Dual-flush toilets 'wasting more water than they save'
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
For example, we had a window air conditioning unit in our previous house that had an efficiency feature. Instead of recirculating the air, it would cool to the temperature you asked for, then set itself a few degrees higher. So it cooled down to the right temperature, and then just changed the temperature so it wouldn't remain as cool as you wanted. THat's not more efficient — that's just not doing its damn job.
Likewise, our dryer has settings that amount to "almost dry," "not actually dry," and "can't even tell you put it in the dryer." Who are these settings for? When I dry my clothes, I need them to be completely dry every time. I can't hang a shirt that's still damp in the closet or it will get all musty. WTF?
They "work" because the most common form of evacuation for humans is urination. And that is easily cleared with a lower volume of water. The math is that even if you have to flush three times after you poop to get everything gone, you've saved water because most of the time you only peed and that took less water than it did before. The math checks out.
That said, washing is a different story. That is because washing is a chemical process, not a mechanical one. Regulation has simultaneously cut phosphates[1] (EDIT: per wikipedia the phosphates chelates the water which allows the detergent to be more effective) and reduced water (which is required for chemical action) and as a result the effectiveness of washing units (dishwashers and clothes washers) has in some cases stopped being effective.
Regulation itself has become less effective (in my opinion) because it continues to attack the symptom and not the problem. For example, it would have been just as effective to upgrade waste water treatment plants to remove all phosphates rather than ban them from detergents, however that solution creates a tax burden which can be resisted by a population whereas restricting the sale of products the consumer wants cannot be countered by the consumers directly.
But plastics recycling comes to mind as a bit of a counter example, where all the effort has been put on dealing with the end problem, when perhaps they should be targeting the symptom (regulating unnecessary plastics and packaging, and taxing the producers instead of the consumers). Currently plastic producers have incentive to generate more plastics, and consumers are left trying to deal with the waste.
I’ve said this for years. It’s always been ignored or downvotes to oblivion, but maybe it’s finally catching on?
It’s not an end-consumer problem, because the further down the manufacturing and delivery chain you go the more difficult it becomes to recycle.
A complex mechanical product is more likely to have problems, which is something that can’t be ignored.
Either their standard was too lenient or their testing procedure unrealistic though, because my dishwasher has the "EU mode" (which has to be selected by default by law), and then 4 other modes that will actually clean the dishes.
I'm surprised that the manufacturers didn't label the EU mode as such to make clear to customers who they have to thank for that.
Such experiences sour consumers for future eco initiatives (compare e.g. early CFLs and LEDs leading to people hoarding incandescent bulbs and refusing to touch the technology to this day).
Vacuum cleaners are the EU's most recent victim.
It must be a quality thing I guess? Cheaper/worse dishwasher will never clean dishes as well as a better one without using least efficient programs.
And what's wrong with vacuums? I got the good old Henry hoover(if you're in UK you might know the brand) just a year ago and it's as good as ever.
In the US these newish dishwashers drive me crazy. They don’t have a heating element on the bottom (efficient!) and anything plastic is absolutely dripping wet, even after it’s been drying overnight (or rather, actively drying for a couple hours and then just sitting there). You’re supposed to top them up CONSTANTLY with Jet Dry (drying agent), but it barely does anything. Parent was spot on in describing the efficiency gains as being a result of not doing the damn job.
Also they still make both and the models with the heating element aren't hard to find.
THANK YOU, I had no idea why my dish washer seems to go through jetdry like it was water!
How is that possible? Even when I hand wash plastic items they'll usually dry within a few hours, at worst overnight.
The biggest problem with this is some of the not dry items have so much water on them they end up getting everything wet again when you even so much as slide out the dishwasher racks.
But mine is a cheap samsung dishwasher provided by the landlord, so I don't expect it to be terribly effective. Mainly I use the dishwasher when I forgot to do the dishes and need to start cooking and need the sink. It's basically an overflow sink for me.
Never ever again.
