Macerator loos

[crosstalk]

I bought a 1980s house just for the view, on a river, proximity to town.

However there's just one bathroom with a loo. The whole place is very badly designed. I would like to put a loo and washbasin in the attic next to the top floor bedroom but putting in a waste pipe to the bathroom would mean serious building work since they are not above each other. There's no room for a loo on the ground floor.

Anyone have any experience of macerator loos?

Anything with moving parts is going to wear out or get jammed eventually.

Then replacing that part is not a nice job if it is a macerator, and is an expensive one if done all the time.

I would only go for one if : a) put in a high quality reliable unit b) you have control over what's going down the toilet and can minimise stuff that is likely to jam it. I wouldn't for example put one in a rental where people don't care as much what they shove down because they don't have to pay for the repair if it jams.

My parents have one. It's very loud and growly and everyone is under strict instruction to limit their movements in/on it. They used to have a sign up that said "please do not poo in this electric loo" before they had it upgraded to a fancy new one. But even the new one can't handle much more than a wee and a single sheet of loo roll.
In short, fine for emergencies but not much more...

Ours works fine and isn't particularly noisy. It services a shower room (shower, basin, toilet) in our garage conversion. We would have preferred normal plumbing, but the expense would have been prohibitive.

We don't use bleach, as it can corrode the seals. We use a macerator descaler every 5 or 6 months, to keep it working smoothly.

The one issue we had was when it stopped working once. It was luckily easy to find a company that specialised in macerators, so was repaired and serviced quickly the next day. Turns out our son had dropped a plum stone in the loo - rather than the bin beside it. (Why he chose to dispose of it in the bathroom is something I can't answer.) The stone had got caught under a blade and jammed it.

I would recommend you have good access to it, in case it needs repairing.

The other thing to consider is any neighbour who may share a party wall. I ended up putting my house on the market after two years of broken sleep from the noise made by my neighbours' macerator. It was awful. It actually vibrated throughout my entire house but was unbearable upstairs and they'd positioned it right above where I slept (or tried to). Just thought I'd offer a viewpoint from a
different angle!

We had one in the cloakroom we made under the stairs. It worked very well until someone put a tampon down it, the string tangled around the blades and stopped it turning. But it wasn't too onerous to take the unit out and sort the problem, we thought it would be dreadful inside but it wasn't that bad at all. We didn't often use that lavatory for poos though, it tended to be the "quick wee" place. I really miss having a loo downstairs!

You could hear the macerator working from in the hall, my NDN never said anything but all in all, the extractor fan we installed (because no window) was noisier.

I agree with PPs that you need to ensure nothing other than poo or loo paper goes in it (ours had a sticker on the inside of the lid showing all the NO items) and make sure the motor isn't so boxed that so you can't get at it easily. We had a Saniflo, it didn't have any issues dealing with poos but maybe poorer quality units might struggle.

Find if you're the only ones using it, not so good for guests who might put prohibited items in!

I have one in my ensuite. Bloody nightmare. It has showed, sink, loo, all linked to one badly installed macerator. The pipes haven't been fitted properly so there isn't enough of a down angle to get the shower to drain properly.

It stopped working last year, raw sewage started coming up through the shower drain (not envy)
It cost me £700 to repair and it was one of those little plastic covers off a disposable razor that had gone down the loo by accident.

My sister stayed over at Xmas in my room. Strict instructions given about not doing anything other than the smallest of wees with minimal loo roll. Such a ball ache.
The motor box is in my built in wardrobe and on occasion is smells of shit (again, not envy)

I hate the thing.

However I have no experience of a correctly installed one

We rented a property years ago with a macerator loo in the en suite bathroom to my then bedroom. Everything in that home had been done/fitted to a very high standard and the loo was no exception. We never had any problems with the macerator loo. Still, the noise was really not nice at all. Unbearable really. Plus, the angst of always having to make sure we didn’t do anything to risk malfunction was enough for me to be certain that I’d avoid ever having one installed myself. You’d only have one if it were the only choice. I’d go the extra mile and pay more to have traditional plumbing installed, if possible.

If you cannot get the waste out, can you get the water in? Waste and water are connected when it comes to planning a bathroom. The water cannot be below the attic either. You either bite the bullet or go without the bathroom. Macerator - ugh! No.

Thanks for your comments. This would definitely be mostly an emergency pee use of loo. We are always careful as are our guests since locally a large number of us have septic tanks so provide full non-loo disposal for guests (bags, covered waste bin etc). The cold water tank is in the attic but the hot water tank is next floor down so presumably some sort of pump might be needed to get hot water up to the washbasin. I take on board the noise/access for repairs advice. How the family of five managed before I'm not sure especially when getting ready for work/school.

You could've searched and found this reply.

"This was written on another website, if you still want one after reading this, go ahead. :LOL:

Sell the house, failing that give it away, if that doesn't work pay
someone to take it or burn it down.

To give you a clue - these ghastly instruments of the Devil are
French. Add the French and lavatorial engineering - now see why I
say get out while you can. Moreover this particular Frenchman was a
lunatic with strong Anglophobic tendancies and a bad case of
coprophilia.

