Testing the Newest Low Consumption Toilets | Ask This Old House
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- Ask This Old House plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey travels to a plumbing facility in New Jersey to learn about advances in toilet engineering that help save water.
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Steps:
1. A series of tests are performed on new designs of toilets to ensure they are achieving the goal of minimizing the water usage of toilets without compromising their cleaning and waste disposal abilities.
2. First, prototypes are created and tested to measure water usage.
3. Once the prototype passes a series of water usage tests, a real model is built and put through an additional series of tests.
4. One test measures the distance the low flow toilet is able to move waste material.
5. Another test measures the quantity of material, both big and small, that can be flushed down the toilet.
6. Another test ensures that the bowl remains clean after every flush.
Resources:
Richard toured the American Standard test facility (www.americanst.... The toilet with two flush valves for better bowl cleaning is part of the VorMax collection.
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Testing the Newest Low Consumption Toilets | Ask This Old House
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This is awesome. So much thought put into it. The miso paste cracked me up.
They should have colored them orange
Please do a video on sewer systems. Particularly the importance of proper venting. I loved your water and steam hammer videos.
@@zombiekush760 stop eating straight Tang.
Like poo
It's so awesome to see you here!
Great if we pooped wet poly balls
Well you beat me to the punch line .
Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking, "Oh great... round balls will go down a smooth pipe ... probably if there was no water to push them". Do that brown miso paste poop test on that pipe and lets see if it pushes it all along.
@@atherahmed6397 only if I eat a lot of grapes.
Am I the only one laughing when the guy starts grabbing shit I mean miso paste
@@Mike__B miso paste and a rusty old cast-iron clogged with tree roots
I think you should have explained the miso paste before showing the dude grabbing it with his hands
Good thing he didn’t eat it like in the movie Caddyshack.
They could have used a lighter colored miso paste. Seems like the director was going for shock value in that scene!
@@jazzjohn2 The director had nothing to do with what that company uses.
Hahahahahaha so true
Didn’t have a dad growing up, thank y’all for teaching me everything I need to know to take care of my future family.
I can be your daddy.
Bruh, typical dad won't go that far into toilet physics. The generalities, *maybe*, but you didn't miss out too much with no dad when it comes to toilets.
Girls now can do this stuff too. Just watch youtube.
@@suzanneseale9543 They can clean my toilets
Balls roll, turds don't.
Don't turds roll down hill...
I have that last toilet they showed. Works great. They also used miso paste tubes. A little more realistic than the balls.
@@aeros5678 maybe your turds!!! do you bark?
turds smear.
The ball's serve a function or else they wouldn't use them, and the meso paste is closer to what one would expect. Overall a quite educational video.
.. those polyballs will never stop!! Rolling like maniacs. Try cubes or something. Or those miso things.
They need to put like 40 of them in the toilet to see if the toilet will get clogged - of course the 12 went down just fine - ridiculous. Forget the standard - the standard needs to be a little bit better than what it is. They need a bowl or whatever is set up to make the bowl and flushing and whatever else to flush to make it so that people only need to flush one time (or two times if needed) if there are big things in the toilet. I understand if it will cause more water use and pressure to push the stuff down the toilet and where it needs to go but still it will save people time, less water usage and money.
What's the name of the toilet with dual valves, when i google it all comes up dual flush :/
I'm sure others have brought this up but we don't poop hard round smooth balls and our poop is not encased in a plastic bag. Not trying to be gross but poop is more like wet sticky cement or gumbo, heavy clay, mud. Many times in a 3-gallon flush toilet the thick sticky stuff just won't go down and out comes the plunger, not a pretty site. They need more realistic test media to solve problems in the real world.
When I was in high school I worked at an arby's, I often had to clean the bathrooms. I am confident your laboratory tests are inadequate.
The balls would have rolled away with no water...
They wouldn't have made it past the trap in the toilet without water...
I'm never eating miso paste again. Kudos to Rich for remaining professional 😂
I wonder if they had to do several takes on that scene.😁
Use all the technology you want but as a plumber I'll tell you right now low consumption toilets are absolute garbage. Can't even flush my mighty turds without a few flushes
you should have done some tests with toilet paper to simulate real world situations...
But then they can't advertise super low flow toilets. Ever been to california? You need two flushes to get JUST some tissue down the pipe.
@@FullSendPrecision I live in California, and never needed more than one flush on any toilet I've used.
@@Mike__B Then you must have a very petite and dirty bum.
