Having been prompted by a post earlier today, here's today's second cistern-related question. It never rain, but pours :-)
I have a toilet where the cistern is built into the wall behind it. The flush "handle" is a vertical panel on the wall that you press.
However I want to be able to access the inside of the cistern itself to be able to put one of those blue toilet cleaner blocks in there, like I was able to do with my stand-alone cistern toilet.
Any idea who to do this? My guess is that the panel slides/pulls away, but before I act on my hunch I'd like some confirmation.
Anyone else with a toilet-related question might want to post it today while all the experts are on here :-)
With my built-in cistern (Geberit) it works as follows:
1. Close the seat. You don ́t want to dump any parts into the bowl.
2. Lift the entire panel slightly up (just 5 mm or so, parallel to the wall) and pull it out. Hold onto the bottom of the panel, push up and start with lifting the top from the wall.
3. Undo the plastic snap-in thingy between the two buttons. As with any snap-in plastic thingies: Be careful not to break it.
4. Unscrew the two metal screws holding the big black plastic plate. Pull it out.
5. Loosen the white plastic screws holding the white plastic plate. Pull it out as well.
That should give you access to the water tank. You can turn off the water supply by closing the metal screw on the top of the cistern.
A lot of work just to put a tab - which taints the water, has little to no effect on the cleanness of the WC and apparantly ruins the gaskets too - in. On the other hand, if you do that once a month you know how to do it when you need to replace the gaskets
I didn't realise that the tabs weren't great for gaskets. But environmentally, are they really any worse than regular toilet cleaner?
But I am not a fan of those over-the-rim baskets. I think they look kind of crappy and messy - I know, I know, it's just a toilet, but still. The "hidden" solution always struck me as better.
The difference to the toilet cleaner is that the chemical is added every time you flush - necessary or not. I'm not a total "green-freak" but I avoid what I can.
Oh, and this constantly dark blue water in the toilets is kind of suspicious - guests never know what it is hiding.
6 of one and half a dozen of the other, in terms of environmental impact:
If you install a watersoftener to reduce the calcium levels you are effectively dumping salt into the water.
If you use a WC ente, then you're getting the bowl clean and calcium free, but you're dumping the stuff into the water (and this won't stop the flush valve from eventually leaking, at which you end up using stuff to clean that, and the stuff ends up in the water.
Basically, if you don't want to trash the environment then you need a slit trench (but we've moved past that by now). The other possibility would be to crap less.
I'm surprised I couldn't find anything on ktipp.ch
Seat of the pants I would say your environmental foot print is smallest if you use a biologically abbaubar (Howzat in English?) product like Spirit of Vinegar, or Citric, and just dekalk the cistern once a year. For the bowl, brush oftener with minimal use of the cleaner.
In my experience the basket over the rim thingies don't really keep the bowl as clean as regular brushing.