A while back we had a thread about the worst messes you ever had to deal with and one of my answers was having to shovel a literal pile of crap that backed up into my basement. The reason that had happened in the first place was my family believed Tucks when they said they were flushable. I never flushed one away again.
The same question applies. People are still not going to have one of these installed out of the blue, with no previous experience with any sort of bidet.
I have a European style bidet and love it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but warm water on your butt feels pretty nice on a cold morning. A quick blott with some TP and you’re done.
As someone who lives in a rental unit, there is no way I’m paying 1/4 to almost a full month’s rent on a bidet seat. And I think my landlord would laugh at me if I asked for that upgrade. That’s probably why you don’t find them very often in people’s homes. It’s a very expensive gadget. Also, can anyone explain to me why a toilet seat bidet requires a remote control? Presumably, you’re only going to operate it when your ass on the seat.
ETA: Also, why do women require a “Turbo” rear wash option? Are my shits messier than my husband’s?:dubious:
As someone who has had a septic system, there are thing you can flush down a sewer system, and things you can flush down a septic system, and they are not the same things. In my current apartment, I am free to flush any toilet paper I choose, as well as flushable wipes and tampons down the toilet. When I had a septic system, I could not flush tampons (which I rarely used-- mostly for swimming) and flushable wipes, and had to be careful about the brand of toilet paper. To be perfectly honest, if we weren’t expecting guests, we put the TP in the trash, and stuck to an “If it’s yellow, let it mellow…” paradigm. We could go 18 months instead of 12 months between suck-outs that way. At $600 a pop, it was a big deal. We also put that RID-X in the septic tank. BTW, Scott brand is the gold standard for not clogging septic systems. Cheap TP costs in the long run.
I don’t use flushable wipes, but my son needs them for some reason. I don’t know why. He will be 11 soon. I hope by the time he’s a teenager, he will have outgrown the need for flushable wipes, but the long and short is that he clogs with regular TP by overwiping, unless I provide him with flushable wet wipes. Yes, he has been checked for problems, and he has nothing diagnosable.
I also have a septic system at my house, and have designed them in the past as well. The main difference between a septic system and sanitary sewers is that almost no septic system is sized large enough to handle food waste, which is why kitchen food disposer units are almost never recommended for use in properties with septic systems.
You shouldn’t flush wipes down either septic systems or down the sanitary sewer. The only real difference is who you are affecting. With a septic system, the only one you are going to hurt is yourself if you cause a blockage. With a house or building that is connected to a sanitary sewer, you cause problems for whoever owns the pipe (or pump, etc.) in which the blockage occurs.
Note that in your current apartment, if you are getting guidance from the apartment manager, than all they care about is as far as their sewer lateral. I am certain that your local sewer utility is less happy about you flushing wipes and tampons down the toilet.
Rid-X is a complete waste of money, and can even cause harm to the system. (We’ve discussed this before here.) All the bacteria that is needed to break down septic waste is already present in the waste itself. Also, a properly designed septic system should only need pumping every 3-5 years.
It usually takes me 5 handfuls of dry to do what one wet wipe will. No, I am not getting a bidet seat for the teeny-tiny toilet in our ancient rental house. There’s not one made that would fit it. We are on a sewer system here.
If you are fortunate enough to travel to Gallup New Mexico, and if you are further fortunate enough to stay in the Ronald Reagan Suite at the El Rancho Hotel, you will have the benefit of a glorious bathroom, with separate bidet.
Worst American toilet experience was in some godawful gas stop in one of the desert states that insisted you not flush paper. The proprietors were kind enough to provid a kitchen-style bin for the used paper, and it was hideously overflowing. The flies and the stench, apparently, were no extra charge…
(To continue this hijack in a thread that is not about bidets). First, the remote control is just so the control can be in front of you and not behind you by the seat. Some models I have seen in Japan have sort of console on the side, which you can see and operate by looking down and to the right (if you’re not too fat like me).
For your second question, I have not heard of that. Most toilet-top bidets have a front wash for women (which seems a bit over the top to me, but I’m not a woman), I wonder if the Turbo rear wash option is just washing both front and back with just one button?
Anyway, I appreciate that renters are probably not going to have these things, but there are lots of homeowners around who could. They are somewhat expensive, something of a luxury, especially considering that you would probably need the services of both a plumber and an electrician to install one.
Seconded. Word for word I had the same situation as kunilou and tree roots used to grow into the line, so with plenty of root killer from the hardware store and an occasional visit from the plumber, we found the culprit and always got the same warning. Even if it says it is flushable, outside of human waste, absolutely nothing but toilet paper can be flushed, no paper towels, tampons, nothing!. Apparently someone was flushing lysol wipes instead of putting them in the little trash cans next to the toilets.
Reading around the web, It seems that there are no wipes that are touted as “septic safe” that will dissolve/break up in a septic tank as toilet paper does.
Is that the consensus here?
How can manufacturers of such wipes get away with claiming wipes are “septic safe” if they don’t disintegrate? As expensive as it can be to clean these out of a septic tank, I would expect a ton of lawsuits over that.
I think there’s a notion somewhere that if the average wipe can travel from the toilet bowl to the solids tank it’s “safe”. And, you know, just one wipe or the occasional bit of dental floss or whatever can do that, and even if that one item gets hung up it probably won’t completely clog off the pipe… but keep throwing stuff down the toilet and eventually there will be a problem.
Septic tanks have to be sucked out periodically no matter what, so maybe there’s this assumption that the non-dissolving wipe will just be removed as part of normal maintenance - nevermind that having chunks of non-organic stuff in there might interfere with disposal of solid septic wastes down the line.
And, finally, if unscrupulous companies haven’t been sued enough they’ll still make the claims.
I first discovered them while traveling in Japan. They are commonplace in hotels there. But I agree with you that most people won’t have the chance to experience one. Maybe that’s part of why I recommend them here? Not sure I expect people to buy one merely on my suggestion, but you’ll be glad you did if you do!
Fancy toilets and fancy toilet seats including bidet features are not uncommon among McMansions and above. For sure you’re not going to see them in $800/mo apartments.
But for the 5-10% of Americans who live fairly large, bidets or bidet toilet seats are a frippery, but a perfectly reasonable one. Not some insane unheard of fatcats-only thing like private jets or crewed yachts.
I’m certainly not a large liver (wait, that doesn’t sound right, does it?) You can get a bidet spray for like $40 at Home Depot. I bought it after traveling to India and just really enjoying the whole bidet experience. It also ended up helping with the kids, since we did the cloth diaper thingy, and the bidet is wonderful for doing a first rinse before throwing it into the laundry bucket.
I don’t think I ever used the European-style separate fixture, but I’ve give the Japanese ones quite the audition on my most recent trips there. They’re now common not only in Japanese hotels, but even in shopping center and airport toilets.
I returned unimpressed. And still a little damp. I much prefer to finish with one wet wipe (sold everywhere in Asia) even if I have to put it in my “soiled” Ziploc bag and carry it to be disposed of later.