would it overwhelm the plumbing (either within the building or under the streets outside)?
Do engineers factor in this possible “max load” when designing big buildings, or just assume “no more than X% will be flushing at any one time”? I’m thinking sports stadiums must factor in a serious half-time tidal wave, too.
Engineers take all that into account when they design buildings and stadiums and such.
Video of a flush test at a stadium:
Sometimes they do have problems. Here’s a news article about a flush test to see if they’ve fixed all of the problems that they were having:
More flush test articles:
Urban legend says this was tried at some campus (Texas, IIRC0. the place had a belltower that chimed the hours, and some engineering society (always the engineering students) got as many people to be at a toilet on campus and flush when they heard the bell chime the hour. The story goes tha the main sewer pipe exploded, but what would a good urban legend be without a funny ending?
Most high-rises, IIRC, have a jog in the drain lines every so often, so a flush does not fall 1000 feet building up momentum all the way.
The building would take off and head for the moon.
Didn’t Abbie Hoffman have a proposal similar to this?
(I’m too tired to G it…)
I have been in buildings when a majority of the toilets were flushing. The water has been shut off. When the water was turn back on the boosted water pumps restarted a lot of the flushometers opened. The pumps will start and go to full speed trying to get the system up to pressure. Slowly a few flushometers will close. As a few close the systtem pressure will increase. The increased pressure will close more until most will close. There may be a few that will have to be repaired to get them to operate properly.
The Empire State Building will have a number of storage tanks at different levels in the building, or perhaps all somewhere up high. Flushing all the toilets could drain all those tanks if there no limiting mechanism. Refilling those tanks requires pumping water in stages all the way up to the tank levels. They will have a known recovery time for the loss of all water in holding tanks.
Can I ask, exactly how many toilets do you think one building has? It isn’t like there are 5000 rooms, each with their own pair of his and hers toilets. There are public bathrooms on each floor, and then a select number of office suites have a single ‘half bath’ [toilet and sink only] and an even smaller number of office suites that might have an added shower. I would be surprised if there are more than 2500 toilets in the entire building. And those supporting probably 10 000 people not counting tourists.
Would it cause earthquakes in China or Bolivia or somewhere?
That number sounds fair (this page agrees with 2,500, but bear in mind Colophon’s Third Typographic Theorem when considering its reliability). But that’s still a lot of effluent in one go: a toilet on full flush is allowed to use 6 litres (1.6 gallons) of water, so you’re talking 4,000 gallons thundering through the pipework in one go.
I’m sure there is a truther conspiracy waiting to be born here.
Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, that is a hell of a page for whacked visuals :eek:
With 51 miles of piping, I think it can probably deal with a 4000 gallon flush.
My god, you’re right! WTC7 was brought down by controlled flushing! :smack: