How to use a Thai bum gun (toilet spray hose) without wetting the floor

The hose beside a Thai toilet is สายฉีดชำระ (sai chit chamra, "spray hose for cleansing"), also called a bum gun. Its head (the spray end) sits about a hand's width away and the squeeze is light. The lever under the head sets the force, and a quarter squeeze is a soft spray ¹.

On 11 October 2026 I asked for a "cleverly illustrated minisite" (a small website) on how to use one, and to "add lots of toys". The result is a page with a bathroom you can tap, a game, a toy that takes the gun apart, and the eight steps below ¹. Its squeeze toy shows the range: too soft dribbles on the floor, too hard reaches the gecko (a small house lizard) on the ceiling ¹.

Eight steps, in the order the page shows them

1. The small valve on the wall opens. It feeds only the gun.
2. One short squirt goes into the toilet bowl. It shows how hard this gun sprays and how warm the water is.
3. The gun reaches in from behind, or down between the knees. People do both.
4. The squeeze is gentle, the head about a hand's width away.
5. The spray passes front to back, two or three times.
6. The gun hangs back on its holder.
7. A few sheets of paper dry the skin with light pats.
8. The valve closes.

A how-to guide written by foreigners, quoted by Bangkok Biznews, a Thai news site, also says to try a squirt first, because pressure and temperature differ from place to place ².

The valve on the wall sets the force

The stop valve is the small tap on the supply pipe that shuts off the water to the gun. HomeGuru, the advice section of the Thai shop HomePro, describes a spray so hard that people jump at a public or unfamiliar toilet, and names the stop valve as the control: turned, it sets the pressure that reaches the head ³. On the page, a half-open valve softens a strong spray ¹.

A HANG spray-hose set at HomePro lists a flow of no more than 6 litres a minute and pressure up to 1 bar (a unit of pressure, slightly below the average air pressure at sea level) ⁵. It costs ฿169, checked on 24 October 2026 ⁴. Full sets in the page's price table run from ฿169 to ฿615, checked on 10 October 2026 ¹.

Where the paper goes

A sign on the wall tells which to use, the bin or the bowl, and many Thai toilets keep a bin for used paper ¹. In 2009 the Thai newspaper Manager tested tissue brands, found that two-ply paper (two layers) forms lumps when wet, and wrote that paper does not belong in the toilet or the drains ⁶. In the page's bin-or-bowl game, wet wipes, sanitary pads, cotton buds, plastic and hair go in the bin, and a scoop of water from a dipper goes in the bowl ¹.

Squat toilets and the dipper

In a 2010 household survey, 86.0% of Thai homes had a squat toilet (a pan set in the floor), 10.1% a sitting one and 3.1% both ⁷. Wikipedia says "the 'bum gun' is ubiquitous" (found everywhere) in Thailand, and that a Thai bathroom usually also has a plastic dipper, ขัน (khan), used in bathing ⁸. A squat pan with no cistern (water tank) is flushed by pouring water (ส้วมราดน้ำ, suam rat nam); the page's toy counts three dipperfuls ¹.

A little history

A Thai firm, whose brand is HANG, says it began making spray sets in 1972 and has made over 50 million ². That is the company's claim; Sanook, a Thai news site, repeats it and adds that Thailand did not invent the hose ⁹. The Finnish firm Oras made a hand shower for the toilet, the Bidetta, in 1968 ¹⁰.

The names: สายฉีดก้น (sai chit kon, "bottom spray hose") is a joking name ⁹. ที่ฉีดตูด (thi chit tut) is slang ¹¹. "Bum gun" is English slang, and Wiktionary lists "health faucet" as another English name ¹¹. The word ชำระ (chamra) means to cleanse, and the same word is used for paying a bill: ชำระเงิน (chamra ngoen) ¹.

On 15 August 2019 a member of parliament complained that the toilets in Thailand's new parliament building had no สายฉีดชำระ, and the Speaker of the House went to inspect them ¹².

How much toilet paper people use

A person in the United States uses 141 rolls of toilet paper a year; in the United Kingdom 127, in Japan 91, in France 71 (Reuters, 2019, on a report by two environmental groups) ¹³. A Thai figure in rolls was not found.

A spray hose that leaks

HomeGuru lists the causes: a cracked head, a broken lever, a loose joint, a leaking hose, or water pressure that is too high. Pressure is the most common cause, in dorms, condos and houses with a strong pump, where the head shakes when it is used. Its fix for the pressure case is the stop valve, turned down, and closed when the gun is not used for a long time ³.