Maintaining your bathroom Service for showers, traps and cisterns

If you don’t give your car a regular service, it will end up falling apart because of rust. A thorough service in the bathroom also helps to ensure long-lasting pleasure. It starts off with cleaning the surfaces of the ceramic appliances and taps, then maintaining the shower drain or shower channel, all the way through to cleaning the installed cistern.

The Shower

The Trap

The cistern

The Shower

It’s important to clean your bathroom regularly. This is also true of the shower tray: regular cleaning of the surface ensures the tray looks good without any unsightly deposits of limescale and the like. Other things take a little more time but should nevertheless be carried out on a regular basis. These include cleaning the shower drain or the shower channel. The hair trap is easy to remove and clean, but the drain and the channel also need a thorough clean every now and again. Soap and dirt residues can cause the drains to become blocked.

The Trap

If you are already in the process of cleaning the drain, you may as well clean the trap at the same time. Blocked drains are a common problem – particularly for people with long hair. The hair collects in the drain and can cause a blockage, preventing the water from draining away. While it is relatively simple to remove and clean the trap on a washbasin, in the case of a shower or bathtub it is impossible without removing the tray or tub. We thus recommend you fish out the hair with long tweezers. That way you don’t damage the trap or pipes and you save repair costs. You should also regularly clean the overflow hole in the washbasin. To do so, spray standard cleaning agent – containing acetic acid or citric acid – into this hole as well and leave it to take effect for a while. This stops unpleasant odours and limescale deposits.

The cistern

A blockage in the cistern results in the water flowing continuously after the toilet has been flushed. This is possibly a signal that dirt or limescale is blocking the toilet’s flush valve. The valve is sealed on the outlet at the bottom of the cistern with silicone and stops water from flowing continuously after flushing. Blockages occur when dirt or limescale deposits get between the seal and the drain hole, for example from deposits in the cistern. To solve the problem, all you have to do is remove the flush valve from the cistern and clean it at various places with water or a dry cloth. Then you put the valves back into the cistern and flush once. The video shows how easy this kind of maintenance can be.

How to clean a Geberit Sigma concealed cistern
Installing and cleaning a Geberit exposed cistern

Please be careful!

Be careful: cleaning or descaling the inside of a cistern is tricky. This is not usually necessary and can even lead to larger pieces of limescale or other encrustations becoming detached and blocking everything. If this should happen, a plumber may have to be called in to remove the toilet. You may also encounter problems when removing the trap. A useful piece of advice from experienced engineers is always worth bearing in mind: take a look before you start touching anything. And if you are in any doubt, always consult a specialist.

No more hair in the trap