hibis  "three sites"

hibis, nothing
but reality

hibis       Personal Ideas.

  • theme summary
    • Home kitchen/else; devices, tips/tricks, arrange, tidy, appliances, hygiene/life, decoration, trip
    • Home environment car, bike, dogs/cats, construction, garden..
    • DIY Painting, gluing, fix things oneself (of which electricity), usual works, to bond, dismantle, restaure..
    • Technical PC-Windows and environment, pixels - Photo - practical Electricity (understanding), electromagnetism, special electric motors..
  • global summary

this page,  Hygiene - bathroom, toilet,   water..
French

Bathroom and toilets (spiders, skidding, - baignoire (rebord glissant), towels, shower (curtain), odors, cleaning, leaks, dealing (bath-tub)  Saving water - Hygiene (general, foods, drink)  -

Bath room, Toilets

Security first. Think at boiling water, mainly for your young childs. Never let them running alone hot water and learn them to touch a bit the water with a finger while the temperature has arrived. Some of them are sadely crippled for their life for that. Young people are much more sensible than ourselves, and don't react quickly. A few are dead too. Learn to your young childs to touch slightly the hot water with a thinger before anything else ! and don't run hot water in the bath !
There is also a big electric risk, due both to the tiles and the water. No unsecured sockets, neither metallic lamps reachable from the tub or the bowl. And think at your hair drier and the water !!

- CAUTION !! (toilets bowl) avoid putting pastilles of cleansing or scented bond hooked on the edge of the bowl. They can wedge in the sewer pipe and get you big troubles (we did experience with).

- Towel that skid (holder, edge of the bath-tub). If you pose a small guest towel or a piece of rug to wipe around, they always slip down the ground or inside the bath-tub. I placed a small transparent suction cup (removed hook), on the edge of the bath-tub. The towel placed above does not slip any more.

- Toothpaste. The paste should be used as it is, without adding water or three drops if you prefer a little more creamy. no need to open the faucet fully already and let it running while waiting for the rinse! See below "water saving".

- Odors in the toilets. there, no miracle; if you do not like the odor of the deodorant bombs, light a match. Deodorant are not eliminating odors as their name suggest ! they added another odor which masks a little the others. But it is some chemicals we don't know about, and better is to eliminate them.

Clean the drain of a sink or a shower. Use a long hook that can be made with a quite resistant wire, like a fine metal hanger one. Tufts of agglomerated dirt with hair can be brought back (especially shower). A brush allows a good cleaning, but doesn't go far enough. To perfect the work, it is necessary to unscrew the bottom of the siphon which is underneath (beforehand put a bowl underneath).

- Toilet (glove of toilet): if you use two gloves, perhaps one "for the top", the other "for the bottom", may be you would wish to distinguish other parts of your body, like "the front" and the "behind".
Think turning the glove so the back hand switch to the palm; useful also when you rinse yourself (soap on a side and have the first rinsing with "the back" of the glove).

- Bath-tub and spiders. To avoid seeing a spider in the bath-tub, best is to facilitate its rising up ! for that, lay out a towel or the carpet of bath on the edge so that it hangs until the bas. In England, one thus sells “scales with spiders!!

Shower. Curtain shower suspended from the ceiling with an original pushing-shifting system. My idea has been taken over on my site (august 2010) and is now sold in the german trade. Of course, it is valuable !  but I had to withdraw the free access to it !
It can be fixed on a beam integrated in a decoration. (Manufacture) to be asked

- Leaking toilet. See below, water leaks.

