The house we’ve recently moved to only has 1 loo (and 4 bedrooms, though we use 1 as an office/store). We are thinking of replacing the tiny shower cubicle in the 2nd bathroom with a macerator toilet. Do these generally work OK? Do they use much electricity to run? It would be mainly a guest toilet, except in emergencies! I understand they should be flushed at least once a week to keep everything workng properly. Thanks.
We’ve had one here for 20 years, recently it has developed a problem which is solvable.
It is used once a day, so I would say yes it’s reliable. It is not the ideal solution but if there is no other option go for it
Thanks John. No, there’s no other option as there’s no way we’re going to dig up the floor and garden to install a larger waste pipe!
The problem is not the toilet but the people who use them.
We had one in a flat we let out - it was a way of getting another bathroom in the property when we opened up the loft.
The tenant had two daughters - so everything went down the toilet - even though it shouldn’t.
Also, they managed to switch off the electricity to it and it backed up.
Cost us a lot of money to get it sorted.
If it’s just for guests, they won’t understand the importance of putting nothing down it (especially wet wipes) other than toilet paper - make sure you have notices in the shower room and that you impress upon them the importance. (We have to do that with people coming from the UK re our fosse)
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I echo Sue’s views. In the gîte world which I am in they have a very bad reputation. But if just for your personal use then maybe a solution.
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The only other thing I would say is make sure whoever installs it respects the the instructions.
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Are you referring to the requirement to pump up a meter or so before flowing down?
@Julia_Grange We used them commercially and the public were fine, it was our cleaners who didn’t respect the instructions. On the later Saniflo units it’s much easier to remove a blockage as they had an opening hatch, rather than having to drag the whole unit out.
Friends have a macerator toilet installed in the “spare bedroom” attached to their home. It was/is used when family visit.
Trouble arose when one of the children used what seemed like a roll of TPaper at one “sitting”… and this was too much for the macerator to cope with. 
Our Friends had put signs up etc etc and now had to say something like.. flush regularly, even if not “finished” eg flush after using 3 or 4 pieces of TPaper… 
EDIT: reminds me of childhood, visits to seaside and The Pier and queuing for the ladies loo.. a woman, seated at a small table, guarding access to the 2 toilets. We paid her a penny (I think) and she would hand out 2 pieces of izal per person. When someone exited and walked away, the next person in the queue was allowed to go forward and gain access to the loo. often with a great sigh of relief
With respect to tube diameters, length, slope and what gets put in it
Oh yes, it’s not all plain sailing, some want 22mm others 30 something and then it’s the length of run scuse the pun.
We have one in our guest bedroom en suite (installed 9 years ago). It worked superbly until this year when a week before relatives were visiting, I flushed the loo and the macerator did not turn off 
It was likely because we had not followed the good advice on here of flushing it weekly. We ended up at Leroy Merlin and purchased a tub of descaler for a macerator and also an unblocker product. Three treatments of said products fixed the issue. I now have a weekly ritual of the eparcyl down the loo for the fosse and i trip up the stairs to the guest bedroom to flush the toilet with the macerator.
Forgot to say, the product treatment was after we had cut a hole in the plasterboard to get to the unit as our ‘Bodgy English builder’ had promised a hatch and of course had not fitted one !
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I had to get rid of my Bodgy French builder for similar issues
We did after the pool fiasco, he apparently stopped breathing a couple of years back - nothing to do with me I have to point out !
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Thanks for that tip; I’ll need to check. I’m sure we will need a small diameter as the current waste is only for water from the shower and adjacent hand basin.
This is an extreme example so let’s hope people take heed!
I’ve read they need to be “used” (flushed ) regularly to stop the macerator from seizing up. Hopefully evaculation should be more or less straight down, though we won’t know till we take the old shower tray out. I’ve been looking at broyeursani.fr as I thought it would be better to buy direct from experts rather than Leroy. But happy to be persuaded otherwise.
My tip would be look at how easy it is to access yourself, for urgent clean out. You don’t want to be waiting for a service agent and cost for that call-out
Thank - another really helpful tip! The ones I’ve been looking at have the unit built in to the body of the WC, so it looks as if you’d have to pull the whole unit out if it had a problem. So presumably better to go for the uglier-looking sort where the macerator is separate.
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Yes I would think so. We used to pull the unit out to the side for servicing and that’s when I noticed the later Saniflo was really easy to access the macerator blades (due to a cleaner trying to flush a cotton cleaning cloth)
We’ve had a macerator toilet in one of our bathrooms for the past thirteen years. It’s used daily and there haven’t been any problems. Nevertheless, when it was installed I ensured that the macerator mechanism was easily accessible. But that’s that’s just an obvious common sense precaution.
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