Yes, that’s right, a toilet, in my office building. You pee in it, and it screams at you.
It’s one of those hands-free jobbies with the proximity detector. You step up to the urinal, do your business, and step back, and the gadget recognizes your move and flushes for you.
And as it does so, it screams.
There are two of them now. The first one, I thought it was a weird quirk, a plumber’s joke or something. Now there’s a second one, in our other building, that makes the exact same noise, which leads me to believe it’s some sort of standardized appliance. Thing is, though, I can’t figure out why they want the urinal to scream at you.
Well, maybe scream is the wrong word. Howl, perhaps. Bellowing in a rough falsetto. It’s not an expression of pain, either; it has this odd authority, like an ostrich sergeant calling his feathered troops into action.
Does anybody know what I’m talking about? Can anybody explain just what the holy blue hell is going on?
The urinal at my work does the same thing. Well, ‘whistle’ might be more accurate than ‘scream’. It seems to be air that is displaced by the downward flow, perhaps blowing across some kind of clog. I can’t imagine why this would be a deliberate design, but it might be a side effect of some otherwise desirable feature.
Dunno about toilets, but a shower in my old apt. made shrieking noises unless the water pressure was just right. I was under the impression it was due to air getting caught in the pipe.
I listened carefully to it, and it’s definitely a recorded noise, not a whistling pipe or whatever. It’s a tinny electronic sound effect that comes out of the electric-eye device on top of the urinal.
Well, given how much it normally costs to pee on a midget, I’m pretty sure they’re not offering it for free.
Until Cervaise just came back with the recording theory, I was gonna say I knew what it was. I think its the plunger/valve opening them closing. Whatever the moving part in the flusher is, its probably gasketted with something rubbery. I thought the noise was the rubber-on-rubber shriek. Dunno about a recording.
There’s one of these in a local library. It does indeed make a sound like a baby or a small animal in pain when you step away from it. I don’t go there regularly, so I forget in between and it catches me every time.
And I wonder why there isn’t a big warning sticker on it.
CAUTION: URINAL HOWLS IN PAIN. IT’S NOT YOU. REALLY.
It’s probably a low-flow toilet, which uses less water and more air to do the job. The sound is the motor forcing additional air into the pipe. It’s a conversation thing.
If you want to consult the experts, this site has contact info for movers and shakers connected with the recent World Toilet Summit in Beijing.
There is a Mr. Stone Wang who has an e-mail address listed. I would definitely contact him first. Or perhaps Ms. Situ. It would be hard to choose.
The linked site has many interesting features, including photos of the Toilet Pantomime Show from the 2001 Toilet Summit, a toilet forum and information on how to become a World Toilet Ambassador. Don’t miss it.
WOW, an orgasmic toilet - I’m really impressed. Do you think it procreates? What will they think of next - maybe a toilet roll holder that tells you off if you use too much toilet paper to wipe your arse?
yes i had the unfortunate occurance of having a hotel room with a screaming toilet. I seemed to scream while it was filling as well. It was really creepy. Sounded like a “please don’t kill me” kind of scream. I didn’t go to the bathroom very much on that trip.
Many of the new, low-water-use toilets have a power assist, often via air pressure. So the sound you hear could very likely be from that.
P.S. A common complaint with these toilets is the noise they make. But that’s just the poorly designed ones. There are good ones available, which are just as quiet as any toilet.