On vacuum cleaners - i would hazard a guess that you are in the UK where this has been a major talking point e.g. during the brexit referendum. Truth is that there are plenty of studies showing that new vacuums are as good as old ones and just use less energy. Regulating vacuums was a huge success in that sense. Of course if you get a 40£ tesco vacuum they fared better before they were obliged to try and be efficient, but by a proper brand and you shouldn't notice any difference (except where the brand maybe decided to reduce cost e.g. Dyson has gone downhill for years and recently decided to move HQ to Singapore...).
The energy saving has become goal, not an efficient outcome.
Dryers can absolutely be made to be more energy efficient! They just need to use reverse-cycle airconditioners to efficiently heat the air and dehumidify it instead of simply using a resistive heater. These are much more complex to make and are expensive.
Blowing lots of cool air through clothes will also dry them eventually, which is cheap and "energy efficient". Of course, this doesn't work well in humid climates and damages clothes. It's probably overall a net loss for the environment, as making new clothes takes a lot more resources than drying them.
Note for the other commentators that there are also "Condenser" dryers that pump the water into a hose or water tub instead of into the air - that are still otherwise resistive and not "Heat Pump" dryers though "Heat Pump" dryers are always "Condenser" dryers.
I've seen these in apartments in Europe; I presume this is because it's a PITA to route a dryer exhaust vent to the outside in a 400-year-old building with 2-foot thick stone walls. Such dryers work well; you just have to dump the accumulated water out of them every so often. But I've never seen one for sale in the US.
At least that's what I think my Hotpoint does.... it does get mighty hot and release a rubbery sort of smell when it's drying; my wife can't smell it but to me it stinks.
Clever equipment though.
Then there are "Heat Pump" dryers that operate with a compressor the same as a reverse-cycle air conditioner. "Heat Pump" dryers are always "Condenser" dryers.
https://www.abt.com/product/140010/Bosch-24-800-Series-White...
I've read the opposite, that heat can damage clothes.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990831080157.h...
Heat may confound this, suggesting an equilibrium that minimizes both wear from excessive heat and from excessive tumbling.
So I use the heat I warm my room with the extra airflow of the fans works well with my apartment
Unless the measure is page-load time, in which case it's a damn good measure.
Also, if you want to iron something, it better be not completly dry or you have to wet it a little bit for ironing.
I used to live in an apartment with a landlord-installed $200 cheapie dishwashers that never worked.
Then I moved to an apartment without a dishwasher, so I bought a $500 one that I could plug into the sink. Worked much better.
After that apartment, I moved into one that had the same dishwasher that I bought, but installed. Worked great! Then I moved into another apartment with a cheapie dishwasher that was so loud I'd only run it when I left.
Anyway, the lesson is that you need to be a savvy consumer... And skip the cheapest models!
New toilets are awful.. just terrible.
New models can be good!
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/the-best-dishwash...
They have otherwise nearly identical models with physical buttons. If I were buying it over again, I would definitely get one of those.
But the Ikea dishwasher we bought, it was loud but it worked
I'm not sure that's a good idea.
I had a dishwasher that had the failure described in the article linked below. The electronics circuitry (top of door) caught fire. Opening the door didn't stop the smoke, and also caused water to spew uncontrollably into the kitchen.
Fortunately I made a quick dash out to the garage and turned off the breaker so there was no damage to the kitchen.
But if I wasn't home .... what would have happened? If we were all sleeping upstairs while the fire was downstairs .... what would have happened?
https://www.consumerreports.org/dishwashers/whirlpool-settle...
I lived in a studio apartment with this kind of dishwasher for five years.
I refused to run it since it was so obnoxious.
Now I just treat the dishwasher as a drying rack. Works great.
When my old one failed to drain and filled up, I was amazed at how much water came out of it when I shimmy'd it to the back door and released the kraken over the back garden. It was like a tsunami.
1: https://www.consumerreports.org/dishwashers/energy-efficient...
0. use aerating faucet head to increase spread of water.
1. Short splash of cold water to remove stuck-on food, letting it sit if needed.
2. Wash with detergent on wet sponge, no added water.
3. Rinse with cold water, low water volume, with stacked dishes below faucet so that water from the rinse is rinsing dishes below as well.
I've never measured how much water is used, but I would think that it's fairly competitive against a dishwasher.
Finally, there has been very few times where it has been necessary for me to use hot water instead of cold. Unless I had burned the food, almost everything will come off after a good soak and scrub, even in cold water.
That's like just over a minute of the tap being on full blast for an aerated tap.
I am sure you could compete with that if you really tried, but from what I've seen a lot of people simply leave the tap on for the majority of the time they are washing the dishes.
Also, an additional difference between handwashing and using a dishwasher is the environmental impact of the manufacturing of the dishwasher, if the main concern is the environment. If the main reason is reducing work, then the dishwasher comes out ahead.
These are actually useful if you're ironing your clothes, which, admittedly, is not very popular these days. But yes, there should be "completely dry" option too.
In the NEW versions of the hybrids, they never go to no bars or full bars, and a toyota rep told us they made that software change because new owners were ringing up and asking if they need to do something to stop the car over charging (because it was showing full bars).
This sort of "presumptive tail wagging the dog" bullshit needs to stop. Manufacturers need to show us real data not the Fischer Price data.
If the car fuel economy is getting worse I will use the data feedback to collate anecdotal evidence to deliver to my mechanic.
I might pay a visit to my mechanic sooner if I see strange behavior. I t might save me money, it might save a life.... but with a fake ass dashboard feeding me bullshit readings It's not in the slightest bit useful.
The older style toilets I remember as a kid just worked. One flush would properly and fully clear out anything that didn't clog the darned thing.
The new toilets barely flush properly with two flushes, and I still wonder how much is left behind in the backwash.
Anecdata is anecdata. It's most likely that some toilets are just bad and some are good, regardless of flow amount.
Because of humidity that actually might be the right behaviour in some cases-- drop the temp lower then let it go back up a bit to lower the humidity level... but not in others. :)
If you're only measuring energy usage, then actually doing the job is irrelevant.
I know this because long ago when we retired our old cheapie house phone, I took it apart and it had two lead weights in the base and handset.
To have a similar "heft" compared to the old "ma bell" phones - which are made of actual durable materials - they removed lightness.
This is not the reason for the weights. Remove them from the base, and the phone ceases to stay put when you pick up the receiver (which is attached by a springy cord). Remove them from the receiver, and it is not heavy enough to keep the buttons on the hook depressed when hung up.
(Source: I did exactly this in college, with exactly these results.)
Unless it's a radiant heater by the window, it gives exactly as much energy as it consumes. An "energy efficient" heater is a useless one.
For example, I recall there was some computer EPA energy saver test - you ran the test and compared energy used to energy used at idle. Thing is the computer was so efficient that running the test was done mostly in hardware and took very little energy. So the ratio of benchmark energy to idle energy was pretty much 1:1.
Higher-quality brands like Miele still suck as good as ever, they just use less power thanks to improved designs.
A year later, I decided to look into it. It occurred to me that there should be an exhaust somewhere on the exterior of the house where the dryer is blowing air out of. I went looking for it, and couldn't find it! This was crazy.
After a lot of searching, I finally found it - the previous owner(s) had blocked the vents - they were covered. I removed the block, and air could flow freely again.
And suddenly the sensor dry worked perfectly.
If yours is not working, do some debugging.
What you really want is "sensor dry + 10 minutes" or some other offset.
we really need open appliances (with some safety features)
It's really a kind of recurring issue, where something is superficially "solved" (sounds good on the surface), but actually ends up making things worse in practice.
How many people have have lived / are living with absolutely terrible light and usage ergonomics (and will do so for years more) because of that stillborn "technology" ?
The kicker is that after 20 years of bad lighting environment, you have a local mercury disposal issue, regardless of how much mercury might have been saved in total emissions over the bulbs lifetime.
How about "good enough" technology, and by "good enough", I mean something that's better than incandescent.
Everyone has their metric, mine is how often I need to replace a bulb. I am a lazy person, I don't want to think about things if I can avoid it, see.
In my experience, CFL bulbs were bright enough, and lasted much longer than incandescent ones.
Plus, they are way less of a fire hazard, and I don't have to worry about scorching my hand on a desk lamp.
Environmentally, they are a disaster though.