I am quite sure the designer was also an ex-submariner Frenchman who
missed the strangled screams of seamen who had got the valve sequence
wrong in the submarines toilet and just been rinsed down with a few
gallons of seawater (and the recently donated contents of the bowl).

They break down at the slightest opportunity. The only thing you can
actually guarantee about them is that they will break down - very
frequently.

Basically the only way of maintaining the slightest semblance of
serviceability is to impose on pain of repair the same rules as for a
small yachts sea toilet - if it hasn't passed through you it doesn't
go in the bowl.

They have an interesting design. The motor has poor starting torque
and the macerator lots of tiny teeth. Ergo anything that has strands
in it catches on the teeth and stops the motor from starting. Things
with strands include anything with cotton wool (including cotton wool
buds) and anything with cloth. Females in particular must not be
allowed anywhere near these devices. If you were unfortunate enough
to have the added misery of a sink (oh dear - you were) then add
hair, strands from wooly pullovers and almost anything else thats at
all fibrous.

When they break (which they will - that's an absolute certainty)
their endearing characteristic is that you are left with a bowl full
of whatever which you have to empty back the way it came and more
importantly many feet of 40mm pipe still full of minced whatever.
When you disconnect the pipe I'll give you one guess where its going
to go. Repairing or unblocking them is the most thoroughly revolting
job.

Now to get to specifics - the pulsing is a fault in either
installation or the pressure switch. Does it pulse with just the
cold water tap running from the sink? The way they work is a low
pressure trip switch switches on the motor when the small holding
tank is full. This tank remains partially full all the time. If its
pulsing either the switch has too low a hysterisis or water isn't
getting into it fast enough. The motor should remain on for a few
seconds after everything has emptied so that pulsing you are seeing
shouldn't be happening.

As the failure rate of these diabolical things is worse than that of
a F104 Starfighter I'd suggest you get the installer back (preferably
to remove it forever). If it was installed by yourself then self
flaggelation with a few lengths of barbed wire and a call to the
Saniflo people might be in order.

>Also, my system is a Sanitop with the outflow from a washbasin going
>into the top of the unit. I find that running the tap for a few seconds
>activates the Saniflow. Is there any way of adjusting the sensitivity of
>it so that it will only run when a reasonable amount of water has gone
>into the unit.

No, but if its oversensitive this might be related to the pulsing you
are seeing.

>I dont see why the washbasin water cant just bypass the
>cutter/pump internally.

Because these horrors are designed to be installed pumping upwards -
the raving idiot who designed them thought it would be pretty neat to
have something you could stick in a downstairs cloakroom and run the
pipe upwards to join the soil stack in the bathroom. If that's how
your installation goes cut out the selling the house bit - just burn
it now. When it fails there is 10ft of pressurised whatsit just
waiting for that final turn on the drainpipe.

The other reason the sink must go through the pump is that the outlet
of the thing is at some pressure. Connect the sink a bit downstream
and every time you pull the chain the contents of the loo make a
pretty little fountain out of the sink plughole (I've seen one
plumbed like that - the owner kept a sandbag in the sink on top of
the plug).

Some models have an interesting feature - on the top is a reset
switch, under the top cover is a screwdriver slot on the top of the
motor drive shaft to allow you to clear the (frequent) blockages.
However to get the top cover open to get at the drive shaft to free
it - you've guessed - you have to disconnect the drain pipe.

How they can be called Saniflow when they are anything but sanitary
(as you will soon find out) and rarely flow is beyond me.

As I said - sell the house."

Could you have a regular loo and run the waste pipe on the outside down the exterior wall?….it would be a straight shot down & over to wherever your drains are. I lived in an early Victorian home that all the plumbing done this way as it had been originally built with no plumbing. Waste pipes won’t freeze because what goes down them is warm.

We had one when we first moved here. Very noisy and our plumber wouldn’t touch it. It’s gone now thank goodness.

Absolutely hate them, have been unfortunate enough to have 2 houses with them in. Nothing but problems, and it is virtually impossible to get plumbers to fix them as they are so gross. Last time ours broke DH had to install new one using a YouTube guide as we literally couldn't get anyone to deal with it. We also have the problem that sink drains into it, so sink drains very slow, and triggers a loud short flush sound in process. If you run the tap for too long (and washing hands counts as too long) the water trap seems to stop working and you get sewage smell. It also blocks all the time with just loo roll in. Will never have one again, and cannot wait to get rid of this one when we build an extension and move en-suite to an outside wall. I would avoid at all costs.

We have one and it's fine as long as it's used for weeing, not poo. It didn't like the toy soldier that got stuck in there, and out local Saniflow engineer is someone I prefer not to see very often, but on balance it works fine -- mostly. Given there was no workable alternative for downstairs, I prefer to have it for accessibility.

We had one in very poorly installed downstairs loo. Thankfully it wasn't our only loo. The thing was absolutely useless, blocked at the slightest excuse and as previously detailed, when it did breakdown, it was revolting. We ripped the loo out and managed with a single toilet. Voila, problem solved. Hideous thing I'd not recommend to anyone.