In many cases the toilet and bathroom are one unit, but in our house they are actually two rooms, and having grown up in a house where they were both in the one room, I found this to be much more suitable arrangement! We also had the bathroom and toilet remodelled about 10 years ago which gave us some options around water saving and re-use.
The Bathroom
Our bathroom is not a huge room at 1750mm x 2400mm or equivalent to 4.2 square metres in area. In it there is a bathroom cabinet with a sink, and a corner spa with the shower over it, and not much else! According to Sydney water, 24% of water is used in the shower, so this was something we wanted to address and when we had the bathroom remodelled and the old bathtub removed (and turned into a water garden where we grow our water chestnuts) I asked for a specific modification.
That modification was to include a valve in the drain from the bottom of the spa which would allow me direct wastewater from the spa into the centre of the banana circle we had constructed in the back yard or to waste as required. The full story and construction details are available here.
The shower nozzle which was installed with the spa turned out to supply 19 litres per minute, which I was not aware of at the time. After some years it started to fall apart and I needed to replace it. In my researches I was able to find a low water use (9 litres per minute) shower head which I duly bought and installed. The change was immediately obvious. When I did the original install on the waste water line out into the back yard, for good or ill, I used 25mm hose as the conduit for the water and while showering there was a tendency for water to build up in the bottom of the spa. I really didn’t think too much about it, it was just a bit of an inconvenience that’s all. When I installed the new low water use shower head, that build-up of water stopped and the existing drain was able to easily cope with the shower greywater removal. This was a very visual demonstration that even though the water flow didn’t seem much different than the original it had been measurably reduced!
Yes, I know you are going to moan at me “a spa? Really?”. Yes they do use considerably more water than a standard bath if you want to fill them up, but our reality is that it usually only gets used on the hottest days of the year when we are sheltering in place. The spa in that case forms a comparatively cheap swimming pool which we can use and then give the waste water to the bananas! They are always grateful.
Another (minor) water saving fitting we have installed on the shower is an easily operated on/off inline valve between where the water supply comes out of the wall and where the shower hose connects to it. The idea is that once you get your hot/cold water mix right, if you want to shut the water off for any reason, say to apply shampoo, massage in conditioner or whatever you just shut it off with this valve. When you turn the valve back on your water mix is maintained and you don’t need to waste water rebalancing the hot and cold before you can use it.
We have also recently installed lever style taps on the bathroom sink. We find they give us better water flow control and are easier to turn on and off, particularly when washing our hands, which we seem to be doing quite a bit of lately.
The energy to the bathroom is primarily solar, with hot water coming form an evacuated tube solar hot water system, and the main light being an LED downlight supplied from the remnants of the old 12 volt system, now integrated into the new 24 volt system. There is a fan/heater/light installed which the new system runs through the inverter without difficulty although mostly it is the LED which we use for lighting.
While we have done pretty well growing vegetation along this part of the back of the house to protect it from the harsh western sun on those hot western Sydney afternoons, there are times of the day when the bathroom and toilet windows are quite exposed. For these times we have polystyrene sheeting which is cut to fit the inside of the window surround that fits in and reduces the problems considerably. We applied some contact to dress it up a bit!
We do make some of the products which we use in the bathroom including deodorant and shampoo soap. I have not found a home made toothpaste I am really happy with, the usual go-to sodium bicarbonate results in a (for me) unpleasant saline taste. I did come up with a toothpaste built around a calcium salt like calcium carbonate but I feel it could be better. Most cleaning and disinfection is done with vinegar and bicarb.
The Toilet
The toilet is also quite small at 1500mm deep by 900mm wide, and it has……. The toilet! Prior to the remodelling the toilet had a single flush 10 litre cistern. We had installed a 2 litre drink bottle filled with water to reduce the flush volume but it still used more water than we wanted. During the remodelling we had the old toilet replaced with a new ceramic 3 litre half flush/6 litre full flush cistern. We have always practiced the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow……” thing and still do today.
The only other feature which sets the toilet apart is for entertainment more that anything else and it was one of the first modifications I made to the house after we moved in. I painted the inside of the toilet door with blackboard paint! With a selection of chalks placed on the cistern, it is endless fun for all the family!
Other parts of our Zone 0
