What about clogging? A certain person I know tends to use a lot of TP, which results in too-frequent clogging, even on a traditional-flow toilet. Wouldn’t this happen much more frequently with a low-flow toilet? As the one who has to wield the plunger way too many times, sometimes without success, this worries me.
Extra flushing seldom helps. It just makes a mess on the floor. Sometimes only waiting for hours sufficiently dissolves the paper to allow it to go down.
I have heard that a lot of people have this problem, usually women. Will millions have to be sent to toilet-training re-education camps? :eek:
My low flow clogs less than my previous 7 gallon model. The difference is that the old one was the toilets that came with the house built 50 years ago, and when I replaced them I didn’t buy the bottom of the line cheap ass models. I bought high quality stuff (Kohler)
Nearly every time I’ve used a low flow toilet for a bowel movement, it winds up getting clogged. Guess my mighty feces are just too much for it to handle.
My toilets at home pre-date low flow mandates and usually accomdate me just fine. So, when I must use one of these low flow horrors, not only do I have to deal with a clog, but I have to deal with a clog on someone else’s toilet, and sometimes have to ask them “do you have a plunger” because for some odd reason some people keep theirs in a location other than next to the toilet or in a bathroom closet/cupboard.
The real fun comes when one’s “extrusion” is of a wider bore than the drain and refuses to exit the bowl. It’s a shame Cecil didn’t address that problem. . . .
That actually happened to me in a hotel once. Imagine three guys on their senior class trip all trying to figure out how to get the thing down. Yeah, that was real fun. We just wound up clogging the heck out of the toilet and had to call maintainance in the middle of the night.
A toilet drain is 4" in diameter. If your extrusion is larger in diameter than that, well I believe the proper expression is:
You are full of shit.
In my experience it is the long, hard extrusions that are hard to make go away.
But as I said upthread, with a good quality low flow, it is not as big a problem as it was with my former cheap 7 gallon per flush model.
Actually, after giving the loo a close look yesterday afternoon, I think the problem is probably less the diameter of the drain than the sharp curve at the beginning that hard stools refuse to negotiate. Maybe I need more roughage. Or less. Or whatever.
Another Toto fan here. When I moved in, the water department gave me three new 1.6 gallon Toto toilets for free, and they are amazing. In three years, I’ve only managed to clog one once. The 3.whatever gallon mid-1980’s style low-flow toilets that came with the house were simply terrible - I had to keep a plunger next to all three toilets. Now, I’m not really sure where the plunger is.
Well, the pipe the toilet is bolted to is 4" but the internal trapway is much smaller - 2" on the modern “high performance” toilets, and it takes a couple of pretty sharp bends, so if your output is (ahem) long and firm, it may get hung up on one of the bends - usually the upper one that’s right under the tank as it’s nearly a 180-degree U-turn.
Granted, the trap makes some sharp bends. However, I think it is closer to 3" than 2". I suggest you go back and read my post and BJMoose’s. He said diameter, I went with diameter, and mentioned long hard poops. In any event if you are beaming down a Shatner that is larger in diameter than the drain, or the passage in the toilet, you have issues.
Cheap low-flow toilets are in many cases old toilets retrofitted to flow less water with such devices as pressure assist tanks. Real low flow toilets were designed to use the 1.6 Gals. and should pose no problem.
If you clog that often, flush more than once, you’ll still use less water.
Narrower diameter at same psi = greater velocity.
All I know is that the American Standard ones in my house are horrible. My wife clogs it up and I successfully plunge it out regularly enough that I’m considering giving my plunger a name and maybe carving some runes into the handle.
(for some reason, I feel like relaying a toilet clogging story)
Yesterday, I “beamed down a Shatner” in the guest bathroom. I flushed, and didn’t look back.
This morning, I went in there to retrieve the magazine I’d left there yesterday. Somehow the toilet had clogged, stirred up the contents of the bowl, and then retreated, leaving a thin film all over the entire inside of the bowl. It was sort of reminiscent of the Trainspotting toilet, actually, except for it didn’t leave the bowl at all.
“It’s been sitting there for several hours… it should just flush right down. Let me just hit the lever…” thinks I…
Ever seen those bubbling mud things at Yellowstone? That’s what the toilet did before it filled up with stirred up contents and completely polluted the air in my guest bathroom.
I decided that I’d tackle that one when I got home tonight, instead of right after a shower.
We’ve got 1.6g low-flow toilets at work, and they almost never clog. But you’d better not do a courtesy flush while you’re sitting on the john unless you want your butt showered - they kick up some spray.
For toilets that do clog (low-flow or not), I’d think that flushing between pooping and wiping would almost always solve the problem. I’ve never seen a toilet get clogged up on poop alone - it’s the combination of poop and a fair quantity of paper that’s deadly. I expect it’s quite possible to clog a toilet with paper alone, but (a) it would take a fair amount of it, and (b) the mess from the overflowed toilet would be less messy.
I have. Not often, certainly not as often as for paper alone or the dreaded poop-paper combo, but it does happen. I try to remember to flush pre-wipe when using a low-flow (because every time I have the combo in a low-flow it clogs) and have indeed had a clog occur even after such a pre-emptive flush.
As for the diameter debate, the one that wouldn’t go down (mentioned in my previous post) most likely wouldn’t go down because of variables other than actual diameter, but once it finally did get forced down, that’s when the whole thing clogged up entirely, which I thought must’ve meant it was near in size to the diameter of the pipe. On further thinking about how those pipes curve, I can envision a scenario where it would clog it even if it wasn’t quite as girthy as that.