@@BoxxerCore Not any dirtier than the next guy, I just don't require half a roll of toilet paper to clean myself.
@@FullSendPrecision Today's toilets work better than ever now. I'll give you there are old ones still out there that need to be replaced.
Who watched this on the toilet?
I love how they spend the first half of the video skirting around the idea of poop, only to suddenly whip out a big box of homemade dookie that they then try to ram down its throat.
Not real test use something not round or bagged. Many homes have more then 40 foot sewers. I been a plumber for 30 years and have seen many problems with low flow stools
Low-flow toilets and front-loader washers mean sewer pipes never get flushed like they used to. Even tho I'm not on septic, I dose my sewer pipes with Rid-X.
Quote of the day... “go big or go home”
I've never understood why big box stores don't install the toilet's they are selling in their restrooms so buyers can take a test drive. That's a real-life test.
The only place that would do that is a store dedicated to only toilets.
They would probably be always calling for a plumber or the customers wasting water with 2 or more flushes. I just picked up a Gerber Viper toilet--liking it. The plumbing store where I got it had Kohler toilets also. In fact, there was one in their rest room. But I decided to go with the Viper based on a plumber's recommendation on YT.
The problem lies with the difference between a homeowner toilet and a commercial toilet. Public toilets almost never have a tank and use what's called a flushometer. This is to keep people from hiding things they're not supposed to be hiding in the tank. Flushometers aren't used in homes because a flushometer requires higher water pressure to operate, and also because they're loud.
@@tier3rd375 I was had a summer job dumping trash in a factory's corporate office. One of the co-workers told me that they removed the toilets with tanks because the executives would hide their bottles of booze in them.
@@AStanton1966 You would think that being an executive that they would have their own desk.
Wow cheating on the test pushing stuff to the septic tank using balls that will roll by themselves down an tilted pipe. Notice you dont do that with that meso paste because you know it would be stuck in the pipe.
Why not just move the water tank back to the ceiling like it was 60 years ago?
Because hydrostatic pressure is an insignificant factor here. Raising a tank up through a gravity fed flush box by about 6 feet gives about 2.6 psi increase. Also pull chain tanks are far more than 60 years old.
Just pull the plug having a big party and roof on fire
@@Furiends 'more then 60 years old '
Is that your little straw man?
@@andriyshapovalov8886 1. This is a 2 year old comment you're replying to. 2. pull chain cisterns with wash down pans or bowls were invented in the Victorian era well over century ago. Siphonic toilets eliminated the need for a raised cistern. Although they persisted for aesthetic reasons.
@@FuriendsOP stated when they were common, not when they were invented nor how old they ere. So you are arguing a straw man.
Also if it bothers you, you should delete all your expired comments.
REcently removed a regular round toilet that was 1.6 gal flush which was handling the waste products fine. Put in an ADA Sterling 1.28 and immediately started having problems with it flushing it down. What a mess, product clogged up the trap, stool auger wouldn't release it, figured it had to be further down the line... push come to shove... had the main cleared which brought nothing much back to indicate a problem. $250 later and the next day, same issue. It has become an ongoing problem. Some medications make for bricks and they don't flush well. I am in the process of adapting the flush valve tube by adding a 3/4" pvc coupling (amazingly it fit) and will cut a few varying lengths of tube to see if I can get the water level up in the tank. I hope it works. Will have to see if the fill valve float will accommodate this maneuver! They currently have to flush at least 3 times with plunging going on. This water saving only saves water if it works... right now we are wasting 3x as much water as we used to. Wish me luck...
Gee, i just bought an old American standard from a plumbing salvage yard and installed it. Works great cheap to rebuild. Pushes the waste through old cast iron and into the city sewer.
Did the pvc trick work?
I for one will not take this sitting down
Most people don't pump out rabbit pellets. People usually push out somewhere between a stake and dropping an engine block into the porcelain.
Not certain the tests are useful. Example the plastic pipe was perfectly smooth. Most pipe is rusted metal. Then everything flushed was smooth as well. Water volume is needed for an efficient flush. These government regulations were enacted to appease environmental groups and no thought was given to how this works in the real world. Typical of government I might add. My plumber has told me to double or triple flush to make certain all solids get to the main sewer line. My insurance adjuster told me the same thing.
That's it! I'm gonna plumb my house with clear PVC!
What good are the newest toilets when you have to flush at least 3 times at 1.28 gallons versus 1 time using 3.5 gallons
90 % of the time you're just going number one in which case 1.28 is plenty for a flush.
