Actually, modern toilets can be just as effective as older toilets, but you have to avoid the cheap-s**t ones. It comes down to the quality of the fluid engineering.
Older toilets used a brute force approach, to blast everything down, as is noted, it uses a lot of water.
If you really want to get the power, you can get a commercial style flush valve toilet; otherwise, look at overhead tank toilets, which still use only 1.5 gallons, but the height provides the water head you need to really put some oomph behind the flush.
I echo that. I’ve never found the new water-saving toilets to be any less flushable than the old George Washington-shat-here kind. And the amount of water you save is considerable, which is a big issue with the cost of water here in the Northeast. Sometimes total replacement is absolutely the way to go. Of course, no guarantees that the toilet flange is intact and that the supply pipes haven’t been crafted out of Cthulhu’s intestines.
I took last Wednesday off work so I could attend to a couple of little jobs that I never seem to get around to. One of them was a kitchen-sink faucet drip, with a ten-second interval. Oh, no problem, it’s just a washer, a five-minute minute fix, easy.
Rule #1 rears it’s oh-so-ugly head.
Hours later, the hot water is coming out in a thin steady stream, I have a scald burn on my cheek from having a steaming geyser explode into my face, and I have to explain to my wife when she gets out of work that we have to go to Lowes because it’s more than a bad washer: I have to replace the entire faucet assembly, but it’s no biggy, because it’s an EASY FUCKING FIX.
Two hours later, it’s like the hot water tap is all the way open even though it’s closed, and I’ve got an extremely irate Lady Lacha breathing down my neck. Thanks heavens our apartment complex has got a handyman; two days later we had a whole new faucet & nozzle assembly. Also, he discovered a leak down the back of our sink that would have caused major problems down the line for the apartment below us, so it’s a good thing that I screwed up when I did.
I practiced saying that convincingly for my wife, trust me.
I’ve heard several tales of waxy woe, including from my in-laws. They hire somebody to replace 25-year-old wallpaper, floor tile, toilet and sink. Just a simple bathroom remodeling, right? Nope. The 25-year-old wax seal has been subtly leaking for 10 of those years, and the whole bathroom floor is rotten and has to be replaced, along with a joist or two. The job takes three weeks longer and costs a few thousand dollars more than you thought. :smack: