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Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

I've lived in Vietnam for the last 4 years and got used to the 'bum gun' as we call them. It is awesome.

I came back to the US late January for a meeting in SF. I was staying at my friends house and lamenting the missing gun. My friends were refusing to install one because they were afraid that their two year old would use it to soak the entire bathroom.

I started checking Amazon anyway... once everyone started stockpiling TP, the prices started to rise and I started to see more and more of them marked as 'unavailable'.

Now there is definitely no chance they will get one in the near future...

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I've been using a portable, battery-powered bidet (Toto brand) for years. The first vacation that I took to Japan sold me on them nearly instantly, but I didn't want to go through with installing them once I got home. This is a good compromise.

I think I'd prefer to use a bum gun over the whole toilet seat thing. You can really move the bum gun around more easily than you can your body and it is super easy to wipe it down to clean it.

Yeah, I think when all of the dust clears on this that I will be putting in the bum guns in our place. The idea has spread to my entire house and close family, who spend a lot of time living with us during the year, over the past few weeks.

Yea, wait for the prices to come back down. It is an easy install too... the ones on amazon come with all the parts. Once you get the water turned off, it just takes about 15 minutes to assemble it all.

The toilet seats have adjustable nozzles, and even can be set to spray in a pattern to get everywhere. You still need to be in the right position but it's not so difficult.

Oh, that is part of the fun of using random bum guns around se asia... all different water pressure and quality of handles. It is like playing russian roulette with your bung hole.

Actually though, the trick is just shoot a bit into a toilet first to test it... ;-)

How do you not get water everywhere, and what do you use to dry? I’m assuming you’re also using soap and your hands, or toilet paper or something.

Many of the toilet seat based bidets (such as the Brondell Swash) have sensors in the seat that won't allow the water sprayer or blow dryer to run unless contact is detected from someone actually sitting down. That's what relieved my concern about it. I have a toddler who likes to press buttons, too! He just presses them and nothing happens. You can also just turn it off and completely deactivate it by holding the stop button for 5 seconds.

Can confirm that my Toto Washlet C200 does this as well. The water will stop about 2 seconds after you've gotten up if you did not manually stop it.

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