On 24 Jan, 19:22, "The Medway Handyman" davidl...@no-spam-
blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

Agreed - spawn of the devil. *Agin nature. *Bring back the good old ball
valve.

Ball valves?

Croydon valves (the sliding plunger) did, I suppose, keep a lot of
handymen employed (hmmm....) but they were rubbish at gradually
leaking. Torbecks, IMHE, have been utterly reliable, fast-filling and
quiet. OTOH, I haven't lived anywhere with hard water in years.

At present I've inherited some crappy American thing (dark grey, float
wraps the upstand pipe) and it just doesn't get on with a UK syphon.
It starts to refill instantly, so that if you let it fill at anything
more than a trickle it doesn't let the syphon break and so it's
continually semi-flushing indefinitely. Trying to throttle it with the
service ballvalve makes it noisy, slow and requires fiddling from time
to time. I have no intention of fitting the matching US-style flapper
valve, lest the unquiet spirit of Thomas Crapper return and haunt me
when that starts wasting water..