Readers of WUWT know that while I have my doubts about the magnitude of AGW and express skepticism and sometimes outright disdain for certain green schemes and products, some of which work about as well as the photo at left, I’ll push a good idea when I see it.
Readers have also seen when I embrace and recommend practical products, especially when the save energy and resources and can pay for themselves. This is one of those products.
Last year when I was touring Australia, I marveled at a simple piece of engineering designed to save water, something obviously necessary in Australia as weather/rainfall patterns differ. It was a simple case of “necessity was the mother of invention”. Living in California, that also has water problems (but not this year) I thought to myself, it would be a great thing to bring back to the USA. Unfortunately I had not the time or resources to develop it myself.
What was this that had me so intrigued? Well, to tell you the truth, I found myself taking apart a toilet in a hotel room in Emerald and photographing the workings. Why? Read on.
Where I live in Chico, California, we depend on ground water wells. Unfortunately, the water table has steadily dropped over the last 150 years as the town has grown, and even though there are years of upticks in recharge, the overall trend is down. Water saving plans that have been suggested include the ubiquitous “brick or water bottles in the toilet tank” suggestion as seen below.
But, given that California hasn’t built any new water storage facilities in 30+ years, the suggestions ring hollow.
What I found in Emerald Australia (and all over Australia I later found) is now available here, and not only saves water, but money too. It’s a win-win. I looked for this product for over a year and when I found it this month on Amazon.com I bought one, installed it and tried it myself, and I’m more than pleased with the result, hence my recommendation.
What is it? A retrofit dual flush system for toilet tanks. Low flow for #1, Full flow for #2.
Yeah I know, it’s hard to get excited about that, except when you do the math and realize how much water and money you are flushing down the toilet needlessly each day. Here in California they get you coming and going. Water use and sewer use, plus loads of taxes and tiers if you go beyond expected usage. Besides watering lawns and taking showers, there’s very little else where water use can be conserved . The toilet is an obvious choice since it gets heavy use.
The problem with the old flush toilet is the mechanism, which is a “one flush fits all” design that hasn’t much changed in the last 100 years. Here’s a typical toilet tank setup.
Note the red flapper, that’s where this new product fits in.
In a nutshell, here’s how it works:
- The flapper is removed, the handle and chain are removed
- A new all-in-one float valve unit is attached to the flapper post and seated onto the flapper seal.
- A new two button flush button replaces the handle, and a remote cable (like an emergency brake cable) goes to the new all-in-one float valve unit.
Install takes under 10 minutes, no tools required, and it works as advertised. The design for retrofit is dirt simple. After getting the first one, and seeing how well it worked, I bought three more for my home and office.
Here’s a pictorial of what it looks like:
Here’s a video from the company about it. There a bit of sensationalism in the imagery, but otherwise it is accurate based on my experience with the product.
Here’s the product flyer:
The kit is pretty simple, and assembles without any need for tools. Pictorial instructions in English and Spanish are provided.
Price? Less than $20, and at that price it will pay for itself in a few months, depending on usage. This system is guaranteed for five years, so I’m pretty sure I’ll not only get my investment back, but a significant return on it. Plus, my kids like it and they were fascinated watching dad replace this thing and now having a pushbutton 1/2 instead of a handle.
Want one? Available here at Amazon Get it, highly recommended.
I still say the greenest product ever invented was fire–making plant-ready CO2 directly from pretty useless carbon concentrations (wood, coal, petrol, etc.) Had calcium or magnesium carbonate tied up all the available carbon as limestone or dolostone, there wouldn’t be any meaningful life on this planet; we certainly wouldn’t be here.
Our house, built in ’01 (we moved into it in ’06,) came with low flow toilets that did the small flush in the usual way. Holding down the handle for a longer time got the bigger flush for dealing with the #2s. Functionally the same as the gadget above (which seems like a good idea, BTW.) It’s just like the one Don K mentions above.
When we were in CA we had our toilets replaced with ‘big throat” models. Worked quite nicely, too, and I think they were also low(er) flow. They were something like this one, on Amazon.
I wonder if it’s available for toilets with a larger flapper valve?
Scottish Sceptic says:
June 14, 2011 at 2:12 am
……..
So, ever since I’ve got into the habit of throwing lots and lots of food waste into the loo…
You are going to have LOT of rats in your local sewer.
By the way, anyone who’s been to a sewage treatment plant [now called a’waste water treatment’ plant now to protect the house prices] will see sweetcorn and tomato plants growing in the sludge as those seeds where indigestible!
They use something similar in Israel.
Les, with the projected population growth, it will certainly be interesting to see just how robust the major city supply systems are if we get another similar drought, which being Australia, we almost certainly will.
Like any complex technology, it will eventually fail. When it does, it will likely waste more water than it has saved up to that point. Next idea, please.
Rocky, if you look at very long term CO2 history you can see the massive drop in atmospheric CO2 levels just about the time serious plant life might have been flourishing.
Typical food vs prey pattern.. drops down to subsistence level and stays down at that balance. All the old plant life got buried and we are now releasing a small portion of the carbon back into the atmosphere. We are restoring the planet to a more plant sustainable level and benefitting from the energy in the process
gees, it’s almost like someone planned it.
A number of commenters like to note how the US is behind in toilet design. I live in New Hampshire and we get around 100 inches of rain a year. There is no water shortage so why should we use this device? In my case, I have my own well, so I am not paying a utility for water which means I have even less reason to install one of these devices. Also most new toilets here in the US are two-stage without this device. Pull the handle down and release it and you get a short flush where the flapper quickly reseals the tank before all the water is evacuated. Hold the handle down and you get a longer flush using the full tank.
