GB 38448-2019Minimum allowable values and grades of the energy efficiency and water efficiency for smart water closets (English PDF)

Foreword

This document was issued on 31 December 2019 by the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic of China, and has been in force since 1 January 2021.

It is the first edition of this standard.

Classification: ICS 27.010, CCS F01.

1 Scope

China's mandatory national standard setting the minimum energy and water efficiency and the grades for smart water closets. The smart toilet - heated seat, warm water washing, warm air drying, sometimes deodorising - is close to universal in new Chinese bathrooms, and unlike an ordinary WC it consumes electricity continuously. That is the point of the standard: the seat and the water heater are on all day whether or not anyone uses the fixture, so the standby consumption is a larger share of the annual total than the consumption during use. Water efficiency is the other half, and it is the older battle: the flush volume determines how much of a city's treated water is used to carry away waste. The standard sets the floor below which a product may not be sold and the grades above it that the label shows, covering both the energy of the washing and drying functions and the water of the flush.

About this edition

GB 38448-2019 is the first edition of this standard. It was issued on 31 December 2019 and has been in force since 1 January 2021.

There is no earlier edition to compare it with, so a specification that has to refer to this subject can only cite GB 38448-2019 itself.

The interval between issue and effect is the transition period. It exists so that producers, laboratories and buyers can requalify products, revise procedures and use up documentation before the new text becomes the one that applies. The date on this page is the official one from the record of the Standardization Administration.

Classification and status

GB 38448-2019 is classified under ICS 27.010, in the field of energy and heat transfer engineering. ICS is the International Classification for Standards, the same scheme used by ISO and by the national bodies of most countries, which is what allows a Chinese standard to be placed beside its foreign counterparts on subject rather than on number.

Its Chinese Standard Classification code is CCS F01. CCS is the domestic scheme, a letter for the sector and two digits for the subject within it, and it is the code by which the standard is filed and searched in China.

The GB prefix without a suffix marks a mandatory national standard: compliance is required by law for the products or activities within its scope, and a product that does not meet it may not lawfully be placed on the Chinese market.

How a Chinese national standard is set out

Chinese national standards are drafted to the rules of GB/T 1.1, which fixes the order in which a standard is set out. The document opens with a foreword recording the issuing bodies, the relationship to any previous edition and the technical committee responsible for it. Clause 1 is the scope. Clause 2 lists the normative references — the other standards that have to be applied together with this one, and without which its requirements cannot be met. Clause 3 gives the terms and definitions. The technical clauses follow: the requirements themselves, the test or measurement methods by which conformity is established, the inspection rules that say how a lot is sampled and judged, and, for a product standard, the provisions on marking, packaging, transport and storage. Annexes, normative or informative, come last.

GB 38448-2019 runs to 12 pages in the English translation. What is delivered is the complete document in that order: every clause, every table, every figure and every annex of the Chinese original, with the same numbering, so that a reference to a clause number in a contract or a test report points to the same place in both languages.