My Queen Needs a New Throne

[Art]

I enjoyed your post and thought I would add a few things.

I have 4 Kohler toilets with Sloan valves in my house. In 8 years only one has need any part and Sloan sent it to me for free. The only disadvantage to the toilets with Sloan valves is noise but the latest Gerbers installed in my parent's house are much quieter than my Kohlers and would not bother anyone. I don't know if newer Kohlers are quieter.

A great unspoken advantage to these valves is that they detect back pressure and overflows are just about impossible. Plug the toilet and they stop flushing instantly. Let the water do a little dissolving and flush as many times as you want until it goes down with zero risk of overflow.

Finally, when we first moved into the house one of the 4 toilets worked erratically. Sloan sent us every replacement part imaginable and Kohler finally decided to replace the bowl. When we went to the distributor to pick up the new bowl I noticed that the washer between the tank and bowl were different than the one I had. Apparently the plumber has lost the original washer and replaced it with another which wasted several days of my life and many parts from Sloan and Kohler.

[HeyBub]

It's even worse: various agencies work a cross-purposes. Take your example:

The low-flush toilets are designed to save water, and they would if the government hadn't tampered with America's diet.

The health people train and insist that we eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. This type diet creates more "floaters" than the "sinkers" from eating copious quantities of red meat. The "floaters" won't go down no matter what you do - after five or so tries, you have to fish them out with toilet paper and put them in your pocket. Meanwhile, you've used 28 gallons of water and all the while your host is thinking: "Something's dreadfully wrong with Fred!"

Soon, those who keep up with this sort of stuff will realize that 1.6 gallon flushes are not accomplishing what was intended, and the government will begin mandating the use of small cardboard boxes (about the size of a kitchen match box, I imagine) for no-flush disposal. These boxes will have child-proof lids - don't get me started on the consequences of that.

[Grant]

We just replaced the workings of our 5+ years Gerber Flushmate. The parts were free under warranty.

The older parts still flushed, but there was a drip in the pressure tank. (It was not like a sub beyond crush depth as I had feared.)

The new flush is instantaneous, even louder than before, and Niagara-like. It will take some getting used to, for sure.

But it does outflush regular toilets. I considered the Toto brand, but asked about it after the Gerber. As Toto is a lot cheaper, I was steered away from them, even though the plumbing supply place ran ads touting the Toto name.

We have another regular toilet that I would replace with a pressure assisted one, but my family hates the noise. (I hate the Mr. DeClog bills more.)

[hallerb]

I was told that the US law was revised and we can now ligally buy 3.5 gallon flushers. or you can buy one or two in canada and drive them back over the border.

As soon as we have some extra bucks this is a must do here