What were they thinking?! Bad Design Layouts

When you buy a home, you don’t expect everything to be the way you want, but you expect some thought to have gone into the planning. How about a home on the lake with no bathroom in the walkout basement? That’s right – everyone has to run through the basement and up the stairs to the bathroom or up through the deck, through the dining room and kitchen to the bathroom.

A "Saniplus" Toilet

The bathroom, because it would be in the basement or walk out part of the house, meant that the toilet plumbing had to flush up rather than the typical gravity fed systems you find in homes. A great deal of research was done and pricing was obtained. The most recommended suggestion was the breaking up the basement concrete floor to put in a sewage ejector system, which means you break up the concrete basement floor and put in a plastic pit to use a sewage ejector pump to remove the waste. I was uncomfortable with this idea. And then we found the “Saniplus” system. It handled the toilet and sink. (In fact it handles four fixtures – toilet, hand basin, shower and bathtub.)

The pump, which was in a box fastened to the back of toilet, had to be connected. The toilet tank had to be connected to the water supply. The sink was connected to the pump using a 1 ½” plastic pipe, and the pump had an air pipe connected with the other end being put through the wall. It was connected to the electrical supply.

The “Saniplus” system is activated when the toilet is flushed. The micro switch within the pump box starts the motor, ultimately pumping the slurry up to a maximum of 12’. As soon as the water level in the pump box goes down, the micro switch deactivates and the toilet is ready for use again. It takes about 15-18 seconds for the entire flush process.

It was a day and a half job to get a toilet installed in the basement. It uses only 1.6 gallons of water per flush, so it uses less water than older toilets. Have you ever had a need for a bathroom in a lower level? What about any “What were they thinking?!” design problems have you run into?