Leaky European lavatories could be banned in Britain under water-saving plans.
Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have convened a “leaky loo taskforce” to stop hundreds of litres of water a day being lost from malfunctioning loos.
Policymakers are considering a ban on “eco” dual-flush lavatories, which are designed to save water but are prone to leaking.
The very thing devised by the bureaucrats to save resources in fact wastes resources. So, so, unlike planning, eh?
Of course, we’ve still that little problemette of our own bureaucrats now doing their own designing. Sigh. On as island as wet at this one the idea that we need to closely monitor a loo’s use of water is ridiculous in itself. And domestic is only 5% of national water usage anyway…..
Modern horrible plastic materials.
I used to have a concealed cistern inside a cabinet. It was crap, constantly overflowing because the float got stuck or leaking because the washers wore away.
I have subsequently purchased a 6 year old Afghan girl, who lives in the cabinet. She is much more reliable and does not leak at all.
Perhaps they are called “dual-flush” because you need to flush them at last twice to get anything approximating the desired result.
I can’t think of better people to consider this problem at depth and close up and find out the cause. Of course, I wouldn’t trust the tossers to solve it…
Crewkerne Gazette: Carol Voderman’s Toilet Troubles
Probably more water is lost in a day from leaking supply pipes than in a whole year of leaky loos. Ah! Priorities…
“Why don’t water companies all just fix their leaky pipes” comes up a lot in discussions about water waste, and obviously it would be nice if they could/did. But given the problems involved in detecting leak sites and accessing them for repairs, I suspect it would be enormously expensive and not very friendly on bills. On the other hand, aside from reducing need for things like hosepipe bans, it would presumably cut down on infrastructure projects (new reservoirs etc) that are needed down the line. In practice what proportion of leaks are even economical to fix?
How do they estimate the size of the leaks? is it from “water in” minus “water delivered to customers”? Are enough customers metered that this would give a useful estimate?
Same with BT and their phone lines. If you get a fault and it’s not economical for them to fix it they simply won’t, and fob you off until you’ve given up. So you get a mobile, as God intended. And perhaps Starlink.
and they need to be competently fixed. Had regular leaks hear for a couple of years. Every time it was fixed, soon after (sometimes the next day) it leaked again at a different location on the same main. Eventually the whole main right down the village had to be replaced.
We’re going through precisely the same scenario, it’s nearly complete and has taken several months of works with associated traffic control. I hope it will be worth it!
This is government
The last set of regulations caused n unforseen problem. We are going to fix that with more regulations.
… brace for new unforseen problem incoming…
I find that today we can’t flush huge turds. It’s why Labour are in government.
Are they going to impose low-flow showers?
They have *already* introduced low-flow shower heads.
I didn’t know. Maybe our power shower predates the law.
Tell me, can one install a non-low-flow shower head bought elsewhere? How would the buggers know?
When we moved into our place, the shower head arm was spraying all over the bathroom. On the ceiling and all. Thanks to our tenants for not letting me know about a simple problem. Landlord no more, thank goodness.
So I organised a plumber to replace it. He asked if we wanted a particular style and I said not really but that the missus and I both like high pressure showers. He said “no worries, I’ll grab the standards compliant one you can get now and strip out the filters.”
It’s marvellous. And no one tell that plumber that I had $50 on hand in case he needed incentive. He didn’t even hint, sounded like it’s a standard request.
I recall when Euro-loos – EU compliant, natch – were introduced voices of people who know, like plumbers, manufacturers were raised pointing out how poorly they compared with UK siphon design, and were leaky. But…
Most of the eco-twaddle doesn’t work, which is why it is enforced rather than gradually adopted. I worked in a Uni where they replaced the urinals in the Gents close to the main door. The new ones were ‘flush free’. They stank to high heaven, and protests were ignored. Then, one day, the Vice Chancellor needed a pee. The eco-urinals were replaced within days.
They also installed a hole-in-the-floor crapper. Saddly, users (of the Middle-Eastern variety) couldn’t position their anuses over the hole, so their near misses constituted a ring of shit! SUms up the Middle East, I suppose.
Ah yes, the boss is inconvienced, fix appears overnight stories. I worked in an site office once where the only smoking area was an open to nature path down the back of the building. Cold, wet, muddy, whatever. Then we got a new general manager who smoked. Within days there was a nice gazebo on a concrete pad.
The UK is not uniformly wet – East Anglia, for instance, is semi-arid, with annual rainfall similar to that of Madrid….And the UK doesn’t have a basic national water grid. So it makes sense to conserve water in some areas, particularly given the cost of domestic supply – though the EU-approved bog flushes are pretty useless.
Ignoring the geography issues, isn’t an issue with a national water grid something about the differing chemical mix of the water in different places in the country?
That’s fixable though you’d probably have to add chemicals There would be pearl-clutching.
That is why Yorkshire tea differs from the stuff sold in the south. My mother once bvought a packet of tea in the south of England and took it back to Teesside and told me that it tasted awful.
However the water from the surplus areas should be drinkable down south unless the individual is suffering from an obscure calcium-deficiency condition.
By repute there are, or were, different formulations of soap sold in soft water vs hard water regions.
The London ring main (1993) means that the water hardness has evened out. Before construction South London was hard (well ‘ard, even) and North London was softee.
Interesting. Always a N Londoner I thought I’d noticed less limescale in the 80s.
