saniflo plumbing advice for where to exit it?

eadieb

We only have a ground floor toilet at the back of our house. Our bathroom is upstairs but has no toilet and is at the front of the house. Our house is an ex council 1930s terrace and has none of its own sewerage or drains.

we are updating our bathroom and want to put in an upstairs toilet. Our only option is a saniflo which will then need to pump waste from the front of the house to the rear of the house, under the floorboards and down a new pipe, into our existing toilet.

My question is, can we run the pipe from the saniflo and have it feeding into the bottom bit of our existing toilet - not sure what this is called, but it is the big waste pipe that comes out of the back of the toilet and goes down into the soil pipe. It looks like it will be a simple case of drilling a hole in it and fitting the pipe into it.

There is no access to our actual soil pipe because it is underground - under a concrete floor, and I think it feeds under our house and under our dividing wall, under my neighbours house and into my neighbours soil pipe. My neighbours have a drain access in their back garden, we dont. Our bathwater at the front of our house feeds into our neighbours front porch drain. Our kitchen waste water feeds into our other neighbours front drain. I dont think we have any underground drain pipes on our property.

I would welcome any advice as to whether we are allowed to do this. I know there are regulations about how waste is transported out of property and we would not be feeding the waste directly into the waste pipe or drain.

keystone

I think you need someone to come round and give you on the spot advice. In the meantime here is some (lighthearted so don't be offended) information about Saniflos:

Saniflos are neither sanitary nor much use as a lavatory. They are moderately good at flushing perfectly clean water.

Possession of one leads in some people to a condition known as the "Saniflo syndrome" this paradoxical psychological syndrome, where victims develop empathy with and have positive feelings towards their tormentor. It was first noticed in the Norrmalmstorg robbery of the Kreditbanken in in Stockholm in 1973.

The conditions necessary for Saniflo syndrome to develop are :-

1. The owner views the Saniflo as giving life by simply not taking it. Each day without a blockage is a gift. In this sense, the Saniflo becomes the item in control of the owners basic needs.

2. The owner endures isolation from other people and has only the Saniflo perspective available. Lack of information about the outside world’s response to their purchase keeps them totally dependent.

3. The Saniflo threatens to destroy the victim and has the capability to do so. The owner judges it safer to align with the Saniflo, endure the hardship of ownership, and comply with the instruction manual than to resist and face the most horrible consequences.

4. The owner sees the Saniflo as showing some degree of kindness whenever it flushes without blocking. Kindness serves as the cornerstone of Saniflo syndrome; the condition will not develop unless the Saniflo exhibits it in some form towards the owner, usually by operating normally for a short time.

Owners often misinterpret a lack of failure as kindness and may develop feelings of appreciation for this perceived benevolence. if the Saniflo show some kindness, victims will submerge the anger they feel in response to the terror and concentrate on the Saniflo's “good side” to protect themselves.

The inventor of these devices was French. In 1958 Sanibroyeur SFA invented the "toilet grinder" and, having recoiled in horror from what they had done immediately exported it to Germany, the UK and the USA - all countries the French hated.

The original advice, to destroy the house, remains valid but it has been pointed out that it is possible to reduce, albeit slightly, the unsavoury habits of these devices. The following notes are provided as a service to those sufficiently deranged that they want to contemplate installing a toilet grinder and pump.

The first thing to do is to ensure the room is hermetically sealable and the floor and up to 2ft up every wall is tanked in 1cm thick kevlar laminate. Near the top of the room there should be installed a concrete or ceramic tube of 12" diameter leading upwards to an outside wall. The purpose of this will be explained later.

A 2ft Kevlar threshold across the door also acts as a barrier to females (it can often be raised to 4ft with beneficial results). Piped breathing air attachments should be installed near the Saniflo location.

Into the laminate set quick release fastenings for all fittings and fixtures such as the toilet bowl. These will, in the normal operation of a Saniflo, require frequent removal and refitting so easy to operate and robust fasteners are well worth doing at this stage. When plumbing in the Saniflo read the installation manual and learn it by heart. Use any members of the family who have decided to stay to test you on your memory of obscure parts of it at frequent intervals. This should include waking you up at 3AM to ask what the minimum outflow gradient must be. No attempt should be made to fit these devices until questions such as "Page 96 4th line down third word in" can be answered flawlessly every time. Any deviation from any part of the manual will bring about immediate failure.

On no account should a plumber be used. Plumbers never have Saniflos in their houses so have no practical experience of them in use. Most plumbers refuse to respond to "Saniflo calls" so repairs are left to the "untouchables", poor broken men addicted to drink and herbal supplements who eke out a living trying to remedy Saniflo failures.

Shunned by their fellow tradesmen because of their malodorous state these shadowy figures creep home to their mansions each night their morale boosted only be the knowledge of how much they can charge per repair.

