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No soil stack

I moved into a bungalow last year and the other day when talking to my neighbour he pointed out that I have no soil stack from the bathroom and everyone else in the street does. I have no nasty niffs, everything seems to be ok. It is not one of those loos that has a filter to it, does my loo need a soil stack, is it ok without?? Please advise

Thanks for the replies guys.

I have a loo with a durgo valve in an ensuite and this you can see down the side of the loo and it needed replacing when we moved in because like you say there was some nasty niffs. Replaced it - nasty niffs gone. But the one in the main bathroom goes straight into the floor, where would the durgo valve be attached in this case? There is only the outside wall on which it is attached and there is no space there for a valve. There has been no smells or problems it's just the neighbour mentioning that all the other bungalows have this pipe up the wall but not us, as I say the pipe from the loo goes straight into the bathroom floor but I don't know where it goes from there, it doesn't appear to come out the other side - confused!!

Yclueless_97 27th Jun, 2012 Plumbing
2 Answers
A

Hi,

Its unlikely that you won't have any soil pipe. You would notice it straight away as the water in the toilet pan would be sucked away and you'd get horrible smells coming back up. This is because a vacuum would be formed when flushing that would suck away any 'plug' of water left in the pan.
What is more likely is that you have a hidden Dirgo valve. This is something that is normally installed when you're doing an extension. It's basically a large Automatic Air Vent which allows air to be sucked into the waste pipework when you flush the toilet but doesn't allow smells back out.
These have to be installed on the waste pipework above the toilet or bath overflow level and is normally hidden behind a false wall in the bathroom or close to a drainage point. You'll know when they go wrong because of the smells starting to appear :-)

Hope that helps.
Ben

BeeXpress Plumbing and Heating Engineers 27th Jun, 2012
A

You probably have a hidden durgo valve(automatic pressure release valve) This valve would only need to be higher than the highest waste water trap ie. Sink
Otherwise you would know all about it with the smell.

Louis.

Edit.
Both toilets may be serviced by the one durgo valve.
This is fine so long as the existing durgo is above the highest waste trap.
I tend to allocate a durgo to each bathroom but i don't think you will have any problems, simply have to replace durgo a bit more regularly.

Louis.

Louis Kingwill 28th Jun, 2012
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