An introduction to my weirdness…

Confession time. The things that give me pleasure…

A few months back, we got three new toilets. One of our old toilets was “malfunctioning,” which led to a little research. This led to us discovering that our toilets each used over 6 liters of water every time it was flushed. SIX! We had asked the contractor to put in water-efficient toilets. He said he had…LIAR. (Again!) So, we decided on the new ones. The plumber was instructed to install the lowest use-of-water toilets he could find. And he did.

Our new toilets cost $300 each, and use 1.5 liters per flush. I tried to calculate how much water we saved in even a day. I estimated 10 times. That’s 60 liters of water a day! With the new toilets, which we flush far more intentionally, that would be 15 liters a day! A HUGE saving in water. Think of how much that would save if the whole town converted. In Alberta, where I live, millions of gallons of water are wasted daily extracting bitumen from the tar sand to make Alberta rich. Somebody, somewhere, has to start turning off the tap, or our grandchildren will have golden toilets with no water to work them!

I began to wonder how our toilets get away with using so little water. I began to study the dynamics of ‘the flush.’ Most conventional toilets use the ‘spiral and swirl method.’ The amount of water involved (in our case, 6 liters of water) is started on a circular path around the bowl.  Hopefully, the force of this action picks up the bowl’s contents and moves it in a circular motion. When the motion has reached maximum speed and force, the bottom drops, and the whole water spiral and its “load” fall into the sewer pipe. This doesn’t work all the time, as you know. That’s why so many homes have one or two toilet plungers. The rest I leave to your imagination and memory.

The new and efficient toilets work on an entirely different principle. No swirl, no ‘water tornado dropping a load down to the sewer. The new toilets give a little cough – presumable a liter or so of water forced upward. This shifts the contents, however minimally, but just enough to initiate motion. Then the bottom drops out of the toilet and everything disappears into the sewer. Every time! No matter what is in the bowl – rancid cottage cheese, questionable food from the fridge, amounts of human waste. The simple process drops the whole bowl’s contents into the sewer. It is not surprising that since installing the new toilets, we have not had to use a toilet plunger even one, single time, using 25% of the water used by the old toilets. A significant saving, environmentally, I think. And I feel good about this.

Now you all know: I think about weird things; I get pleasure from odd triumphs; and I’m pleased that, in some small way, we contribute to environmental management. Amen. My weirdness is in your hands.