And you will have to replace the flapper and fill valve in a Toto. I have four of the Toto Drake (I think) toilets, and over the years have had to replace the bits in the tank on all of them. I think it is about $25 for a fill valve and flapper kit, and it will take you 20 minutes to do the first one, and 10 minutes to do the second one.
The toilets work great, and they flush better than any full flow one I’ve owned. The flapper is the thing to be careful of, though. Once it starts to leak, it can defeat any water savings you get from the low flow.
That’s what people always think until they find out that the elliptical toilet that they installed where the round one was doesn’t leave enough clearance for the door to close or the distance from the back of the tank to the flange is longer than it was on their previous one. If they’re lucky, the bathroom is already finished and this is obvious. If they’re less lucky, they’ll find themselves cutting the drywall or tile around the tank to make it fit.
I got 2 Home Depot (or Lowes) ‘Dual Flush’ Glacer Bay toilets 2 years ago and are happy with them. Not expensive, actually fairly cheap, and does what it’s suppose to do. I don’t always use the correct button so sometimes use more water then I should, but all is well with my bowl.
If you want to go that route, you’re better off getting one of those inline cleaners. It’s a container that gets spliced into the water line that sprays down the overflow tube during the flush. You put chlorine tablets (or some use bromine hot tub tablets) in the container so all the chemicals go right to the bowl. Nothing sits in the tank potentially harming anything plastic.
This is, of course, assuming Whack-a-mole is referring to chlorine tablets that sit in the tank meant for cleaning the bowl, not that he’s trying to keep the tank clean.
I recently replaced a flapper valve on an old toilet and it was an awful task. I had to disconnect the tank from the pan to disassemble the valve only to discover the couplings to the pan had corroded and needed to be replaced. Quite a lot of work to replace a bit of torn plastic. I guess it was originally installed on a tight budget.
I notice more modern designs allow the flapper and the valve to be removed very easily and replacement kits are available when parts wear out.
Yeah. I am thinking of the hockey-puck-like drop-ins that slowly dissolve and release chlorine or bleach into the tank.
I am amazed that neither side has sorted this out. Make plastic parts that will tolerate the cleaners and/or make a cleaner that does not corrode the internal parts.
You’d think they’d work together on this but I guess not.
As someone who has helped replace an irrational number of toilets in her time:
Definitely do a quick measure of the distance from the bolts to the wall. I had very randomly happened to read about this when I did my aunt’s toilet some years ago (probably on the sdmb) and found that her toilet was 10" away not 12". She has a house from 1924.
If you switch from a round to an elongated bowl you might experience some wobbling. This just happened to me. I had to get toilet shims as no amount of tightening would fix it (don’t over-tighten!) If you don’t really care which you get, go with what is already there.
A couple of my friends just got new toilets and they said they really are happy with having gotten ones with straight sides. As in there’s no curves underneath, there’s no crevices to clean.
The details are kinda gruesome but suffice it to say that a new low flow connected to our old pipes is something our plumber doesn’t recommend. TP needs some force behind it to make it to the street. Failing that the TP can clog the line. And things can emerge at the front yard cleanout drain. They can even flow backward into the house.
I’m still looking but this one is keeping my interest:
My small worries are the low GPF (I know…save water but I don’t live in an area where water is an issue and I am dubious the low GPF toilets save water since you often have to flush more than once).
This is what got me, I bought one from Lowes and my toilet sits too close to the wall for the toilet I bought. Had to return it. Fortunately, I arranged the installer to pick it up, so he just took it back to the store
I sell plumbing fixtures in Chicago. I’m a stocking Toto and Gerber distributor.
It’s hard to go wrong with Toto. Re price, the Entrada is a good working toilet for a bit over 200 with a seat. If I needed to buy a toilet today I’d get the 1.6 gpf Drake cst743s. It’s just over $300 with the seat and works extremely well.
I’ve got a cheapy 2-button toilet (Glacier Bay maybe) and I’ve found that the #1 button never causes a problem, even with toilet paper. I was kinda sorta having problems with #2 just kind of leaving anything that might float behind. I finally figured out the secret was to hold down the #2 button a little longer, until everything had a chance to get down and out. Since then I’ve had no problems with the bowl emptying completely and have not had to flush any extra.
If you’re thinking of early low-flow toilets from the 1990s then ok, but that hasn’t been a problem in decades. They figured out how to make them work, to the point that new standard is 1.28 gallons instead of the previous 1.6. Also, even if you had to flush twice, the total water saved is still significant because the number of solid-waste flushes is way fewer than liquid-only.
I have a Mansfield toilet from the mid 1980s, so it’s probably using 3.5 gallons. It’s total garbage. Clogs if you look at it wrong, and swirls so much that some solids don’t even make it down to the outlet (swirling water is supposed to help scour the bowl, and this is the one thing low-flow toilets aren’t as good at, but scouring is no good if it can’t get rid of what the water scrapes off). So point being, some high-flow toilets sucked too, and this bias against new ones is outdated. It’s similar to the bias against early compact fluorescent and LED light bulbs. Poor early experiences does not mean they haven’t improved since then.
