I've fiddled around with it a bit but it's still not working - I think
I'll just replace it rather than waste time anyway.
but how do the things actually work - it's not obvious from looking at
mine
--
Chris French
Black magic, I always think. Most of the DIY books have an explanation.
Ours did the same last week. It was a tiny bit of grit in the needle-
sized hole in the outer cap - the hole that gets covered by the small
circular rubber pad on the float arm attachment. I used a needle and air
to clear it...at 12.30 a.m.!
--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org
That's a good question. I have no idea either. ;-)
--
*Forget about World Peace...Visualize using your turn signal.
Dave Plowman da...@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
>> but how do the things actually work - it's not obvious from looking at
>> mine
>
> Black magic, I always think. Most of the DIY books have an explanation.
Indeed :-)
It's what's called an equilibrium valve. The basic principle is that water
pressure bears on both sides of the rubber diaphragm but there's more
surface area exposed to the water on the side that presses the diaphragm
against the inlet shutting off the water flow. But on that side there's a
tiny hole - the one you see which gets covered by the tiny rubber bung
attached to the float arm. When the float drops and uncovers the hole it
takes away the pressure holding the valve shut and water runs through the
valve, filling the cistern until the float rises and closes the hole
whereupon the pressure on that side closes the valve again.
Neat, huh? ;-)
--
John Stumbles -- http://yaph.co.uk
"I used to think correlation implied causation.
Then I took a statistics course and now I don't."
"Sounds as if the statistics course helped."
"Well, maybe."
Hard to describe but think pressure differentials. They are a real pain in
the proverbial. Replace it with another type.
Peter Crosland
> On Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:48:48 +0000, Bob Eager wrote:
>
>>> but how do the things actually work - it's not obvious from looking at
>>> mine
>>
>> Black magic, I always think. Most of the DIY books have an explanation.
>
> Indeed :-)
>
> It's what's called an equilibrium valve. The basic principle is that
> water pressure bears on both sides of the rubber diaphragm but there's
> more surface area exposed to the water on the side that presses the
> diaphragm against the inlet shutting off the water flow. But on that
> side there's a tiny hole - the one you see which gets covered by the
> tiny rubber bung attached to the float arm. When the float drops and
> uncovers the hole it takes away the pressure holding the valve shut and
> water runs through the valve, filling the cistern until the float rises
> and closes the hole whereupon the pressure on that side closes the valve
> again.
>
> Neat, huh? ;-)
Until the hole gets blocked...they are very prone to dirt, etc. When
they've been repairing water mains nearby, or when they suddenly decided
to fit an external stoptap without telling us, dirt got in and buggered
it up...!
They work on the same principal as the air valves in an aircraft's
equipment cooling and air conditioning system. I had to go on a weeks
course to learn how it worked, but the most eye opening thing was how
the cockpit cooling was done, just using engine bleed air to cool the
crew down.
It works on the same principle as a fridge or air con unit by
compressing the coolant (air) to make it warm and then letting it
expand, so cooling it and dumping the heat. There were no motors
involved, it was all done by air driven devices.
Dave
Agreed - spawn of the devil. Agin nature. Bring back the good old ball
valve.
--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
Second only to the Saniflo but at least the Torbeck is relatively clean!
Peter Crosland
Thank you all. I'll be plumbing my new bog soon. It came with a Torbeck
valve. It looks very fliddy. After reading this, I'm off to look for a
better valve/float assembly.
--
Tim Watts
Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.
> Agreed - spawn of the devil. Agin nature. Bring back the good old ball
> valve.
Ball valves?
Croydon valves (the sliding plunger) did, I suppose, keep a lot of
handymen employed (hmmm....) but they were rubbish at gradually
leaking. Torbecks, IMHE, have been utterly reliable, fast-filling and
quiet. OTOH, I haven't lived anywhere with hard water in years.
At present I've inherited some crappy American thing (dark grey, float
wraps the upstand pipe) and it just doesn't get on with a UK syphon.
It starts to refill instantly, so that if you let it fill at anything
more than a trickle it doesn't let the syphon break and so it's
continually semi-flushing indefinitely. Trying to throttle it with the
service ballvalve makes it noisy, slow and requires fiddling from time
to time. I have no intention of fitting the matching US-style flapper
valve, lest the unquiet spirit of Thomas Crapper return and haunt me
when that starts wasting water..
> On 24 Jan,
> Tim Watts <t...@dionic.net> wrote:
>
>> Thank you all. I'll be plumbing my new bog soon. It came with a
>> Torbeck valve. It looks very fliddy. After reading this, I'm off to
>> look for a better valve/float assembly.
>>
> I've torbecks in the two bogs and the loft tank. Much quieter than the
> non-equilibrium kind, and I've had no bother with them in well over
> ten years.
Agreed. Because the float only has a very short arm, it's only in the water
for the last little bit of fill - so you get full flow until the cistern is
virtually full, whereas a conventional float valve starts to shut off much
earlier.
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!
> I've torbecks in the two bogs and the loft tank. Much quieter than the
> non-equilibrium kind, and I've had no bother with them in well over ten
> years.
Same here nor problems at all fast fill and quiet. I wouldn't put one
on a loft tank without first checking the over flow can handle the
flow rate, as per the instructions...
--
Cheers
Dave.
But I do understand it. And I've had to sort out loads of the buggers.
The one I've now just replaced (wasn't worth fiddling with IMO) had
quite likely been there since the bathroom was installed - 20 years? The
one I fitted in my old house new cistern worked fine for about 5 years
before I moved here.
Anyway, I'm not sure an alternative valve would fit. It is a shallow
depth , built in cistern so there isn't much space in there.
Anyway, thanks folks i understand how they work now.
--
Chris French
<m...@privacy.net> wrote in message news:50DED7FC2F%brian...@lycos.co.uk...
> On 24 Jan,
> Tim Watts <t...@dionic.net> wrote:
>
>> Thank you all. I'll be plumbing my new bog soon. It came with a Torbeck
>> valve. It looks very fliddy. After reading this, I'm off to look for a
>> better valve/float assembly.
>>
> I've torbecks in the two bogs and the loft tank. Much quieter than the
> non-equilibrium kind, and I've had no bother with them in well over ten
> years.
I'm with you about liking my Torbeck, the water either runs full rate or
not at all, rather than a ball balve progressively reducing the rate to a dribble
before the level is high enough to prime the siphon.
The same toilet has got a "Pacific" siphon with a wrinkled rubber seal and
I can't get a replacement.That can be a nuisance, good job I'm not on
a meter.
--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%
Very polarised opinions on Torbecks... Seems to be a love them or hate
them?
> Very polarised opinions on Torbecks... Seems to be a love them or hate
> them?
Most people love how they work, some report problems with limescale on
the tiny valve hole.
If you're in a soft water area, no problem.
> That could be it, soft water, I've three of them, no problems, quiet,
> fast filling etc.
It's pretty hard water in this part of London and the one in my toilet
lasted 20 years or so. Might have been able to repair it with a kit if I
understood how they worked - but a complete one didn't break the bank and
was worth it for the silence...
--
*Learn from your parents' mistakes - use birth control.
It's hard water here as well, and the old one had done well I think.
>Might have been able to repair it with a kit if I
>understood how they worked - but a complete one didn't break the bank and
>was worth it for the silence...
>
Yup, replacing was the sensible option from my POV
--
Chris French