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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

When I had my bathroom redone, the contractor offered to set me up with an "illegal toilet" smuggled in from Mexico that uses more water per flush.

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Why?

The US has had (roughly) four kinds of toilet:

1. The old 5 gallon per flush kind. Didn’t clog all that often. Flushed very very slowly. Contributed to downstream clogs because the outflow was insufficient to get the solids flowing well through the pipes.

2. The early lower-water-consuming kind. These were awful. Replace them if you have one!

3. Modern toilets. They use 1.28-0.8 gallons per flush, they rarely clog, and they don’t tend to clog the pipes downstream. They are generally quite good.

4. Flushometer toilets. They are often messy - they flush loudly and spray water around. Eww.

Why go backwards?

Modern toilets are tested for their ability to flush well:

https://map-testing.com/

I can confirm this. My house had cheap low-flush toilets that were absolutely horrible. They clogged daily and were difficult to plunge and I began storing a bucket near every toilet so I could efficiently carry out the routine plunging sessions.

I was hesitant to buy new toilets because I figured they’re all low-flush, so what difference would it make? I found a top-reviewed model on Home Depot and it made a huge difference. Went from everyday clogs to a clog maybe once every few months. I replaced all my toilets and it’s the best home upgrade I ever did.

Oddly enough, dual flush toilets may have ended up leading to more water use at a macro level to the point that water companies are pushing to have them banned in the UK. They have a common fault which means they can continuously leak water without emptying the cistern (so the owner never notices).

Also I never know which button to press. Sometimes the big button is the one to press because UX people say it's the most visible, so that produces the smaller flush. If you want a bigger flush, use the smaller button. Sometimes (more logically) big button = big flush.

With a single control, it's more commonly hold for short flush, release for long flush, which is just madness.

There's another style: Push the lever down for a standard large flush, pull it up for a small flush.

Better quality toilets from Toto and other well-regarded brands can do so much more, with so much less water.

You just need to be willing to spend the money on the better brand equipment.

It's a piece of ceramic, why do you need a better brand to work right?

With improved (and patented) design, they can flush much better. And they have better coatings on the ceramic, so that your "output" washes off much easier, and doesn't stick to the walls so easily.

The modern tests for toilets are much tougher than the old tests, and the best modern toilets will pass with flying colors on those tougher modern tests. Older toilets, and lesser quality toilets, can't hold a candle to the kind of performance you are able to get with the better and more modern toilets.

Toto is just one example. They're not the only one with top performing toilets. You can look on Consumer Reports to see the tests they run, and which toilets do well on those tests.

You would think so, yet I notice big differences between toilets’ ability to flush well.

They make ones that "store" house tap pressure water and can flush with more force.

Yeah!

Have an acquaintance, whom I'll call "Big Shit", whose feces were so voluminous that they required custom (i.e., high-volume, larger diameter) toilets and enlarging the sewer line in the house.

Big Shit's oriental wife has broadcast his productivity to all of his friends, much to our amusement and disgust. Certain asians, unlike Americans, are not at all shy about discussing their (and their spouses') bathroom experiences in excruciating detail.

The high efficiency toilets use less water but higher pressure which means they still work quite well. Apparently they still make toilets which use the old design but still use less water. They have to be flushed a few times though. I assume they are significantly cheaper because why else would an ex-landlord have installed that in my apartment back when I was renting?

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