But humans aren't rabbits...our poop isn't round and it sure as hell doesn't roll down pipes
We aren't rabbits?
@@aguyandhiscomputer rabbits poop are round pellets like in the test.
Here I am eating a sandwich thinking those poly balls aren't an accurate representation of the "waste" well smack me in the face cause here comes the miso paste packets!!! I about lost it
New toilets are terrible 😫 most people slush twice for solids defeats the purpose of low flow .
How about teflon coating the bowl like on an airplane?!
4:46 I wanted to see that go down the long drain pipe. Just to see how far it goes. Even if its angled... that's a lot of "Miso" xD
I like to poop in toilets FULL of water. With these new toilets I wind up courtesy flushing myself 3x, thus using MORE water.
I only have that issue if the refill tube isn't correctly inserted into the overflow tube. This is a common mistake (older toilets don't have overflow tubes), the toilet will flush but the flush will be weak and the bowl water will be low.
What home or public place that is over 1yr old will have a drainage pipe system that clean? Should add some unlevel blockages in the drain pipe and see how long until backup. Use dice (6 to 20) sided instead of balls, and maybe add good and poor toilet paper. Not realistic testing at all, but only have to pass government levels.
One comment concerning "Low Consumption" toilets is, if you have a exceptionally long waste line which runs from the farthest point in the home and eventually, another even longer run from the home to the street, some of these Low Consumption toilets may not be able to "push" the waste to the street efficiently with LESS WATER behind it. You may find clogging problems easier to come by. Personally, I am not sold on these low usage toilets in my opinion.
I noticed in the testing they did none of what they tested was shall we say sticky... It would have been a little more realistic if they would have cut open two of those miso paste sleeves are stirred in some nice thick chocolate pudding to add some friction and hold back and then see how far it makes it down the line
If I took a dump in that it would back up and flood the house, corn chunks would be everywhere!
@@allentoyokawa9068 dude… LOL
@@allentoyokawa9068gross
I’ve made my 1.28g toilet use about 2g to make sure that it has enough drain line carry
Would've been nice to know what brand/models we were watching be tested...
My only complaint about this show. They never tell you the brand they are demonstrating. Really hated the one where they were talking about an app to document the contents of your home. They gave a very extensive review but never told you what the name of the app was. For this video though, it appears they are American Standard toilets.
I can't speak for everyone here, but what I've found just asking around at small local businesses in my town is that the most efficient option is urinals. Urinals use barely any water for when men pee, and you've still got a higher consumption toilet for the poops, since people (including myself) still tend to clog the low flows. However, it is cool to see that low flow technology is getting better, and I like the double flapper idea.
Random Stuff In Oregon when I get a house I’m definitely gonna have a urinal for the laughs and practicality of them
What brand has the best non clogging toilet? I'm not looking to save water, just want poop and toilet paper gone when I flush.
A vintage ''Standard'' Cadet from the 50s or 60s
Who else thought that was real crap? Just me.
Same here lmao :D
I would have set little corn pieces into the miso.
@@wompbozer3939 😅
I was impressed by a Toilet. I've become my father and I'm better for it.
Did you have a stroke
@@mikewalko536 No. Don't be an idiot.
VorMax is pretty impressive, isn't it?
If I were to poop out small solid smooth balls I'd go immediately to my Dr 😱
Can I be a tester? I’ll bring a newspaper or my smartphone. I usually do my testing naked. Is that okay?
Richard didn't shake his hand at the end. Hmmmm...wonder why
After some Taco Bell, I'll bet I can still clog it.
Joe T ua-cam.com/video/6AVMcJa77PM/v-deo.html
I installed clear sewer line in my basement as well,but also added a corkscrew and a couple of loopty-loops for more entertainment. 🐒💩🚽
Poly balls are a terrible test for the 40 foot flow. Hell they'd roll with no water.
Nothing would make it past the toilet trap without water
They would go down with or without water. Other than the siphon, there's nothing to stop them from ROLLING their way through your system... A bit of a glaring error in your test assembly!
And I'm using an exclamation mark because I wanted to say "they know their shit!"
Still more water than modern European and Australian toilets use...
Yeah but it's progress, and it works. I've been on some iffy European (mainly British) toilets.
Col. Hogan my toilet works fine and has done for the 5 years I’ve had it installed and it uses a smidge over a US gallon on a full flush and not iffy at all.
How are flushing round balls (which will roll down a pitched pipe-regardless of water amount) an accurate portrail of the oblong waste that I'm hoping to get rid of??