Regarding the environmental disaster, why would you think that, given that the same technology was in use in much larger volumes since the 70ies or even earlier in commercial settings, offices and even homes? Lacking only the compactness, requiring external "ballast" and starters.
When I was young we had a large ring, maybe 40 to 50cm diameter under the ceiling in the kitchen, and I disliked it even then for looking "fugly" somehow. Oh, and the ring never lasted more than about half a year also :)
Also, each bulb contains only a few mg of mercury. Tuna has ~0.3 ppm of mercury, so if you eat two pounds of tuna then you'll ingest about 0.3 mg of mercury. I don't think you'll ingest more than 10% of mercury even if you break a CFL, so roughly speaking, "breaking a CFL" is the same order of magnitude as "two pounds of tuna" - doesn't sound that dangerous to me.
Anyone who says differently either uses weird light bulbs, which is a valid excuse, or has a closet full of hoarded tungsten bulbs they wish they could sell, which isn't.
When we moved in, I replaced all of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs because we were in that brief period where they were legitimately the best option due to being good enough and cheap enough compared to incandescent. Good LED bulbs (Cree) were still expensive enough that I would have had to drop a few hundred dollars to outfit the whole house.
Good LED bulbs are now common and cheap, and I will replace dead CFLs with them today but for now the existing CFLs work fine and only use marginally more power than LEDs.
As for disposal, I crush the bulbs in a paper bag and then huff the mercury fumes for recreation.
I take exception to this. Bad LED bulbs are common and cheap. Your average $5 bulb from the big box has about 3 common failure modes, all of which are exacerbated by heat. I haven't been able to buy a decent LED bulb at any brick and mortar retailer in years.
Meanwhile my 20 year old sylvania LED bulbs which are basically giant heatsinks all still work great. Now you know why nobody makes those anymore.
At this point, I shop for LEDs at IKEA. Tad more expensive, but they don't break after couple of months because someone soldered them on their knee in the middle of a Shenzhen marketplace (been there, seen that), making them overheat and eventually pop something off the circuit board.
And then I know people who got so pissed at LED bulbs they switched back to incandescent. Because turns out that the ban on incandescent bulbs in my country worked for about a year or two, before the stores got flooded with boxes of these, each with a label telling you it's not suitable for use at home, but only in storage buildings, etc. Which got the sellers off the hook, and also got the manufacturers off the hook for quality issues. My mother had a brief moment of weakness, but after two of these "legal" incandescents literally exploded over our heads, shattered glass flying everywhere, I convinced her to go back to buying LEDs.
You shouldn't do that. Mercury is very dangerous, and it takes so long to clear from your body that acute exposure often results in lifelong poisoning.
Though cremation is an option as long if the family agrees to huff the fumes. That's recycling!
Seriously though, how do you dispose of them? Save the mercury forever? Is there even a noticeable amount of mercury in them?
Of the CFLs I installed over the years I've had mixed results. Some are 15 years old and still going strong. Others I have had to replace more than once, although usually with LEDs now. The LEDs have mixed results too, with them being far more susceptible to heat failure in enclosed fixtures. Annoyingly they're usually built around a number of LED elements wired in series, so if any one element goes bad the whole bulb goes dim or fails entirely.
I know people used to complain a lot about CFLs being flickery and having bad color balance, but I only ever had one pair of bulbs (from a two pack) that were really bad in that regard. The pack I bought from WalMart for reasons that are lost to time. They were truly atrocious, one was orangey and the other more blue, and if you looked out the side of your eye you could see the flicker. They also died within a year thankfully, even though both were in well ventilated fixtures. My final point is that I've had much worse luck with CFLs mounted upside down (with the base pointing up). Except for the Wal*Mart specials and one enclosed outdoor fixture I think all of the ones I have installed right side up are still working.
> When we moved in, I replaced all of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs
I did that when I bought a house in 2014. Then when I built a house in 2018, I did all LEDs.
Incandescents were banned, and CFLs were heavily promoted and subsidized to replace them.
Meanwhile, along came a superior technology, ten times as energy efficient, longer lasting, and with a broader range of light which is at least as good.
