This article about a portable toilet for home contains an affiliate link. If you buy through it, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We bought this product ourselves — it wasn’t gifted or sponsored.
This isn’t an article we ever expected to write.
Jonny and I live in a flat, and for most of our lives we assumed that if something went wrong with the plumbing, it would be inconvenient — but manageable.
What we learned is that a non-working toilet removes independence very quickly.
This article isn’t advice. It’s simply why we decided to keep a portable toilet for home use, stored in a cupboard near our bathroom, ready if we ever need it.
When normal plumbing stopped behaving as planned
Our flat shares a soil pipe with the flat next door. Over time, we learned that the pipe has very little fall — it’s almost flat.
We came home from holiday to discover that every time we flushed the toilet, sewage came up into the bath.
It was a Saturday lunchtime.
Our managing agent wasn’t available. The emergency insurance we’d been paying for for over a decade couldn’t find us on their system, so they couldn’t send an approved contractor.
We started ringing around ourselves and were told:
- the toilet might need to be removed
- the drains would need investigating
- and no one could do that work for weeks
We had no functioning bathroom.
For the rest of the day, we asked neighbours. But in the night? My partner found himself having to go find a public toilet
The next day, we went and booked a room at a hotel.
When it didn’t just happen once
On the Monday, the managing agent arranged for someone to come out and clear the drain. We were relieved.
Then the blockage happened again a few weeks later.
And again.
For around eight months, we were paying £100 every six weeks to have the drains cleared. It wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t solving the underlying problem.
The managing agent couldn’t come up with a Plan B.
So we did.
Redesigning the bathroom — and creating a new risk
We had a new bathroom designed with a macerating toilet.
The redesign shortened the horizontal soil pipe by about half, and the macerator pumps waste along so it can’t just sit there. That finally solved the repeated blockages.
And then, a few weeks later, a different thought occurred to me:
The macerator is plugged in. What happens in a power cut?
That’s when we started looking at portable toilets for home use.
This is not about camping
Many portable toilets are marketed for camping.
That’s not what we were looking for.
We weren’t planning holidays or outdoor trips — we wanted a quiet backup for home, in case plumbing or power failed and we couldn’t use our bathroom.
That distinction matters.
What we wanted from a portable toilet
We wanted something:
- an adult could comfortably sit on
- stable and realistic, not flimsy
- hygienic and self-contained
- easy to store discreetly
- easy to access quickly
Most importantly, we wanted something we could genuinely imagine using if we had to — without panic or improvisation… and by candlelight!
Why we chose this portable toilet
This is the portable toilet we chose:
👉 View the portable toilet for home on Amazon (affiliate link — we earn a small commission if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you)
Here’s the Bivvy Loo! What convinced me was the video.
It showed an actual adult sitting on it. That mattered more than I expected. I wanted to know it would be solid and usable, not like an emergency compromise you’d dread.
Other things we liked:
- Disposable bags that line the toilet and collect waste cleanly
- Absorbing powder that gels and neutralises what’s in the bag
- No water, no plumbing, no power required
- Easy to keep clean
- Easy to store
It lives in a cupboard near the bathroom, ready if we ever need it.
Why this matters more as you get older
When you’re younger, you assume you’ll work things out in the moment.
As you get older, you become much less tolerant of being stranded, being forced out of your home, improvising under stress, and waiting for systems that aren’t responding.
A non-functioning toilet isn’t just inconvenient. It removes dignity and independence very quickly.
Having a portable toilet for home use isn’t about expecting disaster. It’s about not losing control when something simple stops working.
This isn’t fear — it’s margin
We hope we never need to use it. But I’ve bought the refill pack of additional bags and powders just in case!
But knowing it’s there means a power cut doesn’t become a crisis, plumbing problems don’t immediately displace us, and we don’t have to rush decisions or panic.
It buys time.
That’s become a recurring theme for us: buying time when systems don’t behave as planned.
Final thoughts on a Portable Toilet For Home
A portable toilet for home isn’t something most people think about — until they really need one.
For us, it’s not camping equipment. It’s a quiet backup.
One that sits in a cupboard, asking for nothing and giving us the confidence that if plumbing or power fails, we won’t have to go hunting for a toilet.
You may decide this feels unnecessary. Given what we’ve lived through, we decided it was worth it.