Monday, September 30, 2013

  

As people around the world prepare to celebrate World Toilet Day (Nov. 19), CBS News is celebrating the world's strangest toilets. Why? First, to make you laugh, but also to help focus attention on the 2.6 billion people who don't have indoor plumbing. Lack of proper sanitation leads to 1.8 million deaths each year from diarrheal disease. Most of the victims are children.


That's the bad news. The good news is you can do go to WorldToilet.org and do something about it.

In the meantime, have a look at some of the wackiest toilets we have ever seen. And don't get flushed.

 

 

For Rolling Stones fans.
 
 
 
For music lovers.
 

 
 
There's a lot of pressure in this bathroom.
 
 
 


 

Friday, September 27, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Fascinating Facts About Toilets - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139




Toilets – we all use them but seldom like to talk about them. The flushing toilet was invented by Sir John Harrington in 1596 for Queen Elizabeth I. He was originally barred from the Royal Court for spreading smutty stories, but after his invention, he was allowed back.

The average person spends three whole years of their life sitting on the toilet

The first toilet cubicle in a row is the least used (and consequently cleanest)

The toilet is flushed more times during the super bowl halftime than at any time during the year.

source: http://listverse.com/2009/06/15/15-fascinating-facts-about-toilets/
by Jamie Frater

http://www.thisoldtoilet.com

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Toilet Trivia - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139




Interactive-Toilet
The film “Psycho” was the first movie to show a toilet flushing – the scene caused an inpouring of complaints about indecency
Pomegranates studded with cloves were used as the first attempt at making toilet air-freshener


source: source;http://listverse.com/2009/06/15/15-fascinating-facts-about-toilets/by James Franter

http://thisoldtoilet.com




Monday, September 23, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - It's a go: Astronauts need toilet training, 'cause it ain't easy in space - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139

On May 5, 1961, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard was locked into his capsule Freedom 7, ready to become the first American and second person ever in space. But before his 15-minute historic flight, Shepard would sit through five hours of delays — and he really had to go to the bathroom.
Poop
"Man, I got to pee," he radioed launch control.
NASA officials weren't prepared for this situation. They thought the mission would be short enough to avoid it, and letting Alan Shepard urinate in his shiny silver spacesuit was not something they were ready to do; the astronaut was wired with medical sensors that might get wrecked if wet. But eventually, launch control had no choice but to let him to go.
"You think it's glamorous being an astronaut? It's a lot of hard work and a lot of indignity as well," Mark Roberts, a tour guide at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City, said during the museum's recent summer SpaceFest last month. [Space Toilet Technique: NASA's How-To Guide (Video)]
After Shepard's debacle, NASA devised better ways to take care of basic bodily functions. But space waste continued the plague the agency.
By the time astronaut Gordon Cooper launched on the last Project Mercury flight in 1963, NASA had created a urine collection device that astronauts could wear inside the one-person spacecraft. Cooper's flight was not an easy one. Near the end of his 22-orbit 34-hour mission, system after system in his capsule mysteriously started failing. He had to take over manual control and pilot the craft through a risky re-entry into the atmosphere.
                               Poop1
Megan Gannon / Space.com
Mark Roberts, a tour guide at the Intrepid Air & Space Museum in New York, gives a talk about going to the bathroom in space on July 25, during SpaceFest. The picture he is pointing to on the screen shows a NASA engineer modestly demonstrating how an Apollo fecal collection bag works over a pair of plaid pants.
What went wrong? An investigation showed that his urine bag leaked and droplets got into the electronics, hobbling his automatic systems, Roberts said.
Everybody poopsIf rogue urine sounds problematic, think about the agony floating feces could inflict inside a cramped space capsule. When NASA started planning longer missions, they had to take astronauts' bowels into consideration.
The space agency's next project, Gemini, put two astronauts side-by-side in a spacecraft, testing out the crucial maneuvers that would bring the Apollo spaceflyers to the moon. To show that humans could survive in space for two weeks, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman spent 14 days flying in Gemini 7, the longest manned mission at the time.
"They had no toilet in there," Roberts said. "What they had was basically a plastic bag every time they had to do a No. 2."
Space toilets didn't become much more sophisticated by the time the first Apollo missions launched. Astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had fecal collection bags that stuck to their bottoms with adhesive when they had to go. And microgravity could make things messy.
Poop2
NASA
The "positional trainer" space toilet is for practice only, as it does not function. The hole diameter is 4 inches.
"There's a problem of separation," Roberts said. "Whatever comes out of you doesn't know it's supposed to come away from you." Each fecal collection bag came with a "finger cot" to allow the astronauts to manually move things along. Then they had to knead a germicide into their waste so that gas-expelling bacteria wouldn't flourish inside the sealed bag and cause it to explode. [Space Quiz! The Reality of Life in Orbit]
The entire ordeal often took 45 minutes to an hour to complete in the Apollo spacecraft, Roberts said. To minimize their bowel movements, astronauts had a high-protein, low-residue diet — think steak and eggs and other foods that are don't make a lot of waste after they are absorbed by the body.
Urinating wasn't much easier for the Apollo crews. Their urine collection device was basically a condom-like pouch attached to a hose that vented out into the vacuum of space at the turn of a valve. By the astronauts' own accounts, it was more than a little unsettling to use the device, Roberts said.
Astronaut potty trainingToday, going to the bathroom in space is much less tedious, but it still requires careful attention — and even space toilet training. The reusable space planes of NASA's retired shuttle program had toilets using airflow to draw waste away from the body in place of Earth's gravity. The International Space Station has commodes with a similar design.
"For No. 2, it's kind of like a camp potty, where you use that to contain the solid waste and that gets burned up in the atmosphere eventually on a spacecraft," NASA astronaut Nicole Stott told elementary students Thursday during a video chat from NASA's International Space Station Mission Control in Houston. "For No. 1, it's basically a hose, we call it a urine hose, that has a vacuum on it."
Astronauts go through "positional training" on Earth to make sure solid waste goes directly into the narrow opening of these space toilets, Roberts explained. The mock toilet has a camera at the bottom. Astronauts don't actually go to the bathroom during training, but by watching a video screen in front of them, they can check that their alignment is spot on.
"If you get stuff around these air vents that are providing the suction in there, things can get really clogged up and you can damage a multimillion-dollar toilet fairly easily," Roberts said.
Breaking a toilet is indeed expensive and inconvenient — not to mention unhealthy. After the sole toilet on the International Space Station had been plagued by a series of problems and breakdowns, NASA bought a second, $19 million Russian commode that was installed in the orbiting outpost's U.S. segment in 2008.
As for peeing, each astronaut is given his or her own funnel — made in different shapes for men and women — which attaches to a hose on the toilet. But as gravity diminishes in space, ego apparently doesn't.
Poop3
NASA TV
The Expedition 19 crew participates in a toast aboard the International Space Station.
"They had three different sizes of funnels and the guys were always choosing the largest size," Roberts said of the astronauts in the shuttle program.
Waste not, want notIn 1986, the Soviet Union built the Mir space station, which had a bathroom with a toilet that vented the waste out into space. By the time space officials were retiring Mir in 2001, the space station's solar panels had lost about 40 percent of their effectiveness, Roberts said.
"They realized that a large part of the damage to these solar panels was frozen urine floating in space at very high speeds," Roberts told his audience.
Today on the International Space Station, a $100 billion orbiting outpost that has been staffed with rotating crews since 2000, urine gets recycled into drinking water through a filtration system.
Fecal matter, meanwhile, often gets packed up and cast off from the space station with other trash in capsules that burn up in the atmosphere, Roberts said. But with longer missions, like flights to Mars, some researchers are thinking about how to recycle feces, too. For example, some scientists propose that human waste could line the walls of future spacecraft to act like a radiation shield, protecting astronauts from the harmful effects of cosmic rays.
 
