On lifting my toilet seat today, I was most surprised (yet reassured) to find a BSI or “kite” mark. For those of you not from the UK, please allow me to explain…
The British Standards Institution is a sort of regulatory body who tell us that the Barbie Dream Castle we buy for our beloved child will probably not spontaneously combust and burn her face off. It’s an assurance that a product is safe and meets a high standard of production and reliability.
Anyway, I’m sure we all agree that such a symbol is welcome on all electrical and potentially dangerous devices which we buy. My question is: What would happen if my toilet seat wasn’t BSI approved? If the tensile strength of the UPVC material wasn’t independently tested to withstand the butt-pressure per-square-inch of the average single white hairy male, would it really put a dent in my day?
If there’s anyone here who knows how a moulded plastic toilet seat can “fail” a BSI test, you have my complete attention because I think that this “duck and cover” reassurance is as vapid as “Have a nice day”, except now it’s “Have a safe sh*t”.
Please excuse the overuse of quotations here, but I always recycle
I’m not so fussed about the seat, its the bloody hinges that hold the damn thing to the pan! I once sat on a toilet seat and the whole thing just slipped off to the side and threw me onto th floor, mid-defecation!!
Ah, obviously you haven’t experienced the “squat and hover” system which is most useful in dubious pubs without the comforts of locking cubicle doors or toilet paper.
I wonder how important a BSI toilet seat is, when one has really “gotta go”!
I don’t know if the problem is her angle of descent, or some weird twisting motion at point of impact, but judging by the repeated devastation of my families various cludgies her ass is a seriously offensive weapon.
The worst part is that once a seat has been wrenched off its hinges they seem to weakened by their ordeal, leading to more than one ignominious Izzardesque dethroning for your humble narrator.
I once had a toilet seat that had a small crack in it. When you sat on it the pressure was enough to spread the crack open a bit; when you stood up again, the crack would close, usually with part of your delicate asscheek in its jaws. A real eye-opener in the morning, I can tell you.
Well, this is fascinating. I thought the BSI would be something like our Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is a federal agency, or Underwriters Laboratories, which is an independent but non-profit organization, or like the non-profit Consumers Union, the folks who put out Consumer Reports magazines.
But evidently it’s a private, for-profit business. You pay them a fee to have your product evaluated and hopefully to have it awarded the coveted “Kitemark”.
And, glory hallelujah! A Search for “toilet seat” and “lavatory” and “bathroom” comes up empty, but in the “Kitemark schemes” link, there’s a category for “WC seats (plastics)”.
But alas! From the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair–they don’t have it listed under Sample Testing and Certification. So we may never know exactly what a toilet seat has to do to win the coveted Kitemark.
So you may console and amuse yourself, if you like, with reading their testing and certification scheme for condoms.
It only takes a week to test condoms, but it can take up to a month to test manhole covers.
I don’t think that a Kitemark is a necessary qualification for a toilet seat.
I would be quite happy to lift a toilet seat and find the standard manufacturer’s invitation to return the product in the event of a problem, as in:
If you are not entirely satisfied with the performance of this toilet, please send it with the contents to the address below or phone us on our Freephone Helpline. Your statutory rights are unaffected.
