legionnaires worry- Taps and toilet not used in over a year help pls

[indixox]

Hello,

What do we do about this please? Worried about legionnaires. We have 2 bathrooms we haven't used in over a year. One downstairs and one upstairs has a shower also.

Have read to run the taps for 5 minutes if it's been over a week or two since using them to flush it through. It's been so long I'm worried this won't work. Especially for the water sitting in the back of the toilet tub.

Completely unsure what to do as surely flushing the toilet isn't a good idea if it needs to be 'flushed out for 5 minutes'.

Help pleaaase !!

Thanks

You're not drinking the water from the toilet, so flush away surely?

Put the loo seat down when flushing to avoid any airborne droplets. I'm not sure that the water would be warm enough for legionnaires to really be an issue. I've never heard of a case of someone catching it that way, generally it's a problem when water is warm but below 60C.

It takes about 2 minutes for my loo to refill, so three flushes would be the equivalent of 6 minutes of movement through the pipes.

Just flush the pipes as it says - open the taps, run the shower etc. You can pour buckets of water down the toilet to flush it through without using the cistern over and over. Flush the handle a few times to empty the cistern and that'll deal with that.

Assuming you don't have a water storage tank and it's just normal mains supply, flushing stagnant water is all you need to do. If you have a hot or cold water tank, you might want to consider getting it cleaned out but if you've used other water systems in the house in this period, it will have been in use and so not stagnant anyway.

The guidance on legionella is very simple and nothing to worry about managing in a normal household water system. It's more complicated for big buildings etc where they need industrial heating systems, pumps to move the water about - that sort of thing.

Sorry to jump on your thred. I have the same concern with a shower. Do we just turn on shower and make a mad dash for it to try and avoid getting splashed?! Or is there a more sensible way?

Run all taps and shower for 30 mins. Flush loo 5 times. If possible change showerhead. All should be fine then.

Legionella is most commonly transmitted in aerosols so avoiding inhaling shower spray is key. Turn on extractor fans and open windows to clear the air completely before returning to the room. Ideally you want no shower humidity left.

Legionella grows in lukewarm water, if you heat the water as normal you will be fine.

On a similar note I often wondered why the taps in places like motorway services had warning signs about the water being very hot - and it is. Why not just turn the thermostat down instead of risking scalding people? Then I worked organising building maintenance teams and one of their jobs was to monthly check shower and tap water temps in the buildings we looked after because of Legionaires. One big office block took two of them two days to get round.

It needs to be 70 degrees to kill legionella, most taps don’t reach 65.

You can buy legionella test kits which are easy to use. We had to test the water in our church buildings before reopening after Covid lockdowns. I didn’t do the testing myself, but they seem to be simple to use and give quick results.

Cold water below 20 which it usually is from the main, stored heated water is stored above 60.

Flush toilets several times, and run all cold taps for 5 minutes or you could go longer if you have a tank, and want to renew the water in there. As pp said it’s the airborne droplets which are inhaled and CAN cause legionnaires so keep toilet lid down.
clean shower heads, and run showers but if the hot tank is 60 degrees then the risk is low.

@Laughingravy that’s why temp is hot from those taps to reduce the risk, only in sinks where there are vulnerable users will the temp be reduced by a thermostat eg in disabled toilets. In those temps should be monitored as yiu rightly say.

HSE confirm 60C is adequate thank you crochetablanket.