xap-flush?
12 February, 2014 - 16:30
So, the pneumatic 'press to flush' system on the toilet stopped working. It wasn't the pushbutton part that compresses the air, but the expensive and hugely inaccessible valve affair. Thoughts of plumbers and general inconvenience filled my head with gloom.
Had a look at the broken part - all it did was raise a plastic rod (that presumably just covers the water outlet at the bottom of the cistern). Then I recalled some low voltage solenoids that were stashed in the basement.
A few bits of mounting bracket and some soldering and I have a solenoid activated valve. Works well.
Next stage is to move the low volts PSU and all wiring to basement. Then an input line on my HAH wired to a little footswitch and one of the, ethernet connected, xAP enabled relays to switch the solenoid.
Have to explain to SWMBO that a network outage will render the toilet unflushable.
All good fun.
Derek.
p.s. Oh yes, I also need to fit a 'safety chain' to the solenoid to prevent it ever falling into the water!
It looks a little better engineered than my 1.5mm2 plaited L&N that was hanging out of the top of my cistern for a few months ;)
Now all you need is the movement sensor on a roomnode, with a short delay for 'completion', to provide automatic flush :)