I’ve just spent 20 days in Europe and noticed two things in bathrooms that puzzled me.
Toilet tanks built into the wall, seen in several hotels. I’ve repaired enough toilets to think this is a bad idea. How are flapper valves or other internal tank parts serviced when it is behind tiles or wallboard?
Stoppers in bidets. I don’t use bidets, but I was puzzled to see that they all had a mechanical stopper like a bathtub. Why would you want to collect the water that you’ve used to rinse your nether regions? Why not let it just drain out?
I dunno about number 1 but can address number 2: They’re used for other things, as well, like soaking/washing garments, etc. They’re great for washing your feet. Some kinds of footwear, too, like tennis shoes or maybe rubber sandals. The stopper might be used when washing your privates because the stream of water comes from the back of the bidet (in front of you when straddling it) horizontally and won’t reach all the parts you want to wash/rinse. That’s why I prefer sitting on the edge of the tub and using a handheld shower head.
The “throne” is up against the wall, the tank is inside the wall, and there’s a double-plunger control mounted on the wall for “big flush” or “little flush” depending on the nature of your business.
When I first came to Europe, I thought the same as you — if there’s an issue with the tank, how can it be serviced without ripping the wall out?
But then, after buying my house, I learned how it works. That whole plate around the plunger buttons? It snaps up and lifts off easily, opening a rectangular hole basically the same size, through which you can see and reach the entire top of the tank. The mechanical elements are rearranged so everything you commonly need to service and replace is right there on the top.
In my years here, I have had regular need to pop out that panel to do minor stuff like tightening floats on arms and such, or to clean out hard-water crystallization. But I have never had a tank or plumbing failure inside the wall, and I’ve never known a friend or co-worker to have that kind of problem.
When this is how a toilet is installed, it’s just inherently designed and manufactured to work like this. Obviously there could be a rare catastrophic lapse at the factory resulting in a flawed tank system, but it’s never happened to me or anyone I know.
Here’s a web page with detailed information about how this kind of toilet is installed, pluses and minuses, etc. It lines up closely with my own experience.
European toilets don’t generally have “flapper valves”.
The flush is worked by siphonic action which uses a one-way diaphragm to push water up and down a syphon tube. This creates the syphon which uses the weight of the water falling into the toilet to suck more water in from the cistern. The syphon is broken when the cistern is empty.
These three replies neatly answer pretty much all my questions.
I hadn’t considered using a bidet for other purposes, such as @alovem mentions.
I had seen the large panels @Cervaise showed, and thought they probably provided access to serviceable parts.
But I had also seen toilets that only had a handle sticking out of the wall, and @bob_2’s explanation of the siphon mechanism, which I assume involves essentially no serviceable parts, explains that. I should have noticed that the handle had a completely different action to that of US flush toilets. Even though I probably wouldn’t have figured out the siphon principle at work, it should have suggested a mechanism unlike those I know.
You see those here in the US in commercial applications, especially highway rest stops, stadiums, airports, train stations, etc. Those most often use the large-pipe “flushometer” style valves that rely on system water pressure rather than a tank, but when you only see the handle sticking through the wall, the flush valve is either behind an access panel, or it’s accessed from the mechanical room on the other side of the wall.
European and UK plumbing has baffled me ever since my first visit there. First time in London, I was staying with friends in their flat in Streatham. They had two separate rooms, one with a toilet and sink, and one with the shower, at opposite ends of the apartment. I’ve never lived anyplace where one couldn’t touch the shower from the toilet, so this stumped me.
Coincidentally, I went to a comedy club in London that week and saw an American expat performer who had a whole bit in his act about British sinks, with their two separate faucets, one for hot and one for cold. He said something to the effect of “When Churchill traveled to the U.S, he was so amazed at how water came out of one faucet, he wrote about it in his memoirs!” I think at least some hotels are moving to a more American (read: sensible) style of sinks, but I’m not sure.
It was not many years ago that the regulations (codes) were changed for what we call mixer taps. Until then, even though the water came out of a single outlet, it was internally divided to provide separate paths for hot and cold. They only mixed after leaving the head of the tap. The design made them much more expensive.
The reason for this and many other rules is the problem of backflow. The concern was that if mains pressure dropped for some reason, possibly contaminated water from the hot system, which was fed from a tank in the loft could find its way into the main supply. This proved highly unlikely, so mixer taps are pretty universal now.
Prevention of backflow is why there is always an air gap between the tap outlet and the basin, bath or toilet cistern. There should also be a one-way valve where the mains enters the house.
In one of the recent seasons of This Old House, the crew installed a wall-mounted toilet in the bathroom of one home, with the tank in the wall. The bowl itself was cantilevered over the floor, though they had to add bracing to support the weight of the bowl and the user. I kind of like the idea, particularly that you can mop under the bowl.
This was common in the US until about the 1930s. General practice at the time was that you closed the drain stopper in the sink, filled it with however much water you needed to wash your hands, and the two separate taps allowed you to meter out hot or cold water to get the right temperature. This wastes a ton of water, and it would leave soap scum in the sink if you didn’t splash some clean water around after draining it.
This was born of an era where (I am theorizing) you didn’t necessarily trust drinking straight out of a stream of water, or putting your hand into a stream of water, you’d want to see it first to make sure there wasn’t crud in it, or that it wasn’t too hot or too cold. Same goes for the extraordinarily unhealthy “common cup” at public drinking fountains. I think the Spanish Flu finally put the kibosh on any that were left by then.
Yes, I remember doing this in the house I grew up in, until we replaced the bathroom sink. (This would have been in the 1970’s, in a house that was built in… I don’t remember, but before 1930. I have no idea how old the sink itself was.) I’ve also seen separate-faucet sinks elsewhere in the US, but they’re not common.
They had two separate rooms, one with a toilet and sink, and one with the shower, at opposite ends of the apartment. I’ve never lived anyplace where one couldn’t touch the shower from the toilet, so this stumped me.
That isn’t typical, but it’s the sort of thing you’ll see in older flats that were originally built without indoor plumbing, or when a larger building has been subdivided. In either case, the facilities have just been crammed in wherever they can be.
Bidets: Some people use them just with the jet of water, others prefer to part fill the bowl and splash the water around or use a flannel and/or soap. The plug allows for both.
I’ve used a bidet to pre-soak stained shirts and to clean muddy shoes. Less likely to clog from mud than a kitchen sink.
They also make a very good wine or beer cooler if you fill it with water and ice!
So you went to Europe for three weeks and what surprised you the most was inside the toilet in your hotel room? May I ask what part of Europe you visited? Now that your question has been answered I may be able to recommend other equally interesting parts for your next visit.
Sometimes it’s the little differences that can be the most surprising. For example, I noticed that the shopping carts at Tesco in the UK (and at IKEA in the US) have all four wheels able to spin about a vertical axis, unlike most American shopping carts.
