Shall we call that a Brownout?
I lived in Houston in 2008 when hurricane Ike hit, power was out for a week.
It took several days but eventually the water pressure failed, as well as cell phone service. So yes the toilets stopped flushing after several days of power being out.
Thanks. My friend still insists his toilet does not work ina blackout. He even insists he heard radio news reports warning people that their toilets will not work. I know think he is crazy.
A simple experiment he can conduct: Make his own blackout.
Hypothesis: The toilet will not flush during a blackout.
Process:
[ul][li]Turn off the main circuit breaker to the house, or pull the main fuze, so that no electricity is entering the dwelling. [/li][li]Turn on one or more water tap and observe whether water comes out.[/li][li]If water comes out of the taps, flush the toilet.[/ul][/li]
Observation: Does the toilet flush? Does the tank refill with water?
Conclusion: If the toilet flushes and the tank refills with water, then the toilet will work in a blackout.
That won’t work, since the aliens that cause the blackout with their ship’s electromagnetic propulsion array also cause the temporary shift in the Earth’s rotation that prevents the toilet from flushing properly. Duh.
:smack: Serves me right for trying to be all scientific an’ shite!
We fill the bathtubs with water before major ice storms.
you can flush the john by pouring a bucket of water in the tank. Makes the house smell better during a blackout. No one wants three day old turds in their toilet. 
Have you seen his toilet? Even though it’s not likely, I suppose it could be remotely possible that his toilet has an electric flush mechanism with no tank. I’ve never seen one in a private home, but I see lots of them in public restrooms.
My girlfriends house has city water. But the bathroom in the basement requires an electric pump to get the waste water to ground level. She did not realize that her toilet had a slow leak and the basin for the waste water quickly filled up and flooded the basement when she had a power outage. Her basement toilet will not properly flush during a blackout. Sure it will leave the toilet but it will not make it to the out flow at ground level.
I agree with Johnny. It sounds like talking in theory isn’t convincing your friend. You’ll have to actually show him that it works.
You don’t need to pour the water into the tank - pour fast and you can pour the water directly into the bowl and it flushes without even touching the handle.
How did the city make that announcement without power? Did they actually call people over the phone?
From a location with power generators, at a guess. Locations which are considered “necessary” (such as hospitals, prisons, some administrative centers) usually have them.
Land lines have their own power source, and cellphones run on batteries.
That only lasts for a few days at most.
Yes, but most phone calls in an emergency probably go out the same day.
I understand that. It just seems odd for any city (aside from really, really tiny ones) to have:
- A list of everyone’s phone numbers
- A large enough staff
- Enough phone lines
- A plan to have all of the above coordinated enough to call all the residents within the first few days of such an event
I’d have thought it takes a major call center to handle something like that (maybe they outsourced it?) and it just seems like an unusual, albeit admittedly useful, contingency plan. I just wanted to make sure I understood it correctly.
It might be an opt-in, where you provide your number.
But with today’s computer technology, getting a list of phone numbers in a certain area, at least land lines, is probably really simple and cheap.
It’s almost certainly a robocall, not live people calling. The technology is simple, it doesn’t require alot of phones or phone lines or staff. It’s the same thing politicians and telemarketers use to bother you.
Yes, the school district I work for uses a system like this. The superintendent can make one call, record a message, and every parent or guardian in the district gets called and the recorded message gets played nearly simultaneously. It doesn’t use any of our phone lines, it uses lines that belong to the company that provides the service.