Plumbing Advice

scottish_lassy

I am hoping to convert a cupboard upstairs( 1.5 storey house) into a toilet.  My only bathroom is downstairs and my days of running up and down the stairs in the night are just about over.  I would like to know what I should be considering when making decisions.  A factor is that the current (downstairs) bathroom and kitchen (therefore inflow and outflow) are at the front of the house and the cupboard for conversion is at the back.  It's not a large house, so the rooms aren't too far apart.  Do I have to have a macirator toilet or is a normal one possible???? TIA

tacpot12

The main issue will be where to how to route the soil pipe from the toilet to the soil stack. You need a fall in the pipe of 18mm per metre. The only way to hide this under the floor is if the joists run from front to back of the  house (rather than side to size) and you can fit the required fall plus the depth of a 110mm pipe into the height of the joists. This is usually quite difficult to do, but might work in a small house, and might be facilitated by letting the soil pipe project below the level of the ceiling (or lowering the ceiling) where the soil pipe is at its lowest. You will need to box in and soundproof the soil pipe in this case. You will need to find a way to determine the direction the joists run in your upstairs floor, and their height. Everything else is pretty easy to arrange, e.g. hot and cold water, hand basin waste, ventilation, soundproofing, etc.  

Jeepers_Creepers

Hi Lass.

Is your house detached? If so, there will always be the solution of running a soil pipe around the outside of your house under your path (or whatever you have), and this will pick up your new soil pipe at the back, and will join the existing soil pipe at the front.

Other than that, it's how to get that large 4" pipe - with a fall - running inside your house. Usually not easy. A floorplan would help?

Macerators are a last resort. They really are.

FreeBear

Jeepers_Creepers said: Macerators are a last resort. They really are.

And when they go wrong, which they will do at some point, it is a real unpleasant job fixing them.

scottish_lassy

Thank you all for your help.  Now I know my next step is to check my joists - an now I know which way they should run!   I think a pipe to the current bathroom may work as its probably less that 6 feet from the cupboard to the bathroom (as the crow flies).  Also thank you for your advice re macerators, definately worthwhile knowing.

Worried_of_wakefield

Joists will run opposite direction to floorboards.
Another solution would be to install a Saniflow 'macerator'  like a food mixer for poo! this will allow the waste to be pumped up and over to the existing soil pipe, would guess more expensive but relatively simple to install. They can be a touch noisy though especially dead of night.