So all that heavy-handed regulation produced, was an era of inferior light, a mercury disposal problem, and the inability to acquire incandescents for applications such as heating, which they're excellent for. Sometimes a lot of heat and a bit of light is what you want, and most of those devices have an Edison socket.
To head off one objection: any technically competent person could have taken a look at the trajectory of LED technology and said "hold on, CFLs suck, how about we just hang back and wait five to ten years?". LED bulbs were hardly a black swan.
Yeah, that seems about par for the course for this kind of regulation. Sometimes a blind cat catches a dead mouse.
As CFLs? Nowhere near.
Early LED bulbs had a horrible color rendering index, too. They made things look weird.
Cheap LED bulbs have the same reliability problem as cheap CFLs, too. They both skimp on the heat dissipation. The life of semiconductiors (in the control circuitry, for CFLs) halves with each ten degree Celsius rise in temperature.
Cheap bulbs use cheap, low-spec components close to the edge of their ratings and treat them badly. Irrespective of the base light-producing technology.
The mercury-in-CFLs problem is as overhyped as the asbestos problem (there are hundreds of thousands of miles of asbestos water pipes carrying drinking water) and the idea that plastics are bad for the environment. (In most cases, they're far better than equivalently priced alternatives.)
Finally, I had CFLs in my house for over ten years before LED substitutes became available. Now that LEDs are cheap enough and good enough, I'm using them. But from the late '90s to about 2012, CFLs were it.
OTOH I indeed don't really need them anymore (maybe as a temporary spare) because meanwhile I also upgraded everything to warmwhite(2700k) retrofit filaments, which saves much energy and doesn't flicker at all.
They are Osram(by name only, meanwhile chinese owned) "PARATHOM Retrofit CLASSIC A" and "B". No smarts, no frills, no dimming. Just the right light. I'm using the clear ones from 2.5W to 8W. Compared to anything I've tried before they are excellent, and the first ones meanwhile about 3 years old? None of them broke so far.
[1] https://www.ledvance.com/professional/products/lamps/led-lam...
I remember when we switched my old workplace from fluorescents to LEDs everybody at complained for weeks about headaches and sore eyes.
Besides that, they are under 10 dollar now, and as stated elsewhere lasting longer, using much less energy, and depending on the model/brand give acceptable light. Though there is trash on the market also.
Have you ever heard of the story of Sam Vimes boots? https://moneywise.com/a/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfair...
Or much older "Wer billig kauft, kauft zweimal!"(Who buys cheap, buys two times!), you get what you pay for, and so on.
Maybe it doesn't impact you so much because energy is cheap where you live, so you don't (need to) care/think about it(for now).
They're measuring flush volume, when they care about water used over time.
Those toilets were for people who bought toilets.
Don't get me started with 'high efficiency' dishwashers.
(Ignore the politics at the end)
This point from the article which comes further down in the page explains -
>> The majority of them use the drop valve system, which sits at the bottom of the cistern and opens to allow the water to flow out when the flush is pressed. Debris and other issues can cause the mechanism to fail to close, meaning water continually flows from the cistern and into the bowl.
>> Older cisterns tend to use a siphon system, which works by pushing water upwards until it reaches a point at which it can flow into the bowl. Because that point is above the waterline when the toilet is not being flushed, the system is less likely to develop the same sort of leak.
There is a bigger problem here though, which is that manufacturers seem to have no incentive to develop leakproof designs since they aren't paying for failures, and there isn't strict enough regulation on these products.
I am about to try siphoning.
https://www.amazon.com/VP-Racing-Fuels-3512-Motorsport/dp/B0...
The US sensibly learning from the UK just produced an improved version.
Also I do wonder if a scale preventer injector (they go online like a water filter) would be more or less expensive than the toilet parts?
Since so much complicated software is being rammed into devices and the consumer is ever accustomed to increased ease of use and lack of mental engagement with the technology, they won't ever invest time to maintain the technology that they have in front of them, since understanding it will involve aeons of time due to the systems' complexity and/or lack of documentation. You're then at the mercy of the provider of the technology, who may or may not decide to maintain it at a whim.
I think this is particularly true in cars, where great strides have been made in engine management and "smart" sensors etc. but where the infotainment systems and general car "features" are reliant on activation by the manufacturer, or an on-going service that the manufacturer provides. If they ever decide to stop the service, a feature of the car is unusable. It's like BMW's horrible idea to "activate" features of the car based on a subscription service.
I have a 1972 Beetle that will carry on running for decades due to its simplicity; I also have a 2016 new Beetle that I suspect will have a far shorter lifespan. There are buttons on the steering wheel that won't do anything without paying VW for the privilege; Android Auto is also not enabled here in the UK without paying £200 for the privilege, and the VW garages I have been to in order to enable haven't succeeded in doing it, or believe it isn't available on the car....
It's like cloud computing for cars, which is short-sighted in future usability. This mentality has affected everything, from music and film availability, to apps and all technology, which is increasingly in every part of life.
It's insane. Everything is far far more complicated than it has ever been in human history, yet is presented as a simple service to attain, so the adoption of short-term usability grows. It isn't an improvement at all.
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/feat...
I'm pretty confident that it's minuscule locally (these aren't European rivers: https://www.google.com/search?q=plastic+waste+river&tbm=isch), but I couldn't find solid data on waste that gets first exported, then dumped into a river.
Say it takes 1 year (probably less) from when a bag is created to when it gets thrown away. After it gets thrown away, it takes 100-1000 years to completely decompose. That means bags are entering the landfill faster than they are "leaving" via decomposition. That's going to be a problem. After enough time we'd just be like a malicious or poorly-designed AI that covered the Earth in plastic bags rather than paper clips.
Supposing for the sake of the argument you're right, that means we need enough landfill space for 500 years' worth of plastic bags. Is that really so much space that it's a problem?
I've also been to countries where these bags make it into the ocean and become micro plastics. As with all things there are pros and cons. Most of our civilization has cons for the environment, but from what I can tell the best situation for most people who's garbage makes it to a landfill is to use mult-reuse recycled plastic bags.
Being as I've already made the commitment to the cloth bags I just have to keep using them until they hit their 131st use, then keep going.
Since Australia banned single use plastic bags at supermarkets I have not seen a single bag floating around the street which used to be a common sight.
They get washed once in a while when they inevitably get dirty and I can repair them quite easily if a stitch finally fails or they get tears, which hasn't happened yet.
People need to keep and use what they already have instead of lazily buying more new stuff all the time.
They really don't last forever. I've had to replace over 3 LED bulbs in my house that didn't last 3 years.
https://blog.1000bulbs.com/home/what-is-an-enclosed-fixture-...
So you will get some failures but over all they last much longer.
Honest confusion:
Does the big button correspond to a big amount of water? Or is it for a little water, with a big button because this is the most commonly used button?
Since on some designs the smaller button cannot be pressed separately and therefore corresponds to a big flush, since both parts of the button are depressed at once; it stands to reason small will always be bigger flush, which I rationalise as urination being the more common operation and therefore deserving the larger button in order for the user to press more easily. However it's actually the case that big is usually the larger flush, which suggests there's some magic button size ratio at which their meaning crosses over.
I think this goes to show how difficult UX is.
- Complexity is bad, especially in plumbing. I also refuse electronics between me and waste removal.
- It's confusing.
- I don't think the difference in water usage matters _at all_. Talk to me about irrigation (both urban and agricultural) instead.
When going out and using such horrible devices I'm quite certain I pick wrong more than half the time.
https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/hospital-water-ta...
Yes. And the insane amounts of water leaked from our ancient pipes
I had one where the big button was for more water. Now I have one that the little button is for less frequent use.
We have a least one leaking system like this in our house - and it's in a nice tiled wall so doing maintenance is like keyhole surgery. From what I've seen so far I'm pretty sure both buttons on our toilets do the same thing (mind you they are the same size).
That is the main reason why I went with plain old toilet without embedding it in tiles. I've seen too many half-working embedded toilets at my friends' houses to have one too, I prefer to be able to easily repair it myself when required.
from what i've seen, that's by design. you push both buttons at the same time to get the double flush.
to me, the water-saving option that makes the most sense is a vacuum toilet along with a greywater system and a biotank for recycling the waste locally (though it is more expensive of course).
