems with it yesterday. We haven`t been chucking stuff down it that shouldn`t be, but yesterday the mechanism inside has been grinding and making a huge noise every 5/10mins or so. This goes on for about 30 seconds. Luckilly i was able to pull the fuse out of the wall socket this morning so we could get a bit of sleep.

Is it probably that its blocked or is something wrong with it? It still seems to flush ok and the water in the toilet is clear.

I`d like to connect it to the proper waste pipe on the front of the house but hav`en`t doen anything like this before!


Thanks,
Mike

 

[seco services]

sounds like something is floating around in the motor or the cutting wheel.

if its the only toilet in the house it shouldn't be on a sani it should be direct to soil pipe.

you can have a second toilet on a sani but at least one must be direct.

 

[mike1978]

does the cutting wheel have some sort of sensor in there then to detect when it needs to run then?

is that building regs to not have the only toilet on a saniflow. Stupid really, but i didn`t even think about it before we bought the house.

its a terraced house with the bathroom right in the middle between the back and front bedrooms if you see what i mean. i think there is a soil pipe runs down the front of the house.

i know its difficult to say without seeing it, but is it possible to to connect the toilet from the middle of the house when its not on an outside wall?

 

[mattylad]

AFAIK you dont get a good enough drop on the soil pipe if its run from the middle of the house, I had a house with a middle bathroom & the soil pipe went under the floorboards, over a 6m length it had a drop of only a few inches. I was having to unblock it at least twice a year.

Although someone more knowledgeable will advise..

Your saniflo non return valve may also be faulty, meaning that water/muck is always coming back into the unit & setting the sensor off.
(thats as well as possible problems with whats inside it).

Unfortunately, this is likely to mean that someone gets the job of removing the power and then opening the Saniflo up and inspecting the inside.
(if you have to do this, run several flushes through it first )

 

[mike1978]

joy! looks like i may be up sh*t creek!

someone on another topic raising the level of the floor that the toilet sits on.

at the moment, i`m pulling the fuse so that it doens`t go off every few minutes and then putting it back in when the toilet needs to be used.

 

[mattylad]

I replaced mine with a switched spur front plate, its been like that for almost a year now until I can get around to fixing it. I also keep my fishing gear in the downstairs loo to keep t'others out

When I said drop, I didn't mean the drop from the loo to the waste pipe, I meant when the soild pipe enters the floor to where it exits the wall will only be a matter of a few inches in available height, this will not give it the required angle (AFAIK about 30 degrees?) to enable "stuff" to flow down well.

Mine used to fill with bog roll, and other unmentionables on a public forum Luckily I had an inspection hatch on the corner to enable a long pole to be shoved in.

(anybody NOT got a horrid picture in their head? )

 

[mike1978]

i`ll have to have a look tonight and see what room i`ve got there. can i run a piep around the perimeter of a room (boxed in) - 90 degree bends in the corner too much i owuld`ve thought?

 

[seco services]

depends how many bends and if you can get the min fall at least on the pipe and its with in the max length from toilet to stack.
and by the sounds of what you are saying it won't be.

 

[mike1978]

i`ve had a quick look and looking at it, i can`t really come straight out of the toilet into the wall as it goes straight into the middle of a bedroom which isn`t practical at all.

i could drop thepipe under the floorboards and across to the front soil pipe directly with no bends - that would be about 3.5m long and a drop of about 100mm. Or i could go straight to the front of the house 2.5m with a drop of 100mm and then a right angle bend along the front of the house (not ideal) with another 1.7m and drop of about 70mm.

does anyone know what the actual limits are?

thanks!

 

[seco services]

6m to stack, min 18mm/m drop.

 

[mike1978]

6m to stack, min 18mm/m drop.

thanks - sounds like i may be ok - i think i`d like more than 18mm/m drop though if possible!

cheers,
mike