Are shower toilets worth it?

[puntloos]

So, in theory, a toilet with integrated bidet (spray wand) sounds like a nice idea. Cleaning with water feels more hygienic, saves paper.

But what about practice, can someone with experience tell me:

• Are you supposed to use them for the full clean, or are you supposed to wipe normally and then use these to only 'rinse'?
• Are they (depends perhaps on brand) actually effective at a full clean, or do you need to run them for really really long and you're still not always 100%
• Once you are sufficiently .. watered down there, what about drying? Assuming the toilet has a dryer at all of course, how long do you have to wait? 30-60 seconds seems acceptable, but I suspect it's more like 5 minutes? Toilet paper after all?
• Hygiene - I still feel slightly iffy about 'poopy water' flying around and likely into various creases - these fancy toilets have a lot of moving parts and e.g. holes for the air dryer, the place where the wand comes out etc etc. Can these ever be clean, or cleaned?

And the final component of 'worth' of course is price/brand. Toto is the gold standard, but what about e.g. the Aqua Lava from comfortcleanse, which has most features incl air dryer yet is 'only' 1200 vs much more for the mainstream brands.

 

[gmartine]

Sound's like you need to find some feedback or reviews from say Trust Pilot, Mum's net or The Toilet Review.

 

[Ric2013]

Bidets are good. Lack of space and habit means I don't have one at home. Did try using what you suggested when in Sweden once, but the cold water was a bit too much of a shock for my constitution.

What I would say is that once you've implemented the backflow prevention measures needed for what is essentially an 'ascending spray bidet', it starts to be involved and expensive. That said, it does look like the Aqua Lava has some measure of backflow prevention built in, but possibly only to EU standards not to the more finnicky UK ones. I am not seeing WRAS approval on the product literature for example. This would be my first question, whether it has that approval (physically checking the WRAS website; I just tried, but I couldn't see anything listed under aqua lava or aqua sigma). So a legally-compliant installation may still involve a break tank (i.e. a modified cistern) and a pump to be fitted for the sole purpose of supplying the new toilet with water.

 

[gmartine]

...but Ric, was the de-clagging jet effective?

 

[Ric2013]

...but Ric, was the de-clagging jet effective?

I don't understand what this means. Is it a pun of some kind?

 

[gmartine]

I suppose the term clag is a regional speciality, never mind. Can some Northerners help out a brother here?

 

[puntloos]

I suppose the term clag is a regional speciality, never mind. Can some Northerners help out a brother here?

"Depoopifying"?

 

[Ric2013]

"Depoopifying"?

Oh, cleaning my backside. lol.

All it achieved was making me make a girly squeal. I didn't leave the water on long enough to experiment the cleaning effect. I suppose if it were able to heat the water first, but this Scandinavian spray was cold water, even in August.

 

[puntloos]

I spoke to a salesman, and he certainly confirmed that the toilets are intended to replace the paper, so they should do everything. The only caveat is that drying takes a long time (6 minutes) so many people opt for a quick dry and then use paper.

 

[gmartine]

I can see why, you wouldn't want a dryer like a jet engine blasting your bits for a few seconds as it could cause an injury.