Because there’s a window behind my toilet I had to put the tank high up. Which results in a cataract of water with a small tank, just like the old outside lavvy did. Low level cisterns evolved to hold more water ‘cos they had to compensate for the absence of the gravity assist of being high up, and then they had to have loads of extra engineering thrown at them to try and reduce their water usage.
One of our loos has a high up cistern and flushes wonderfully well. But our upstairs loo has a Euro-jobby (can one say that?) so occasionally blocks. Then it’s an unwound wire coat-hanger to the rescue.
I find a very large panful of water tipped in at the point of maximum flush usually does the trick, when confronted with an exceptionally torpid brown trout.
Does anyone sell “British” style siphoning loos with their traditional reliability but with the option of a full versus half flush? It’s obviously possible – worst case, subdivide the tank into small and large compartments with a flush handle and mechanism on each side. I’m sure there would be much simpler ways.
The supposed advantage of dual flush systems isn’t just the option of choosing the small flush for liquid waste but that even “full” flushes use much less water, there’s no siphoning and it just washes waste down through a wider trapway, which also means they don’t clog so much. If this is all outweighed by a tendency to leak, that’s unfortunate.
But even the traditional design could clearly use less water. My old man used to put a displacement in the tank to reduce flush volume he thought was unnecessarily powerful. The option of a half-flush for liquid waste would knock a bit off usage too.
Didn’t Prince Philip (RIP) advocate putting a brick in the loo cistern?
Although I always suspected he had high-level cisterns, so didn’t have the low-power problems of suburban toilet suites.
yes, there are syphon types that half-flush. or even quarter-flush… They are, of course, of european design, and work quite well… Except, of course, if you ask the opinion of the Brit Bureaucrats or Union of British Plumbers prodnoses…
The Bricks in the Cystern is about the oldest trick in the book when it comes to saving water, so….
And the leakage… Brit water is generally so hard you can almost *hear* anything not designed for it calcify and conk out.
Which is why one should use cysterns, or at least internals for them, that are designed for extremely hard water.
Which, funnily enough, there are…. as separate kits you can find in any decent DIY oulet over here….
But tell that to a proud Union-Flag Waving british plumber…….
Just piss in the river
That’s fine with a low population. But it’s one of the many things we can’t do since the government allowed immigration to increase our population by 50%.
And the invaders don’t only piss in the river.
No, They also shit by the sides of roads. A lane through ancient woodland near me is bounded by piles of shit and discarded toilet paper.
Then again, if you were a delivery driver on the clock, where would you stop to shit? Public bogs have nearly all closed and you can’t park near most of ’em.
I always use pubs or restaurants when out. But then I’m nice, well-presented, well-spoken and middle class, and I always politely ask first. I’ve only been refused twice: once by some sullen eastern European girl, the other by a Chink. “I’m afraid I have prostate cancer and really must go, so might you make an exception, please?” – did the trick. British passive aggression at its most effective.
WAYNE SLOB: You’re the slob. Every time I go for a piss the sink’s full of washing up.
Why do I have a sense of deja-vue here?
Every so often the Learnéd Heads of the Bureaucrats bleat “It Is The Ebil European Toilet Cysterns, They Are Inferior To Good-Oldfashioned British Designs!!” when the whole discussion about water usage comes up.
It is never, ever!!, because of their inadequacy, their love for Red Tape, or the fact that most, if not all, of the water system is built and managed to Good-Oldfashioned British Union Approved Standards, or…
No!! It is because of the Furriners!! Fog in Channel!! Stiff Upper Lip!!
Now excuse me while I take a moment to ROFL a bit…
The expression Stiff Upper Lip came from the USA.
I suppose they stopped applying it to themselves when they resolved to adopt emotional incontinence instead.
It’s only a certain demographic in the US that gets emotionally incontinent.
Much like the segment of UK society that displayed emotional incontinence when Diana Spencer offed herself by not wearing a seat belt.
As I mentioned before, Thames Water have been trying to build a new reservoir for 30+ years, but can’t get the planning permission.
And when the sun shines, the water pressure drips significantly; it’s the sprinklers and swimming pools which come between the pumping station and my house.
As for fixing leaks, most are too small to justify the individual cost but add up to large amounts overall. I had a leak somewhere unknown in the garden, and it took 2 guys a week to fix it. Admittedly, we did find one of them sound asleep in his van….
I (mostly) use collected rainwater to flush my loo, so they can fcuk off. Doing this has an extra benefit – I’m billed for water supply & sewage disposal, but the latter is based on a percentage of my metered water use. So they still have to deal with the same amount of sh1t, but don’t charge me so much for the privilege!
Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Fascist Pigs)
Why are toilets any of the government’s focking business? Surely they have better things to do. Like putting corn oil in Tornadoes.
You couldn’t make that shit up. Luckily HMG obliges so you are spared the effort
We retired our Tornadoes a few years ago. We use Typhoons now. They’re 4th-generation jet fighters, don’tcha know, but cost twice as much per flying hour as our 5th generation stealth F-35s. They’re the most expensive tactical fighters ever made.
And they don’t run on corn oil.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/uk-sustainable-aviation-fuel-mandate-to-cost-raf-1bn/
Where do the lefties think “wasted” water goes? The sun? Hyperspace? Beamed up to the Starship Enterprise?
The leftoid doinks always yammering about recycling never quite get that all the water we “waste” gets perfectly recycled.
What we may be wasting is money, and fcuk them, it’s our fcuking money.