Not much room in the bathroom, but plenty of room in the budget? Wall-hung toilets give the sleek look called for in some modern designs, and they're helpful for saving space and making bathrooms easier to clean. If your budget can accommodate the price tag - usually $1,000 to $1,500 - one of the latest designs could be right for your next project.
Compact Solution
New York City-based Virtus Design had success with Geberit's new Monolith tank designed for use with wall-mount toilets. "I was very limited to what I could use," says principle designer Frederick Wildfoerster, noting that the bathroom was too snug for a full-size toilet and the building didn't allow in-wall tanks. "Monolith filled all of my requirements and the building's requirements. It's a very small footprint; it was just what we needed."
Unlike standard in-wall tanks used with wall-hung toilets, Monolith conceals the tank, fill valve, and flush valve inside a slim housing skinned in white or black glass. Even without fully recessing into the wall, the tank design creates additional usable space in small bathrooms, and works with a variety of wall-hung toilets.
Saniflo's latest model uses similar hidden construction in a new model that lets designers create half-baths just about anywhere. The Sanistar wall-hung toilet combines a macerating pump and electronically activated flushing mechanism into a compact design with no external water tank. Like other Saniflo products, Sanistar requires no drainage lines. Pressing one of the dual-flush buttons on the flushing mechanism activages a a timer and solenoid valve to fill and wash the bowl. The pump motor evacuates the bowl to the macerator, which pumps waste through the discharge line.
Sanistar's self-contained unit works well in basements, attics, garages, or even beneath a staircase, and can be mounted to any sturdy wall using a bracketing system shipped with the unit.
Category Entry
This spring, Kohlerwww.kohler.com debuted Veil, its first residential wall-hung toilet in North America. The new model features a concealed tank and small footprint designed to save as much as 12 inches of space compared to its longest floor models. Veil's tank, and mounting bolts, as well as the water shut-off valve and electrical lines for the optional bidet seat, are completely concealed, giving Veil a seamless look and making cleaning easier.
Veil's adjustable bowl height of 15 3/8 to 28 1/2 inches from the floor makes it ADA-compliant, and is a much wider range than Sanistar's 15 to 18 inches or Monolith's 17 1/4 to 18 3/4 inches. All three offer water-saving dual flush technology.