- Sink and bath-tub It is the weak point of old work. Leaks may damage the wall itself by water infiltration, because the tile does not exist below. Remove the old jointing by pulling it and scraping the wall on one side and porcelain (or plastic) on the other. A new layer covering the damaged one will not hold long and would be uneffective.
I describe now the worst that we can see. A derelicted wall under the last tiles, because we have to remove the crumbling parts, grains and mold, so much the worse if it digs. The substrate must be good.
Clean carefully, rinse and let dry. Use a hair dryer toaccelerate time to time. If the wall is still crumbly (plaster walls in general), brush it with a  vinyl wood glue "outside" (white), diluted with a little water so the plaster could absorb better. This will strengthen the plaster or the derelict substrate. Although dry, the preparation is important and there is no hurry for any miss. If the gap between the bathtube and the wall is now too high in places, a butcher with a piece of carved wood, stuck with the same glue, or plaster or crumpled paper soaked in glue. While dry is important.
Final touches for making the joint. Clean and degrease the last time in alcohol at 70 or 90°. You have to apply the seal, the tricky part, with a gun cartridge product "silicone" (I don't advise pressured cartridges, not always easy to control and expensive. Maintain a constant pressure on the trigger after got started and move slowly along the corner "wall-bathtub" filing a thick seailng cord the size you want. At each end of trigger pressure, let the product still get out and slow down the progression, just the time you can release and press again the  trigger. This limits the fault recovery. A previous exercise is useful.

 It's now time to smooth the sealing : use the ustensil (sold) to smooth the joints, or one teaspoon (it looks like) or a credit card you rounded the corner. put over oil or moisty soap, then press the angle very strongly at an angle and  pull all the lenght. The tool must touch at two points, one against thetiles and the other on bathtub edge.  You choose the instrument (or cut), which  will make the sealing you want (to be tested). The pressure exerted by pulling form thejoint, and lets two spare strips, one on the wall (tiles) and the other on the bathtub. You can retouch some places with the finger soaped or greased (finishing handbut it is very delicate and concerns mainly the corners). Wait until the product is dry before shooting these two bands parts (vertical and horizontal). Tinkering with the cutter if necessary.

An adhesive seal plastic are commercially available. It is fixed against the mural tile and rests against the edgeof the bathtub. It's always a somewhat curled, not very professional, but it is convenient. Do not expect a good sealing and I recommend doing first the preparations described above, simply by filling the space with the product, without thickness and without smoothing, in order to guarantee the sealing behind the white section. Progress in this area is always possible and to be watched.


Saving water

There are of course leaky taps, but wouldn't they be only..  a drop of water amidst an ocean of waste ?
Savings and water leaks. What we can hear about it:  "A dripping faucet can fill a tub of one hundred liters a day", in which case, the valve will drop more, it drips ! one tap loose a drop now and then fails to meet one to two bottles, I took the test. It is the flushing that lose the most while continuously leaking. Without significant noise, should look at the surface of the water in the bowl, which should be still. If movements are visible, remove the top of the tank and proceed as described on the page "troubleshooting".  If the noise seems important and annoying, turn off the small flushing water tap and open when needed. This small valve is often jammed on an old installation, and a wrench may be necessary.

"A shower instead of a bath." They laugh at us ! who can have a bath in the morning at 6 or 7 am when everyone hurry getting ready to leave? As for a  shower, it can run out 40 liters per person or more if we let the tap full open, neglecting to turn it off between soaping and rinsing. If we do that, the consumption can be reduce down to only 15 liters of water. To make real savings, but it makes us smile in our time, is to switch between bathtub and washbasin with a toilet glove. A saver can also be put on the tap to reduce thewater pressure: it is a simple metal disc with one tiny hole. But we won't be able to run the water stronger after that, and consequently use jets or pulse if you have.


Grotesque? We make drastic savings on one side butwe let wide open taps for washing teeth, hands or hair ! without counting liters of water waiting for the hot water to come. Some technologies have to be rethought. A simple hand washing takes more than 2 liters of water if we let the water running strong. We should close the plug and let small amounts of water in the basin, soap washing then repeat two or three times to rinse oneself. In fact, we would be almost back to the days with the bowl, but without the jug of water nearby. Hard drive in our time of abundance. One could accuse the ceramic valves that open quickly, but not entirely because they can be turned off so easily. Some lever-type faucets have a notch hllf way but they appear to me inconclusive and another system would be welcome. Of course, I do not practice all what I say, but I am doing my best as often as possible. Think about it, too, especially if your resources are limited: I you are three or four familly at home, won't it be better to save 150 or 200 euros a year rather than see them running down the drain ?



 Bodycare, well being, dietetic, illness

hibis Ideas                   back to top