I have a friend who insists that his toilets do not work in a blackout. He lives ina detached single family one story dwelling that gets water from the county. I do as well and mine flush fine even if power is out for days.
So si my friend crazy or is there something that accounts for this? Inquiring minds need to know.
It’s only a problem if you have a well that uses an electric pump. All city/county/town water is kept in water towers, which will work unless gravity is turned off. While they will run dry in a very long blackout, they usually have several days worth of water in them.
A water main break can also keep toilets from working.
There are some very fancy toilets that may not flush with no power on (like this one) but I’ve never even seen one so I don’t know. But a regular toilet, yes. The lever you push to plush the toilet is connected with a chain to a flapper on the bottom of the tank, so by pulling it the water rushes out of the tank, into the bowl, and voila. Now, if there is no water pressure coming from the county you would not be able to reload the tank, but that’s a different story.
All the typical toilets I’ve seen work on gravity and have a storage tank full of water that assists with the flush.
So I’m going to say that they will flush at least once during a blackout. Plumbing generally works on gravity but the water pressure comes from water tanks that are most probably filled via electric pumps. Extended blackouts may draw down enough water from the water towers which will drop the water pressure and may stop the supply. But that wouldn’t happen immediately.
Some sewage systems require sewage lift via electric pumps. If they aren’t operable then the crap would literally fill the pipes and flushing could not occur. This would be another “eventual” problem and would most likely not occur immediately.
Maybe their town has electric gravity.
My toilets worked with no incoming water. Last Winter the intake pipe froze. The hot water tap worked in the tub, so I had to fill a bucket with water and use it to fill the tank. (It would also work dumped directly into the bowl.) Water at the apartment building where I lived in L.A. was shut off from time to time. I filled a bucket from the swimming pool.
My best fiend bought a house in the South, and he said he had to get the grinder pump replaced. I didn’t know what that was. Apparently it’s a like a garbage disposal for drains. I assume his toilet worked without it since he didn’t say it didn’t.
Also, water pumping stations and treatment facilities usually get high priority for restoring power. We had a city-wide, week-long power outage last year and the city made some calls to conserve water (presumably to ease the load on those systems), but the water never stopped.
The bigger ones will have diesel backup generators attached. Otherwise they have a mobile backup generator that they can drive around from site to site to top off the tanks.
But this only works as long as the zombies have not taken control of the diesel fuel supply.
As long as you have a water supply with sufficient pressure, any regular toilet will work. They operate with nothing but a water supply, a marvel of engineering IMO. Basically if your faucets work the toilet will work.
If for some crazy reason your friend’s faucets work but not the toilet, he can always draw water from a faucet into a bucket and use that to flush the toilet.
If he has running water his toilets will work (as noted by other posters).
I had a power outage a few weeks ago and my water slowed to a trickle after about 12 hours. Apparently the water facility had their power go out also. Contrary to other posts, it takes more than gravity to deliver water. Our water is from Falls Church City (even though we live in Fairfax County) serving about 35,000 accounts. The same thing happened a few years ago after hurricane Isabel. At that time Fairfax County water also couldn’t be pumped due to failure of primary and backup electrical supplies.
Your friend is crazy. Any standard toilet will flush so long as there is water in the tank.
Should the water supply be provided by an electric pump - say because the residence is rural and has their own private well - and the power goes out, you can still flush the toilet, once. Then the tank just won’t fill on its own. But if there’s access to water by another source, one can refill the tank manually. Just fill a bucket and dump it in the tank.
We used to have an old lakeside vacation home with a very sketchy well pump. When the water pump failed, we would just fill a bucket from the lake and pour it into the toilet tank.
Standard toilets always work without electricity, period. It’s just a matter of how the tank is filled with water.
Last year, Hurricane Irene knocked out our power for three or four days. We’re on a well with an electric pump, so we had no running water during that time. Luckily, we had filled up our tub before the storm hit, so we had water we could use to fill up the toilet tank if needed. When the tank was full, the toilet flushed just fine without power. Your friend is dumb.
Toilets will also flush if you fill the bowl with water to the brim and flush them.
I’m amazed that most people don’t know this.
In my experience, just pouring water in the bowl will cause the toilet to flush; no need to press the lever. (We used to have power outages with every electrical storm, so my mother would collect water in advance, including filling the bathtub and using that water for flushing.)
It depends how fast you pour in the water. If you pour it in slowly, the bowl will drain at approximately the same rate (assuming no blockage) to maintain the normal water level (so I don’t know what’s going on with Annie-Xmas’s toilet). But if you dump enough water in fast enough, you create a siphon effect that causes it to flush.
No power for two months post-hurricane and the toilets flushed just fine. Had to refill the tank by bucket since the well pump did not work.
The toilet doesn’t flush because he can’t find the handle in the dark.
I also live in Fairfax County but get my water from the city of Falls Church. After the derecho I was without power for a week but never lost water flow after that event or Isabel.
I’ve never seen a home toilet that wouldn’t flush in a blackout, but none of the toilets in the building I work in will flush without power. They all have flushers like the G2 Optima at this site.
Both of my toilets (at home and at work) don’t have tanks. I have no idea how they work. But I know I’ve had my landlord up a few times because it either didn’t flush much at all, or wouldn’t stop. In each case the turn of a wrench fixed it.