What sort of new appliance is so hip, so cool, so stylish, so sophisticated, so much a work of art…that you’d put it in your glass penthouse living room, so that you could impress your hot model girlfriend? Don’t look just yet. I’ll give you a hint. It has an iPod dock, speakers, a light, motion sensor activation, motorized access, and a touch screen remote. It only costs $6400. Make your best guess now.
Here’s what it looks like after dark, after you and hot model chick have knocked back a bottle of Opus One and you let the gadget’s soft glow set the mood for what comes next.
What could such a home appliance be? Answer below.
Yes that’s right, the new NUMI super toilet from Kohler flushes green dreams and your cash!
We’ve been told time and again the importance of using a single sheet of toilet paper so as to not stress Gaia’s natural state, that we should put bricks in our toilet tank to reduce the amount of water used, and even that we should all be like eco saint Ed Begley Jr., who doesn’t use any water at all, but composts his, er, crap.
Some greenists say we should be “…radically abandoning the flush toilet – one of the world’s most destructive habits, absorbing 40% of water available for domestic consumption and contaminating everything in its way”.
So imagine the howling that will now ensue with the worlds largest indoor plumbing fixture company tossing all those ideas down the toilet, and reincarnating it as a must have hipster item that is marketed in a way like a Ferrari is marketed to a guy with only one thing on his mind. Of course if that doesn’t work out, you can always compost your girlfriend.
Truly, it is the Poop de Grace of toilets.
Here’s the remote:
Here’s the feature list:
- Motion Activated Lid and Seat – Front sensors react to your movement when
you enter the room for hands-free opening and closing of the cover. Motion at the floor-level engages sensors to raise and lower seat.
- Advanced Bidet Functionality – Self-cleaning wand features multiple options for
water spray pattern. Adjust wand position, water pressure and temperature to your preferences
- Integrated Air Dryer – Located in the wand for more efficient drying.
- Deodorizer – Air is pulled through a powerful deodorizing charcoal filter.
- Heated Seat – Warms the seat to your comfort level.
- Feet Warming – Warm air from floor-level vents, heats the floor surface and warms your feet.
- Illuminated Panels – Ambient lighting illuminates your space with a soft, inviting glow.
- Music – Built-in speakers allow you to play a selection from the Numi toilet’s pre-programmed audio, FM radio or to connect your MP3 player through the audio input jack in the remote docking station.
- Touch Screen Remote Fine tune every option to your personal preference. Magnetic Docking Station Charges and stores the remote.
- User Presets – Easily customize and recall your saved preferences.
- Numi Flush Technology – A sophisticated, automatic flush system delivers unprecedented water savings and power.
- Auxiliary Controls – Allows you to control basic functionality without use of the remote.
What, no self cleaning bowl? Personally if I was given one, I’d program the “Numi toilet’s pre-programmed audio” to play a “A Time for Tony” so I could “Think”.
Now the real question is: how many will Al Gore, Sheryl Crowe, and Leonardo DiCaprio buy? I can see this as the new green cred question asked on the red carpet – “is it true that you own a Numi?”
I think I just found my new office chair. What a timesaver!
tesla_x says:
April 23, 2011 at 5:51 pm
“Dedicated circuit required, protected with Class A Ground-Fault Circuit-Interrupter (GFCI) or Residual Current Device (RCD)”
Yup.
Good idea….or this might happen:
http://www.buzzhumor.com/videos/28102/Idiot_Pissing_On_Electric_Fence
BITD, when I was running a survey crew for the county highway department, in the early 70s, we actually talked a couple of my more brain dead rodmen into attempting that trick. The results were similar, if somewhat less dramatic. The accompanying bout of ROTGL helped prove Hannah Arendt’s point about the banality of evil.
They should have called it the “Crapper 9000”!
Also should charge $9000.00 for it because if someone has more than 6k to
spend on a crapper why not take a couple more Gs from them?
How foolish to think Thomas Crapper is turning over in his grave! What nonsense!!!
He’s swirling round, and round, and round…..
So is he going to sit in the living room and watch his supermodel girlfriend use it … while he tweaks with the remote control?
For those who can afford it, the i-Toilet seems a good investment. After all,
you are likely to use it very day and it is much less expensive than the Ferrari.
Speaking of Narita airport, I remember the first time I pushed the squirt
button, unfortunately, while it was on firehose setting. But I have come
to appreciate the techo toilets in Japan. When I was visiting Niigata, in
winter, I was dreading the visit to the bog. Energy costs are high in Japan,
so they do not heat the corridors and toilets, and Niigata is on the coast
that looks to Siberia. Fortunately, they heat the one part of the toilet that
most matters, namely the seat!
mmmm toilet flushing does use a lot of water, but it isnt lost to space, it goes to a river or the sea where it evaporates and falls back as rain recharging the very sources it came from – its an endless cycle that will last forever – its called the hydrological cycle – why can greens not fathom this when school children pick it up in minutes?
