Comment by aristophenes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aristophenes | Hacker News Reader

This is purely anecdotal, but for me every toilet I use in the UK feels like the result of the local plumber trying to invent the toilet for the first time. So many varieties, so many weird ways of getting it to work, most of them failing to do their simple job. Mechanisms plastered behind the wall, using pumps instead of gravity fed tanks, little waterfalls in the bowl that circulate water instead of flush it down. Square bowls, unreachable toilet paper, even pumps to get the waste water out! I don't understand.

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...

I think you've just been unlucky. I was born and raised in the UK and have never seen such 'pump' systems, except where the toilet is in a basement and a pump is required to move the water up to the sewage line.

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.

Interesting, also UK here, never really noticed problems with our toilets on the scale you are describing. There are some that annoy me because you need to push the flush a couple times (pump action), but fairly rare.

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?

Haha, yes the difference in the bathroom stalls is real. I've had a few hilarious conversations about these issues over beers in a pub. Personally, I think the stalls in the US are as they are to discourage problematic behavior inside the bathroom stalls (vandalism, drugs, and worse), and it's just good etiquette to not look through the cracks. Having an actual little room to yourself with a full door in a public toilet in the UK is nice.

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