Next is the matter of diet. The Saniflo will barely dispose of matter which has passed through the body and often not that if it includes fibrous or solid items such as cherry stones. A good Saniflo household will implement strict dietary controls to exclude meat, fruit and fibrous vegetables from the diet. The ideal Saniflo house will live on Pablum and Sennakot to ensure maximum longevity (of the Saniflo).

There still remains the problem of visitors. Ideally just outside the Saniflo room there should be a wall mounted shovel and directions to the back garden (or neighbours flower beds) for the convenience of visitors. However, some may be non-cooperative. To ensure no harm befalls the Saniflo the toilet bowl, at just below seat level, should be permanently fitted with a fine mesh screen made from stainless steel with a mesh aperture of no more than 1.5mm. A suitable soft spatula should be provided to aid the inspection of the mesh after use and a tin can provided where any non-compliant material may be placed.

There still remains the issue of failure or "F day" as it is known in the community of Sanifloists. This is the time some hours after installation when the Saniflo asserts its mastery and refuses to flow. Your hours of careful planning now come into their own. Obviously Saniflos only fail after pre-use.

In other words the materiel to be disposed of is in the pre-pumping area (as it is known). The contents of the last use by comparison are festering in the outlet pipes (the post pumping area) both of which you are about to release.

Elfinsafety.
Any owner of a Saniflo is recommended to invest in a "“Dirty Harry” Contaminated Water Diving System". This can be coupled to the permanently installed breathing point already in place in the Sanilav room. Having entered and having had an assistant seal the room the Sanifloist, safe within their "dirty harry" suit and connected to their external air supply can start disassembly using the previously fitted quick release fastenings.

Hopefully the kevlar tanking will contain the combined effluent released from the pre and post function chambers. Once the Q tip which stopped everything working has been removed and sealed in an evidence bag for DNA testing to identify the culprit the system can be re-assembled the door unsealed and the wife sent in to clean up the effluent from the floor.

It is rarely necessary to carry out this procedure more than twice weekly but it is a sad fact that some Sanifloists find even this simple regime to be too much.

This is where the tube installed earlier is used. Seal the door, remove the visitors shovel and fit a concrete pump to the external part of the tube. Fill the Sanilav room with concrete.

Cheers

eadieb

ahh yes - very good :rotfl:

No choice though so will have to 'lump' it

Ive looked up the saniflo website and found the very comprehensive instructions about angles of pipes and no right angles etc. and the horrors of anything going in them other than biological waste.

We had a few builders who suggested digging up the garden to try to find a sewage pipe but I dont think they will find one.

keystone

Hateful bloody things. Invention of the Devil. You might have guessed I like them huh? Sorry to be so negative.

Cheers

keystone

Ok seriously then. Are there any manholes in your gaeden whatsoever? Is there one at least within striking distance of the wall directly below the existing bathroom. In all homnesty I think your suggested internal pipe routing is a massive non starter.

Cheers

eadieb

no, we have nothing at all on our property. I think when these houses were built in the 1930s by the council, they were never intended to be sold off separately.

Our bathroom waste water (at the front of the house) comes down a pipe into the top of our front porch, through the porch wall, into our neighbours front porch, and joins into our neighbours pipe (coming from their bath) and then flows into a cement covered drain in their closed in porch.

I dont think our soil pipe from our (rear of house) ground floor toilet, goes anywhere other than under our joining house wall and joins onto our neighbours soil pipe under their house.

Do you think there might be an issue with the 'distance travelled' from a saniflow at front of house to back of house or is it an issue joining the pipe onto the bit at the back of our normal toilet.

keystone

eadieb wrote: »

Do you think there might be an issue with the 'distance travelled' from a saniflow at front of house to back of house or is it an issue joining the pipe onto the bit at the back of our normal toilet.

Both.

Cheers

phill99

Saniflos were invented by the French to be exported to Great Britain as retrubution for Agincourt and Waterloo.

Nilrem

Having had the horror of trying to assist an elderly neighbour who had one of these things fitted, about all I can say is, that if you want a second loo and have to use a saniflo device, get a urninal (I think they make a version women can use, although I've heard rumblings that some women manage with a man's one).
That was it's only ever going to be water...
I say this half jokingly, but two neighbours had downstairs loos fitted using these devices, one is still struggling on I think, the other moved out and the first thing the new owner did was pretty much convert the downstairs loo (with saniflo) into something more useful, an empty room.

saniflo's the best case for a trade descriptions case ever - they're not sanitary, and rarely flow.;)

As you may guess, they don't get much love, I've even heard rumblings that even submariners hate them, and they have to use complicated contraptions as part of their normal daily ablutions at sea (in this case, worse things apparently don't happen at sea).