I have a visceral reaction to the existence of low-flush toilets, and it’s not positive.
But I seek to place that prejudice to one side, and open my mind to the facts.
My intuitive reaction is that a low-flush toilet does not save water if the user flushes it several times, as opposed to the single flush needed with the old-fashioned, Eisenhower administration-era toilets that preceded the low-flush mandates.
But surely now we can replace my intuition with actual data.
What has been the overall effect of mandating low-flush toilets?
I’m sure it resulted in fabulous business for toilet manufacturers and plumbers.
The thing is, and I’ve said it before - a properly designed and properly installed low-volume toilet can perform as well as your 60 year old toilet. Maybe better.
It’s the no-name crappy crappers that gave the whole thing a bad name.
Shortly after I bought my house, the county water district offered up free Toto toilets, and they’ve been just fine and clog-free to the point that one day I did manage to clog one and it took a good while to remember where the plunger was.
Before changing out the toilets, I always knew exactly where the plunger was as it had been used the day before.
Some low-flow toilets have a two-stage flush mechanism: push-and-release the lever for a low-flow flush to clear out liquids, push-and-hold for a larger flush to clear out solids. As noted, not all toilets are created equal; my sister’s house has low-flow toilets (I think they’re Toto), and they work amazingly well.
I agree that depends on who made the low flush. I have the two stage flush toilets. A double flush will not clear any better than a single flush and hold flush. But I do have to keep track of the plunger. Biggest problem are guest who use excessive paper or do not flush and hold.
Now the hotel where I worked those were cheap toilets badly designed. Again a double flush would not prevent a clog. But they did clog often.
There is an amazing difference between various products. I put some very expensive dual flush Kohler toilets in a luxury home I recently built and though they looked awesome they did not flush very well. More recently I put some very cheap Foremost toilets in a bathroom at a business and a lower end condo renovation and they work beautifully; they flush well and have a really quiet fill cycle. The moderately expensive Rona dual flush toilets in our house are amazing.
Look at the MaP rating for the grams of solids it is rated to flush for starters. Higher is better. There is good info available online now.
Look at product reviews also. The kohler model I bought were a new design and probably needed some reworking.
Get a power flush toilet that uses air pressure to force solids through the trap. They’re expensive but you’ll never have to use a plunger again (in the past year with mine - no backups - and these were common with my old 5 gallon model).
They’re the best of both worlds - very, very highly recommended.
I can hardily endorse this endorsement. Pressure assisted toilet replacing the 5-gallon model in my previous house stopped all rooter visits, despite the damned, bloody silver oaks outside.
I don’t understand. You think the 5 gallon models are better? Why?
You can stop roots growing into your lines by applying a copper sulfate solution every 6 months. You don’t need to have someone out to do that you know.
If you need to flush more than once, you have the wrong toilet. And generally speaking, you don’t need a power toilet (unless your horse is going to use it). Just get the Toto Drake. It’s not the cheapest, but it won’t break the bank either ($270.00).
Then again, some people like flushing multiple times, whether they need it or not.
I think low volume toilets got a bad name because the first ones didn’t work well but I haven’t heard many complaints about the newer ones. I have a house built in 2002 with 3 fairly cheap toilets, they all work great.
I have a $50, 1.6 gallon toilet in my house and a roommate with IBS. I never hear him flush twice, I never need to flush twice and we don’t need to plunge any more than I remember plunging while growing up when we had the 5-gallon toilets.
We may have a slight advantage over my parents’ house, as theirs is a slab and ours has a 6-foot long straight sewage pipe right under the potty, but I’m not exactly versed in the ways of sewage and plumbing.
I have a Toto compact toilet (mounts 10 incehs from the wall instead of 14). I have not had big problems with it other than the water level in the bowl. The water level sits so low that when flushed I frequently get spalshback onto the seat, and often times during a “load” the “dark matter” will sit above the waterline, resulting in increased odor and sometimes a need for a second flush to completely clean the bowl.
Another vote for “you’re using crappy crappers.” Check out the American Standard Champion line with America’s Best Flushing System. These use 1.6 gpf, but have a larger throat and dump all the water into the bowl pretty much at once. Between a larger drain pipe and a larger volume of simultaneous water flowing into the bowl, things go down and stay down on the first flush. There are videos on the American Standard site, but I wouldn’t recommend letting your kids watch it because it is full of kids behaving badly. It’s an expensive toilet, but we don’t even have a plunger in our bathroom that has this bad boy in it, and the kids have been known to use a TON of toilet paper at once. In the master bathroom we have an expensive Kohler that is also low-flow, but clogs far too often. In fact we even have a toilet snake because of the Kohler, but we’ve never had to use it on the American Standard. Kohler is a decent brand, but if you’re replacing your toilet, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend anything except the Champion. In the three and a half years we’ve owned it, with it being the primary toilet for five kids, all we had to replace was the fill valve(we got this one, with a ton of innovative features) and a rubber ring, which cost about three bucks. The Champion doesn’t use a flapper like other toilets, it has a tower system and the rubber ring is the seal for the tower. After a few years it stretched and became leaky. Took about four minutes to replace and now it works like a charm again.
The only criticism I have of the one I have is the placement of the bolts to hold on the seat. You need a deep throat socket to access the bolts, and that’s a real PITA. I think they may have fixed this in the newer ones, but if you want to be able to adjust or remove your seat for cleaning you’ll want to look at this before buying.
Furthermore, even if the occasional solid flush does require an extra flush or two, that you’re using a third of the water for the mostly-liquid flushes should still result in a net water savings (assuming you haven’t adopted a “let it mellow” policy).
When I remodeled out downstairs bathroom, I replaced the toilet with an American Standard Cadet 3. I picked this one because it was really inexpensive, and had good reviews. I’m very happy with it’s performance - it out-performs the toilet it replaced, and uses less than half the water.
I think I read that as “hardly” - hence my question.
But seriously, check into the copper sulfate (if you do end up having problems even with the new rig). You might still need to have someone out every few years but at the very least it will reduce the frequency of backups. You can get the stuff at any good hardware store like Lowes or HD.
Put them where every you get the first signs of a backup. Also put one next to the washer and water heater. Very handy. All of those things are in my basement and I don’t go down there very often so aside from backups, it’s a great early warning system for me.
