Exciting toilets

I've never been quite so excited about a toilet before. Well, maybe that time my running team was coming back from Hastings with a case of beer and the toilet on the train wasn't working. This is something completely different though. Today, I took delivery of 2 wonderful low water toilets. These days we see dual flush toilets everywhere, so it might seem surprising that I'd be so excited by a toilet - but really, not all low flush toilets are the same!



We bought 2 Ifo Cera ES4 toilets from the Green Building Store. 1 is a wall hung version, the other is a back to wall, and both have a Thomas Dudley concealed cistern with a dual-flush ready siphon. The toilet has a full flush at 4.5 litres, and a short flush of 2. Aside from the incredibly low water usage (compared to normal valve toilets operating on 6/3 litres), the toilet is based on a siphon flush. So? (I can hear you saying).

If you go to the Green Building Store page on the ES4, there's a short video at the bottom of the page extolling the virtues of the siphon over the valve (http://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/es4-advantages.php). Most older toilets are likely to be siphons, whilst modern toilets are almost all valves. Where we're staying (during our house refurb) is a new-build house, and the dual flush toilet has exactly one of the problems described - the valve doesn't shut off correctly, so the tank keeps filling up and leaking into the pan. So if we don't pay attention, there's a huge amount of water that could be wasted. Siphons just don't do that - you have to 'pump' the water into the pan, so if it doesn't work properly, you just have to push a bit harder. The guys who developed the ES4 (combining the Swedish pan with the UK cistern) are called Solution Elements, and you can find out more about valves and siphons on their page (interesting discussion here).

Anyway, I'm excited. The Green Building Store were fantastic help, and the service was brilliant (I even got my builder to confirm a bunch of stuff with them). All I need to do is install them and test them out - I hope they live up to the hype.

Floorplans for dummies

Just when you thought Google had an application for just about anything you wanted (you've already explored the Earth, then you went to the stars), you find out that they have something to help you re-design your whole flat. I don't really know how to say this, other than - it's AMAZING. We've been struggling to work out how to plan our bathrooms for months - and we've had architects and bathroom shops 'helping', but all I really wanted to do is have a look to see how different things would look and fit together (like whether our shower door would be too close to the sink). So I went online to find a simple drawing program that allowed me to measure things easily so everything would be to scale - and found Google's SketchUp. This is the perfect partner for Google Earth, since it allows you to create 3D models which can be used within the Google Earth universe...but it's also one of the most helpful tools I've found to plan out our new home. And best of all it's free.

Basically, SketchUp is a CAD program that let's you build 3D models really quickly. You can then walk round your designs and try out different designs, layouts and finishes. It's meant I could try out different tiling options in seconds (and I even used real pictures of the tiles and finishes from the web). You can even find models/components that have been uploaded to Google for use in your own (like the toilet you see in the pic below - it would have taken me hours to make one that well). It's one of the easiest programs I've ever used.

My virtual shower room

So there you have it. I've now designed 2 incredibly eco-friendly bathrooms (they use no water, have no waste, but do consume some electricity - and required a bit of human fuel to create). Unfortunately, I'm going to use them to make real ones - but hopefully I now have a good idea what they're going to look like.

Recharge for 2008

Someone asked me about recycling of batteries and lightbulbs, since we all seem to go through them. I don't have an answer on the lightbulbs just yet, but long life energy saving bulbs should help (although the person who asked also mentioned the issue of mercury in CFLs). CFLs are recyclable - I just don't know how to do it. I'm sure it won't take long to find out how though. In the meantime, there's an article from 2006 which covers the topic (and says that the extra mercury emissions produced by a power plant for a incandescent bulb is 3 times that of using a CFL).

Back to batteries... I found this on the internet last year. It's a device that lets you re-use regular alkaline batteries once they're 'dead'. My girlfriend tried to get me one for Christmas but couldn't find it anywhere, so I've not tried it yet. It sounds pretty good though. Just think of all those batteries you've thrown away. Of course, if you're not using rechargeable batteries already, I'm not entirely hopeful that this product will work for you. I think that people are much more open to rechargeable batteries these days anyway - we all have mobile phones which we charge regularly (and often forget to turn the charger off at the wall when they're done - no, they don't all go off automatically).

A quick search today found that there are at least 2 companies producing devices that re-charge or recondition alkaline batteries: the Souvenir Cranwell one above and one from EverCharge. If anyone has experience of these, please let me know.

Getting into hot water

You might wonder why we overhauled the heating system in the first place. After all, you've got to figure that leaving things as they are has less of an environmental impact that refurbishing something. Well, this flat had a bit of a bizarre heating system, especially given its size. It had a combi boiler feeding the sinks and the heating system, but a large hot water cylinder with 2 electric immersion heaters that fed the showers. You find houses that have cylinders fed by the boiler (and often have back-up immersion heaters), but this was a little strange - and not that efficient. Couple this with a boiler that was going to need replacing at some stage in the not too distant future, we thought it was an appropriate time to put in a new system. Little did I know that it involved re-piping most of the flat to get it all working and to meet current standards.

So the plumbers descended en masse and managed to do everything in a matter of days. I missed the yellow gunk that came out of the hot water cylinder, which fed the showers (my builders thought it was disgusting), but I did catch the radiators being emptied:I'm told that our new system shouldn't ever end up black like that...

Why boilers are sexy

OK, so you know you're obsessed with your refurb when you talk to people about the boilers they're putting in and get all excited about flow rates and energy ratings. Well, in our place, the choice of boilers came down to this: Volkswagen or Mercedes. I had spent a fair while researching the very best boilers - going to everyone from the Energy Saving Trust to the Sedbuk database (Seasonal Efficiency of Domestic Boilers in the UK) - and basically I'd not moved massively forward. I was stuck with Vaillant, Viessmann and Worcester Bosch. All very efficient and seemingly all pretty good. So I put the question to our builder (aspiring to be a Corgi engineer) and our plumber. The response I got back was something like this: "they're all good boilers, but you've got imagine them like cars. A Worcester Bosch is like a Volkswagen, but a Viessmann is like a Mercedes." Err...ok, but I just want hot water.

In the end, we chose the Worcester Bosch. I'd asked the plumber which he prefers to install and deal with and he was unequivocal. It was also nice that the Green Homes people later suggested the same one. As did a friend of mine (graphic artist turned plumber turned interior decorator) enthusiastically agreed with the boiler assessment. So we are now the proud owners of fully operational hot water and central heating system. Gone is the old combi boiler and immersion heater (I'll mention that in another post) - in its place, a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 42CDi combi boiler.

So here are the beautiful 'before' and 'after' shots: