Hacker News Reader

Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

What kind of toilet is that? If you ever wrapped the toilet seat with cling wrap (no judging of why you would do this), you can see how many droplets are on the wrap after the flush. The toilet in the YT videos looks like it's been modified to prove a point.

View on HN

Commercial, not residential.

"Commercial toilets emit energetic and rapidly spreading aerosol plumes":

* https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24686-5

E.g.

* https://www.americanstandard-us.com/Toilets-Commercial/Mader...

* https://www.kohler.com/en/products/commercial/shop-commercia...

Please ignore my ignorance in ... the science of toilets, for lack of a proper term ... but these look like regular US-toilets to me. I believe them to be US-toilets, because the seats are missing the front section.

Can you please explain?

Residential toilets only use gravity to flush. Water flows down from the tank into the bowl.

Commercial toilets use water pressure which helps clean the bowl with a jet of water but will also create much more of a spray outside the bowl.

In many (perhaps most?) countries there is not a distinction between commercial and residential toilets, I rarely see any here that aren't gravity flushed.

I remember the first time going into public toilets in the US (at LAX) and I went into a cubicle and thought I'd picked one with a broken toilet - the bowl was full of water!

Wikipedia provides a good introduction into the many kinds of toilet designs found around the world. The U.S.-american residential style with lots of water floating high ip in the bowl, as well as the high-pressure flushing system straight from the pipe are uncommon in most continents. There DIN-norms about „Flachspüler“ and „Tiefspüler“-style toilets e.g. in Germany.

My favourite: Japanese „tornado flush“ style toilets. Optional with built-in bidet or „washlet“. There seems to be zero aerosols and it flushes clean more consistently than others.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet

[1] https://eu.toto.com/de/produkte/randlose-wcs

Home toilets have the front section

Reply on news.ycombinator.com