Come on, people don't flush little plastic balls down a perfectly clean plastic sewer pipe. The Miso paste is a nice substitute, but you didn't show them successfully being flushed down the sewer line, and how about taking them out of the sleeves to make them a bit stickier. Also, try changing the pipe out to something with some texture in it to simulate an average sewer line (more like something 30-50 years old). Real world scenarios like these are why these low-flow toilets are not liked but residential customers.
I suspect they don't because objects like toilet paper behave too eratically to make for a reliable test that can deliver the same results for a given configuration.
Water (fluids in general) alone is really hard to simulate, add in stuff like toilet paper and you get chaos, which we can define as systems where a slight change in initial conditions results on a major change later on.
Toilet paper pliable enough to align itself with the flow, but more eh, 'solid' waste can get blocked spanwise, or stick to the walls of a pipe, causing turbulence which reduces the force of flow downstream.
For an iterative R&D process, where you need to be able to see the effect of small changes in design, using a test which varies so much isn't helpful, so they use objects like plastic balls made to a certain spec. Of course, before the product is ready to market, I'm sure they use more, uh, 'real world tests'.
Kinda disappointed they didn't mention MaP testing for toilets - it's how the industry rigorously quantifies flush performance
If we really wanted to conserve water the water utilities would not punish those that conserve water. We typically pay for water we don't use because we often use less than the minimum billable amount. So do we really want to reduce water consumption?
Yep. I use 1,000-3,000 gallons every 3 months, but get billed for 9,000.
I gotta say that's where I like my utility department, charges for every 750 gallons that you use and the homes that are the conserving the most get $5.00 of their bill.
I am planning on two Toto Drake toilets when I remodel my house. I have heard good things about them. Has anyone had experience using Toto? I would like to hear opinions before I buy them.
Thanks
Thanks, TOH. Really good info.
I like this. I wish that I could get the Clear Toilet Version and the other thing is I would love to see it use less than half of that water. Three it the toilet bowl and tank could be lit up with color changing lights that would seal the deal.
What kind of toilet was that last one with no holes on the rim? Great idea.
It's a line of American Standard VorMax toilets. They come in a few models like the Optum, Esteem, and Astute. I believe there is also a Yorkville VorMax variant.
Am I the only one that doesn't pass poly balls?
Yes you need to eat more poly .
Flushing 95% of material means you will have to flush twice, thereby using 2.4 gallons per use.
Perfectly round balls rolling down a perfectly clean pipe that's pitched down........Brilliant Test!
Would be awesome to have a clear see through toilet.
So future toilets will have two valves??? Great, double the moving parts and double the maintenance.
I'd say streamlining the cavity just under the flush valve would help a great deal! With an insert of some kind so as not to make the walls too thick as that would cause problems in the kiln.
I wondered if one flush actually carries shit from upstairs all the way across and to the sewer or if it sits in the pipe for a while. This test still doesn't convince me with the low friction rolling balls.
... unless you're a rabbit.
Oh great! Now I have two of those things that need to be replaced periodically...
I watched this while pooping
The drain carry test with the balls is kind of pointless. Even without water, the balls would still go down.
Wow do you really use that much water for a toilet in US??
I tried to test low consumption toilets once, but that was the day I was banned from the Home Depot.
😂😂😂
Very cool job, flushing toilets all day long
Check out the reviews for american standard vormax. Real world intrudes.
How is flushing round balls a test? Even without water they will roll 40 feet easily.
I had to pause to read the comments as soon as the miso paste showed up to the pool party
I wonder how many Couric's is even to seven miso links
poly balls would roll downhill without any water at all. eat some taco bell & drop a REAL log then get back to me.
Keep telling yourself it's miso paste LMAO
Can you believe they test the speed and the velocity?!
How are smooth sided poly balls that float supposed to simulate blobs of human waste? It would be better to simulate using something that better mimics feces. Try blobs of clay mud mixed with some fiber mixed with a few layers of TP. I'd like to know more about the science behind this test that makes you believe it's an acceptable simulation. But, my uneducated guess is this is not a good simulation. Why not just demonstrate the carry function test with the miso links? How far did they carry? The rest of the design seems to be good, though busy with things that can get entangled or fail. The smooth under rim is great innovation.
Low consumption?
1,28 gallons with flush, my old toilet which was built 1978 used same amount water per flush now i have 2 function toilet small flush is 0,57 gallon and bigger is 0,8 gallon and i have used this new toilet 7 years.
