Toilet Hand-Wash Basin

One of the space-saving features in my bathroom is that there is no sink.  There are toilets for sale that incorporate a hand-wash basin in the back of the toilet (check out caromausa.com).  When you flush, the water that refills the tank is routed through a faucet, giving about 30 seconds to wash your hands before the tank is full and the flow shuts off.  The basin simply drains into the tank, meaning the grey water from washing your hands is used for the next flush.  There are also kits for sale that allow one to retrofit most toilets in a similar fashion.

I ended up building as solution that functions the same way using an Ikea salad bowl as the basin.  I like that I have a shelf the entire width of the bathroom to maximize the amount of available horizontal space.

Building Codes require that a bathroom have a sink available with warm water.  This turned out to be the only sticking point in getting my building permit since a conventional toilet is only plumbed with a cold water supply line.  The solution was to add a mixing valve so the water that fills the toilet tank via the faucet is automatically mixed to come out warm.  This should have the benefit of keeping the toilet tank from sweating as much in the summertime.  One unintended and undesirable consequence of this is that the valve seems to reduce the pressure to the faucet, so it is pretty much just a trickle when it comes out.  The video shows it in action, but be aware that I didn't shoot for the entire 30-second fill cycle in case you don't have sufficient bandwidth to download a long video.