How to Care for Your Bathroom Furniture – WC Unit and Concealed Toilet Cistern
For design conscious minimalists who crave the streamlined look of a back to wall or wall hung toilet, uncluttered by a visible toilet cistern and pipes, a WC unit could be the answer. This simple piece of bathroom furniture conceals both your toilet cistern and pipes. It can be wall hung, combined with a wall hung toilet, or floor standing, combined with a back to wall toilet. Whichever style you choose, one big advantage over fitting a wall hung or back to wall toilet against your actual bathroom wall is ease of access for future cistern maintenance.
Your WC unit will have an access panel, whether at the front or on the top, that can be easily unfastened and lifted off to allow access to your toilet cistern. And you can be sure, if anything goes wrong with your toilet, the fault will lie in the cistern, so this easy access through your bathroom furniture will be extremely beneficial.
To keep your WC unit looking its best, it should be cleaned regularly. No matter what its construction material, regular cleaning will prevent any build up of dust and dirt which could otherwise become ground in to the surface and possibly cause surface scratches, marring the appearance of your bathroom furniture. If your WC unit is solid wood or wood veneered, it will benefit from a polish three to four times annually, to restore or maintain its lustre. Make sure you use a polish that’s appropriate for the type of protective coating on the wood – some polishes will be incompatible with different types of coating and using them despite this could result in an unattractive filmy build up of polish on the surface of your bathroom furniture.
If your WC unit – or, indeed, any of your bathroom furniture – has a storage cupboard section or a drawer or set of drawers, you should keep its hinges and drawer runners free of dirt and debris, and ensure they’re well-lubricated for ease of opening and closing.
Beyond this, issues which may occur within your WC unit with your concealed toilet cistern include continuous running of water from the toilet cistern, and insufficient refill of water to the toilet bowl. If either of these problems occur, you should be able to take remedial action yourself. Open up the access panel on your bathroom furniture: this will allow you easy access to the interior of your toilet cistern.
To fix a continuously running toilet, try raising the float ball in the toilet cistern – it might be catching on the cistern wall, or just set too high. You can bend the wire slightly to bring the ball away from the cistern wall or lower its level so that it achieves its rest position and the water stops running. If this doesn’t work, it could be that water has collected inside the float ball, making it too heavy to float in its proper position: the ball can be removed and replaced fairly simply. Finally, a build up of residue around the filler valve at the bottom of the cistern or kinks in the wire mechanism that raises and lowers the tank ball to cover this valve, may be to blame. Shut off the water supply and flush the toilet to empty it before attempting to investigate and solve these potential causes of your problem.
If you’re experiencing the opposite problem, a toilet which does not refill sufficiently, this could once more be the fault of the float ball. Bending the wire, this time upward, should help if this is the case. Otherwise, the guide which raises and lowers the tank ball to let water flow may be set too low. To look at this properly, you’ll need to drain the cistern as before.
Other common toilet issues include clogging of the holes around the rim, which affects toilet refilling, and clogging in the waste pipe, which can cause the toilet to back up. These issues should be addressed away from your cistern and WC unit, in the toilet bowl itself.