Also, Australia does not have any drought or water shortages either. They have had huge amounts of rain and floods this past year and it is looking like the snowfall will be very large for them as well. The Australian BOM and media, mostly ABC, is spreading lies and misinformation in a fraudulent campaign of climate fear. Just read Jo Nova, Andrew Bolt or Warwick Hughes to learn all about it.
From Philip Peake on June 14, 2011 at 7:10 am:
An electric hand drill, with a cord, that plugs into a wall socket? That is soooo 20th century. Yeah, I got a few still laying around, some real old ones too. Those with the metal housings and metal gears, the nice hefty models, last practically forever, as opposed to those wimpy lightweight ones with plastic housings and plastic gears that wear out relatively quickly.
Meanwhile there’s not much that beats a nice modern cordless drill, like a commercial-grade DeWalt. I had bought a 14.4V, now 18V has become basically the minimum for real use, and 24V is becoming more common. Good weight to them, and the modern basic features of reverse and variable speed with a keyless chuck used to be higher-end options in the days of corded drills. Now we have the ongoing transition to Lithium-Ion from Ni-Cad batteries. Yup, good times.
So when is the EU going to catch up to US hand drill technology?
Pamela Gray says:
June 14, 2011 at 6:08 am
You don’t want to know what they do on the backside of Jamaica. Or in the interior of Ensanada.
I thought that rum tasted weird!
Our Belgian toilet has since 5 years a push button that sticks out on one side when you push it, and you just gauge how much is enough to flush your waste and push the button back in place. Very handy. My mom has a system that looks like what you described and it was already there when she moved in in 1998. But we learned recently that the Germans are already working with water-free toilets, now that would be interesting !
I don’t know if I would ever actually do it, as I was raised with flush toilets and a sewer connection, but the solution that uses the least water is a composting toilet.
I remember attending a development meeting a few years ago where a retired engineer was proudly showing off his design for a modern sewer system for a remote village in the Andes. The elephant in the room was, where was he going to get the water for all those very sanitary flush toilets? Conventional Western solutions often put an unnecessary burden on the resources and revenue of developing communities. There are ways of having modern Western conveniences, without replicating complex Western infrastructure built on layer upon layer of older technology. These communities are in the enviable position of being able to think outside the box, not being tied to an existing infrastructure and code.
The Australians must have to install them backwards ’cause their swirls go the other way!
Long ago an oil tanker named Torrey Canyon ran aground off the UK coast and produced a large oil spill. The powers that be decided dispersant was needed and moved in hundreds of plastic tanks of 1 cubic metre capacity, each in a rigid wire and metal frame so the tanks can be stacked. There was no plan to recycle those empty tanks. I aquired four of them for next to nothing. I now have four cubic metres of stored water, as long as it rains, and have more than enough to flush the toilet full flush and water for the garden veggies as well.
Starting in January 2012, all inhabitants of the EU protectorates will be required to piss into bags and flush down the brown stuff with the stored piss. No more water required. /foresight
Absolutely amazing. I just installed two of these last week! The traditional flapper valve things need constant replacement or they leak. I got tired of the bi-annual replacement of the flapper and got two of these since they cost less than a complete replacement kit. Super easy to install and work well.
As many people have commented, these are common here in the UK. My only problem with them is the small (double) button which often takes quite a bit of finger power to push – and is difficult for those with aged, arthritic fingers I was pleased to note on a recent trip round New Zealand that they all seemed to use the same principle, but had a really large button – usually on top of the cistern – that was much easier to see and use.
What was the California saying? Back in ’76 I saw a bumper sticker in California that went “Number One or Number Two, Don’t Flush Until The Drought is Through”.
We have such a toilet as this at our Little League ball park. Has two buttons, one for half, one for full flush.
But what most caught my eye was this part: “Unfortunately, the water table has steadily dropped over the last 150 years as the town has grown, and even though there are years of upticks in recharge, the overall trend is down.”
Given the expected record runoff, it would seem to me that we should have in place a mechanism for massive injection of this runoff into aquifers. We do have around here some ponds that are used for ground water recharge but I would think that in years such as this, we could have some fairly massive direct injection recharge. That is a water project I could get behind and they do a similar thing in Southern California where they “bank” winter runoff in underground “reservoirs” where it doesn’t evaporate. This would be in the area from between, say, San Bernardino and Banning. I think we could used a similar method up here in the Central Valley during years of exceptional runoff when most of that water would simply run out to sea.
Every toilet I saw in Norway last year was of this type. Some had large buttons, which might help out with the small child problem?
—-
You use the large button to flush small children???
Scottish Sceptic says:
June 14, 2011 at 2:12 am
Now, I’ve absolutely no authority for suggesting that food waste should be flushed down the loo
My wifes renter was also in such a habit. Unfortunately her favorite food was rice which will harden in the pipes if not flushed completely to the street main.
If its Yellow Let it Mellow,
If its brown flush it down.
Sign on the wall in a true Environmentalist’s toilet.
Much cheaper and greener than this New Fangled device.
Hhhmpphh
It will never catch on with us true Greens
40 Shades (heading for 41)
Rather than pushing buttons, I’d buy a cont(c)raption that uses a dial system.
Sometimes going “all the way up to eleven” is what it takes.
As other’s have commented, if you are taking water conservation seriously, don’t flush after just a piss. It does no harm in the u bend. And wrt hygiene, it is good. It’s antibacterial. Don’t forget those storys from WWI, the soilders that treated their wounds with urine, survived more often than those that didn’t ‘cos they thought it ‘dirty’.
Good luck trying to convince the wife though. No chance.