Toilet
A toilet, seen from above: the tank and the bowl. On plumbing drawings a toilet is a water closet.
This explains what a symbol represents on a drawing. Conventions vary between firms and standards, and a drawing's own legend takes precedence.
How to read it
The Army's print-reading manual lists wall-hung and low-tank water closets among its plumbing fixture symbols, and notes that fixtures may be drawn as block symbols with abbreviations or as shapes close to the real fixture. The Navy's Utilitiesman course names water closets (toilets) among the fixtures shown on plans by symbols.
Also searched as: water closet, WC.
Look-alikes
A lavatory is also an oval basin in plan, but without the tank.
More blueprint symbols
Sources
- Construction Print Reading in the Field, TM 5-704 / AFM 85-27, Departments of the Army and the Air Force, para. 3-8d; fig. 3-8
- Utilitiesman Basic, NAVEDTRA 14265A, Naval Education and Training Command, U.S. Navy, ch. 1, sec. 1.3.2
- Reading Architects' Blueprints, William S. Lowndes, 1922, International Textbook Company, Scranton (Internet Archive), §6, art. 19
- Engineering Aid 3 (NAVEDTRA 14069), Nonresident training course, April 1995, Naval Education and Training Command (copy hosted by Navy Tribe), Ch. 10, drawing symbols
Last reviewed September 24, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research