The same can be said for the tissue, firstly the more demand, the trees we plant – I thought trees were a good thing in the green brigades eyes? Ok so when they are big enough we cut them down and make them into tissue, but most that tissue is collected at the treatment plant via mechanically raked (sometimes manual) screens where it is than put back in the ground for future trees to use as nutrients, some going to land fill and some being applied direct to land to compost along with other solids material collected. The very fine tissue that gets through the screens either settles out and also goes to land or it makes it to the ocean / river where it forms nutrients for the life downstream that flourishes on the plumes of nutrients carried by rivers / ocean. Remember rivers are full of nutrients naturally and carry lots of leaf litter, this forms the food for wildlife in estuaries, or at river mouths etc…. we are merely copying nature or working with it – wastewater engineering is nothing more than our attempt to use natural systems / process for our own benefit – and if it isnt collected in a sewer and instead composted, its no different though the perception may be different in some peoples eyes!
For every fox out there trying to sell a fashionable electric gadget we dont really need, there is also a fox selling “green”products that we dont really need to those that wont buy the flashy product!
Does the seat always elevate? I mean, what would happen after too many shooters, and one needs to ralph? I wouldn’t want to be trapped in this thing in a drunken stupor.. not being able to hold one’s booze is demeaning enough without having to be rescued. Having the bidet might be good for rinsing one’s mouth from the residual appetizers afterwards. It that why one can choose between two elevations… if the first stream sprays the forehead, hit the other button?
When I finished watching the video, one of the “Next Up” choices was the horrible “Friday” by Rebecca Black! How appropriate. If you have not heard of this song, you are lucky. Oh, and even my 14 year old daughter thought the lid opened way too slow.
If it was an iToilet, it would be secretly tracking your “movements” and sending them back to Apple headquarters.
Jer0me
I feel sick now. Thanks Jerome.
What do you do if your toilet gets a virus? What if Skynet becomes self-aware and uses your toilet to make you the first Terminator?!
Saving the world comes with risky decisions.
From David Falkner on April 23, 2011 at 11:17 pm:
Skynet would likely just use the opportunity to try to kill you. Might not be that hard with enough water pressure, just deploy the bidet arm, shoot upwards and inside, puncture your colon, wreck enough blood vessels… You could bleed out while sitting there.
Of course, as manufactured, there’s likely some pressure regulating mechanism to overcome, although using a narrow “stream” nozzle rather than a wide “spray” nozzle may be sufficient…
Wow, that’d be a cool CSI episode, death by automated toilet. “Looks like they got what they deserved in the end.”
Can I control my neighbours iBog with my remote? There could be some serious fun had if the remotes are interchangeable.
It’s been said before but the Japanese have cornered the market for cheap, smart crappers. This is just just, I dunno, errrm…..shit! Can I say that out loud?
Jim says:
April 23, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Speaking of Narita airport, I remember the first time I pushed the squirt
button, unfortunately, while it was on firehose setting.
http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u82/Robertinjapan/Firehose.jpg
Well, 140+ posts later, I hope we’re getting all this outhouse humor out of our system.
A subject dear to my heart, since the Christchurch NZ earthquake took out a good deal of the sewerage infrastructure.
There’s some great examples of Kiwi ingenuity shown on this website
http://www.showusyourlongdrop.co.nz/
All very planet friendly, but not much to impress your hot model chick with though.
Yeah but…
Where’s the crossword puzzle ?
Potty time is not potty time without the NY Times Sunday crossword.
And what happens if the power goes out…
Potty no flushy in brownouts ? (pun intended)
Certainly not as good as Pruzy’s Pot- Theodore Sturgeon’s hilarious entry in a 1972 issue of National Lampoon. I wish I still had my copy…
PaulH says:
April 23, 2011 at 7:44 am
Much like the hot model girlfriend, it looks rather expensive to keep.
I have to say I’m sceptical about that. (What else on this blog?) I now firmly believe she is in fact a shop dummy – as she is standing in exactly the same pose in both photos (even down to her purse).
What? no medical analysis as in some British and Japanese toilets?
Re the question of what one does when the power goes out, perhaps the spade and catalogue could be situated in the roof-top garden that is trendy these days (hopefully the roof covering is more reliable than the typical flat roof’s gravel and tar construction). But much of the world has type of facility located a cold walk away in winter weather.
Otherwise, Kohler’s advertising and web site are an indication that investing in that company would be unwise – fails to communicate essence of product. Even Playboy magazine would do better than that, I suspect.
(BTW, at least some of the high-price stuff the military bought was actually not, just bad accounting. Lump a hydraulic test stand and a pair of pliers in the same purchase, then average the non-recurring costs such as design and instruction manual over all items. Bureaucratic incompetence.)