So your newest toilet is around 40 years behind development.
Don't forget they have different gallons in merica
I used US gallons when i converted Liters to gallons.
With UK Gallons mine toilet consumes 0.55 and 0.77 Gallon water.
Apparently most humans are constipated and make an average of 100 pebbles? This would never work at the local taqueria!
Water cannot be wasted and low water appliances are pointless in my opinion. The reason being is if anyone knows how a basic septic system or water cycle works they will realise all water has been reused for millennia and cannot go away or be lost forever. Basically the water leaves the house goes into the septic thank the solids settle at the bottom lipids float to the top. The water however, once the tank fills completely goes into a leech feild and sinks untill it goes back into the ground water by that point good bacteria and the ground texture has filtered it. All we need to worry about is keeping our water holders, "lakes, river's, and ground water" Clean and free of chemicals. Now you may argue that since water is getting less I'm wrong. Welp the main reason that water is going away is because of global warming making some areas too hot for it to condense. It's still there but it's vapor, or moves to some place where it condences.
Add fracking.
I was agreeing with you until you brought in the ridiculous global warming thing. There's not one iota of evidence to back up the THEORY that man is affecting the climate. Do your own research, don't listen to the propaganda
Such crap, customers aren't asking American Standard that they want to use less water! The government needs to get out of my bathroom and my laundry room with mandates! Low flow toilets generally suck and you end up flushing them 2 and 3 times which isn't saving anything! And another thing, I detest how the majority of new toilets at the big box stores are ADA height. Why do the majority of us have to suffer for the few that need ADA height? I don't want to feel like I'm sitting on Santa's lap everyday when I'm making a deposit.
They still sell the low ones.
@@jjbud3124 Perhaps they do, but go look at Home Depot and Lowes...almost all are ADA height! And the new "low ones" are still higher than a 60s-80s toilet.
@@jacktorse2145 I just bought a new toilet at Amazon. If you have Prime they'll ship for free and you can have your pick. They have a large pick of regular height toilets. I personally am old so I need the ADA.
How in the world can anyone say round balls are equivalent to br waste?
nice now i gotta use the toilet
Consumers are asking for low consumption toilets? Really? And these toilets are GREAT at flushing small, smooth, slick plastic balls...lemme dump a jar of peanut butter and four napkins in there. That's a test!
In order to simulate a large meal from McDonald's and having to take a large dump afterwards? hehe
Very cool but they need a flush some actual crap and see how that does.
Miso is the closest thing to the real thing. It's not hygienic to flush real "stuff".
What a non sense test. Only a brand new house would have sewer pipe that clean and why no toilet tissue. Why didn't they run the test with 80 year old cast iron pipes and with bathroom tissue. King of toilet fool Richard.
Are you trying to tell me round balls roll down hill.
They obviously never dropped a football like I did the other day 😁
The balls are easy to roll through the water it's the paper that's the problem
Looks like another flapper system to malfunction and require repair. I have little faith in this type of system. Might work when new, but I see many toilet replacements in the future.
I don't see any real problem with the double flapper. The parts will last just as long as any normal toilet, and when the time comes to replace the parts you'll just pay a few extra dollars.
Turds are not round and able to roll down hill.
I have a low flow toilet and the bowl is brown now and not white
Please post the make and model number of the last toilet in the video . The best seat in the house ! Thanks .
Let's see 1/8" slope with the miso and toilet paper!
Round poly balls would roll down a sloped pipe even if dry!
IIRC American standard named one of their R&D rooms Flushing Meadows a la the Simpsons joke.
I made my own stick shift variable flush wall mounted toilet. Tank is on the opposite side of the wall.
Mostly the standard here in Germany these days to install wall mounted toilets. But the tank is inside of the wall covered with plaster board, in most cases this green board which is rated for damp locations and then tiled or covered with glass fibre wall"paper". Variable flush is actually no new thing here, got that here already 25-30 years ago, on these old ones you could interrupt the flush at any time. It was shaped like a seesaw, pushed on the right side and the flush started (left side of the lever going up). To interrupt push the left side down:
images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/4193wRHkseL._SY355_.jpg
My parents still have one such a toilet at home, the other one is wall mounted.
Mine had better be able to choke down a utility pole.
All joking aside, toilet improvements can only do so much to reduce water use. Those areas that need water conservation please everybody do the best you can. Thanks!
This video is 2 years old
Does this toilet have a model #
I wish I could show people Toilet physics simulations on my laptop. Quite the conversation piece hahaha