How many toilets are too many? Grand Designs guru Kevin McCloud weighs in

How many toilets are too many?

That’s a question Grand Designs UK guru Kevin McCloud has asked this week. Lately, it seems that every new build or renovation has a family bathroom, an en suite bathroom, a guest toilet, and maybe another one somewhere else in the house, because, God forbid we should have to walk a few metres more to visit the bathroom.

Speaking to Leigh Sales of ABC News, McCloud said the house he grew up in had one toilet, and now people are putting in more toilets into their homes than there are actual physical inhabitants of the building.

“I’m fully expecting in 10 years time to visit a finished house which is just toilets… nothing else.”

If you look at the listings for new houses for sale, it’s de rigeur for a five-bedroom house to have a minimum four bathrooms. 

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“Flabbergasted” at number of toilets 

Rochelle Payne, an engineer with the Building Excellence Group, says the company’s work involves studying new house plans as they analyse sustainability performance.

“I am absolutely flabbergasted how many toilets people are putting into their new homes,” she says. “Most new four-bedroom houses… have five toilets. I have just looked at the drawings for one four-bedroom house where every bedroom has an en suite, and there is another guest toilet. This is typical.”

But Payne says social housing homes usually have between one and two-and-a-half bathrooms, depending on the size of the house.

“Most other new three-bedroom homes (privately owned) would have three to four toilets.”

Old character villas that have been renovated often have a minimum of three bathrooms. Which makes you wonder what the original owners would have thought as they traipsed outside to use the outhouse. Even bungalows built in the 1930s just had one toilet and it was usually off a rear verandah, so you go outside to get to it.

Theoretically, you won’t use any more water with more toilets, because one presumes the residents of a house don’t need to go any more often. But there will be more cleaning and associated costs.

Eco considerations may determine how many toilets you think are acceptable in a house. Rochelle Payne and her husband Joel are undertaking the Living Building Challenge with their new rammed earth house. Their house will be large but will have just two toilets, one on each level. And there will be one other toilet in an adjoining apartment.

But they will be harvesting rainwater and there will be a composting toilet waste system in the basement. “I have been told that all going well, we should only need to remove the waste once a year and it will be beautiful compost for the garden,” says Payne.

– This article originally appeared on Stuff.co.nz