Simple Device Saves Toilet Water
This video shows how you can connect a simple device to the water inlet in your toilet tank to save two-thirds of a gallon per flush. For a family of four, the water savings could be as much as 4,000 gallons per year.
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:40 am
Are the toilets behind the ocean all that strange? The water level shown at 00:30 is so hight that one would get wet while sitting. For hygienic reasons, at least the whole water content of the bowl would have to be exchanged when flushing, which already is a lot (independently of how good the tank works).
Over here, the water level is somewhere down below the place where the bowl has narrowed to ca. 10cm.
Besides that, the amount of water spent on flushing can be controlled freely by various methods depending on the type (on some tanks, one presses the lever a second time to stop, on others one moves it back to the unpressed position), which is much more practical than changing it by a fixed percentage (which is too much or to little depending on what needs to be flushed out).
Third problem: Depending on where one lives, saving cold water might or might not be ecologically relevant (it probably is in California, but much less in most places in Europe, where water is just being filtered and pumped around, costing only labor and a little energy – saving water here would be almost like saving the electrons in the electricity instead of saving electrical power itself).
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:33 am
Yes, on this side of the pond—in the USA—toilets use more water than needed, even the low-flush models. The one in the video looks to be an old-style toilet. As people remodel and buy new homes, toilets get switched out. One of the biggest wastes of water I see are the automatically flushing toilets. When not calibrated properly, these can flush two or three times while someone is sitting on them. There are plenty that are not calibrated, at least in the public loos I’ve been to in the USA.
In many places in Europe and in South America, people don’t throw toilet paper in the loo. In the USA, people throw toilet paper and more. A lot of it is that big fluffy paper. It’s all that paper that often necessitates a flush. I’m of the opinion “if it’s yellow, let it mellow.” Well, at least some of the time.
It’s a great idea to filter and pump the water back around. I’m not aware of any municipalities doing that in the USA, but I’ll check. At my house, the water seeps from a septic and eventually back into the groundwater. I assume it gets into my watershed where I pump the water out to use it again. But I’m in a rural area where everyone has a well.
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:34 am
P.S. It’s a good idea not to flush the toilet while you are sitting on it. As you point out, you might get wet!