How much fuel alone is used checking the biotank? They have to be checked quarterly once you get the bureaucrats involved.
Expense is a good approximation for resources.
The point of the post is also simplicity over moving parts.
I assumed that you were supposed to push both buttons down if you wanted more water.
I don't really understand them though, so who knows.
Very convenient, except for having to explain to guests.
Your hands are at their dirtiest when you go to flush the toilet. The button design seems very difficult to clean, particularly the wall of the button hole.
In most public restrooms, I kick the lever with my foot to flush the toilet. Not possible with the recessed button design.
I guess you could read the manual, print out the method of operation and put it on the wall/door/wherever.
We need laws around serviceability and warranty just as much as resource usage. How about every device should work for 10 years, no exceptions.
I refuse to believe we can make cars with 10 year, 100k warranties but not toilets or refrigerators. Ever try to get an appliance fixed? You’re basically paying a guy to come out and tell you a circuit board needs replaced for 300 dollars or to just buy a new device, btw that estimate costs 100 dollars.
It’s ridiculous, especially since it hurts regular people way more than the profits help anyone.
https://www.vivasanitary.co.uk/news/how-a-dual-flush-syphon-...
I think I had one cistern that was siphon based (guessing based on needing to push the button hard) but had two buttons for different sizes of flow. Then again, it would often fail in a way that made me think it wasn’t siphon based.
It's also bad ux because you need to do more work for the most common operation.
That does not sound like the typical American home toilet. I don't think I've ever seen a toilet using that kind of siphon system, I'm having trouble imagining how it works.
Why don't we use that kind in the USA?
I'd guess ordinary toilets in the USA are the worst of both worlds then, no water-saving small-flush, plus leak-prone design.
For anyone else clicking the link, watch it from the beginning for that bit.
It replaced a 100 year old pull chain toilet with that with a copper cistern. it sadly was at the end of its life. there's no way the fiddly plastic parts in the new toilet will last 100 years, let alone 20.
What will wear out in your new toilet is the rubber seals. Same as the old one.
Feels like a solved problem in the USA, where a $100 toilet will use 1.3 gallons (~5L) of water to flush away whatever will fit down the tube. And do it through a gravity fed system that works without power and has about two moving parts that are easily accessible and repairable by any dummy that is using the toilet at the time.[1]
Is this a regulatory thing or a cultural thing? I've had so many issues with UK toilets. Why is this a problem.
[1] https://www.lowes.com/pd/AquaSource-Henshaw-White-WaterSense...
The in-wall cisterns may look like a maintenance nightmare, but on Grohe products (I assume other manufacturers are the same but don't have experience) you can open the flush plate and easily take out every single part through the 20x30cm hole. It's actually easier to repair than a traditional toilet as you don't require any tools, other than a flat screwdriver to turn off the water valve.
I could rant all day about poor habits of the construction industry in the UK, but toilets aren't even in my top 10.
Whereas with US toilets, I just don’t get them. The low flat bowl is weird, discourages peeing standing up, and then the design of most public and business toilets with those massive gaps on the doors, giving you no privacy... what’s with that?
This is a simple maintenance issue affecting every western flush toilet design I've encountered.
I don't understand why a negligent owner/tenant problem is being portrayed as a failure of water-saving flush toilet designs. Are we now expecting plumbing fixtures to disable themselves when in need of simple servicing? Is that the world we want?
How about we stop wasting potable fresh water on flushing toilets instead.
> Until 1 January 2001, the use of siphon-type cisterns was mandatory in the UK[12] to avoid the potential waste of water by millions of leaking toilets with flapper valves, but due to EU harmonisation the regulations have changed.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet#Siphon-flush_me...
I could imagine that this is a good thing at some places. At least where I live it's recommended to "waste more water", because of all the water saving that came with the recent years, the sewers are drying out and stop working properly. Then again, it would probably better in the long run to get a new sewer concept to save more water again.
I've had dual-flush Toto units for many years without problems. Small button = small flush, large button = large flush.