Hi, I had an interesting problem raised by a school regarding the Boys toilets, which I thought would be good to share with you. Apparently they are getting the wc pans over flowing because the water is not running away quickly enough.

Janitor Joe
The reason it was interesting was that they had spent a lot of money getting the drains surveyed by a camera and found no blockages whatsoever. I had a look at it today and found that two out of three sets of toilets have 6″ soil pipes and they lead to the other set of toilets that only have a 4″ soil pipe as a runaway to the main drain, this means that if there are several toilets flushed at the same time this could easily over flow the toilets. However it seems that it may be even more problematic because they are using a good quality toilet paper manufactured by a well known company. However, with the extra quality comes the extra strength and the paper does not break down very quickly at all. This makes the situation worse at the 4″ bottleneck .
I have recommended that they switch to Bay West toilet paper because it is still high quality but it is designed to break down very rapidly and generally leads to far fewer blockages ( www.bay-west.co.uk ).
Also I noticed in the nursery toilets the cisterns supplying the water to the WC Pans were huge, possibly up to 15 litres each. So I suggested that they use a water saving device such as the Hippo ( Normally you can get these free from the local water authority- but you will have to check first) - The Hippo is a plastic bag designed to take up to a litre of water from each flush or even a house brick sealed inside a polythene bag..also about a litre.
The Bay west paper is more economical than the current paper and the water saving means they will save water and save on water rates and save on having the drain company out, all in all a good visit.
Please feel free to make any comments about this problem or send me a question on any janitorial subject that you need help with
Janitor Joe