What is it with British toilets

When I use the toilet at work or in a friend's home, all I want to do is do my business, wipe, flush, wash my hands and leave. It shouldn't take long.

So why do I find myself desperately pumping the handle over and over, as I remain trapped in the loo for what seems like forever until my "deposit" finally disappears.

Sometimes, especially at work, I am very busy and it is a huge waste of my time. Also embarrassing when there are other people outside waiting for their turn. 

My toilet at home here in the UK (built in the 1980s) is not like this. You flush. Stuff goes down. Easy.

What's the problem?

I'd like to know too.  I actually didn't know that on some of the toilets you literally have to pump the handle.  I thought you just push it (like a regular toilet in the US with a 'handle' flusher).  It's really bad when I go to a public toilet with DD as I have to go in the stall after her to flush it properly for her.

I'll have to try the pumping thing, some toilets just don't want to flush for me. I feel really bad just leaving, but after spending a good 5 minutes trying to get the thing to flush, what else are you going to do?

I must say, I'm not really a fan of British plumbing, for the most part. It doesn't seem at all standardized or modern.

I have to agree, when I was there, I was at a party that some stranger was throwing, and I ran into the bathroom quickly, and couldn't flush the damn toilet, so I'm sitting there and the person who owns the house knocks asking if everything is okay, and me trying to be a lady "give me a minute" while I desperately tried flushing the toilet over and over again cursing the damn thing.

Maybe I've been lucky because I've only met one toilet that needs "pumping" and that's my aunt's ancient downstairs loo. In my experience, there are some fiddly toilets in any country, but it's not the majority of them. My old toilet in the US was occasionally tricky and needed a double- or triple-pump.

Obviously, other people have had other experiences!

I've not come across one that needs to be pumped, but I've found that many of the toilets here require holding the handle down for a bit longer than what I usually found in the US. 

The holiday home we stayed in over Christmas had brand new toilets that were like this, but worse because if you didn't push it down with enough speed, then it just stalled the flush and you had to wait a few seconds to try again.

I also find that some of the toilets are too modern, in that I don't understand how the inside of it works when there's a push button or some other fancy kind of flusher.  In the US, if I came across a rogue toilet, I would just take the lid off the tank, reach my hand in and manually flush it...problem solved.  Here, some toilets have the tank built into the wall or (our toilet for instance) a push button on the lid of the tank, and I can't do anything about it because I don't know if I'll be able to put it back!

But British toilets have one design improvement over American ones - the handle is usually on the right side. With most of the population being right handed, I never understood why they were on the left growing up in the states!

Most of the toilets I've come across are just push in a button (little button for quick flush and big button for big flush).  The pumping ones I've seen are in older parts of towns in the public toilets (like not the ones in the shopping centers, but there is a really scary public toilet in Barnsley that's like underground and it's ancient and they have 'pump' style flushers).  I've also noticed that some of the 'handle' flushers don't have to be pumped but others do...even in the same toilet facilities...so maybe the 'pump' thing is because they're actually broken and don't work right?   

Germany...

I feel really bad just leaving, but after spending a good 5 minutes trying to get the thing to flush, what else are you going to do?

It's awful in someone else's home though, especailly if they have a lot of people over and there is someone waiting in line behind you.

My bathroom at work is very small and  only has two stalls that take up almost the entire bathroom - It's in a small office building that houses small businesses.

So there is often someone in the stall right next to me who can hear what I am doing and can tell if I've walked out without flushing properly. There is also often someone else waiting outside as well.

Someone posted a sign near the sink telling us to please flush before leaving, so my guess is that others get frustrated, too, and that someone else complained about other people not flushing.

Argh!  I hate the anxiety that comes with the pump-flush toilets.  HATE!  If it's an older toilet, I've gotten into the habit of automatically trying to pump twice to see if flow increases enough, but it's always a bit of a crapshoot ( ) and I really hate giving up, but I will eventually. 

I had no idea about pumping until I was staying in a hotel and called housekeeping because the toilet wouldn't flush.  The maintenance guy told me that with a lot of older toilets, I needed to pump at least twice -- and voila!  It worked.  I should have given him a huge tip or something -- it was an invaluable piece of information.

Ha Ha Ha! I thought I was just an idiot who didn't get it.  I'm glad I'm not the only one who has problems.  Though mine don't stop at just the toilet. Apparently I can't use the showers properly either. Since I've been here, not one shower has functioned the same- it's so embarrassing to sit in the bathroom for 10 minutes trying to figure it out, only to have to sheepishly find somebody to turn the shower on for you. I actually just took a bath at my hubby's cousins place just because I was too ashamed to admit I couldn't figure it out. I haven't taken a bath since I was a kid.

Oh man, I always have the worst luck in pubs. The toilets in pubs never seem to work properly- and you need to push and pump and attempt to flush for ten minutes- and there's always a queue and you feel sheepish! 

Our newish toilet has a push button with an eco flush feature - a short stab on the button  gives a small flush and to empty the cistern completely you hold the button down.

I always thought it was me doing something wrong.  I've only had problems "out" with it, but I thought that if you figured out rate and amount of pressure, you never had to "pump".  In fact, I've never found pumping to work really.  Just standing around and waiting for it all to fill up again was the solution. Embarrassing, yes, but the only way that works (and hoping the whole cycle doesn't start all over again).

This happened to me the first time I went to a public loo, and seems to happen a lot less often in the past two years or so as I've gotten used to things.

We have two buttons on the top of our tank, which works pretty well.  I do admit when I first moved here I missed the "flushometer" style of toilet which is pretty common on most public toilets in the States.  We even had one in my last flat there.  If you didn't need a "heavy flush" you pulled up on the lever, the same as pushing the small button on our current loo. I am not sure why they had them other than it was a luxury, pre-war building which had been fairly well maintained through the years.  They rarely broke, but when they did they were a bit of a pain for the management.  One day all the toilets in the building began flushing continuously on their own because of a variation in water pressure.