by Megan Gannon
 

Friday, September 20, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - What are Composting Toilets - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139



Composting Toilet

























What are composting toilets? Are they really that much better for the environment? Are they gross? 
A composting toilet is a miniature ecosystem designed to recycle human excrement safely by containing it while microorganisms convert it to humus. Returning that humus to the soil is one important ecological benefit. Another benefit of composting toilets is that they use little or no water. By comparison, a "normal" toilet adds up to 5 gallons of pure drinking water to an ounce or so of waste so it can be flushed into an expensive septic or sewer system, where it is treated. The American Water Works Association Research Foundation finds that over 30 percent of household water use is just for flushing toilets.

Because composting toilets keep human excrement out of the household wastewater, the remaining greywater from the kitchen, shower and washing machine can also be used to water lawns and trees (see Art Ludwig's book Create an Oasis with Greywater). Even if greywater recycling is impractical, a composting toilet can greatly prolong the life of your septic system and reduce pump-out and maintenance costs (usually $200 to $300 every other year) because most of the problematic solids are kept out of the system. Composting toilets also are used to reduce septic system flow-through in places where it creates problems, such as lake cabins and houses with older, low capacity systems, or places with bedrock, heavy clay soil or high water tables. For a more comprehensive look at septic and composting systems, see Lloyd Kahn's Septic System Owner's Manual.

Commercially available composting toilets range in cost and capacity from the $1,000 Nature's Head or $1,500 Sun Mar toilet (small enough to be installed in an RV but only able to handle a single full time user) to $10,000 Clivus Multrum units that can handle a large household. The Clivus Multrum-style composting toilets at the visitor center for Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Fallingwater house take care of 120,000 visitors per year, minimizing the impact of so many guests on the sensitive Bear Run watershed ecosystem.

A composting toilet can also be as simple as a 5-gallon receptacle, with fresh sawdust added after each use and emptied regularly into a specially prepared outdoor compost bin. This type of do-it-yourself system is detailed in Joe Jenkins’ Humanure Handbook

The “humanure toilet” system will almost certainly be unknown to local permitting agencies, which often resist even code and NSF (National Sanitation Foundation) approved systems because of inexperience or assumptions based on experience with pit privies. Certainly composting toilets require more "hands-on" upkeep from owners, such as emptying of the clean, composted material every six months or so. If it is overloaded or not taken care of, a composting toilet can also draw flies or smell bad. 

If designed and operated properly, composting toilets are clean, odor-free and will kill the pathogens in human excrement that spread disease while creating fertilizer and saving a lot of water. 


source: 
http://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/what-are-composting-toilets-zb0z09zblon.aspx#axzz2eygQ4mlu
by Chris McClellon

http://www.thisoldtoilet.com

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - For the High-End Bathroom, Something Unexpected - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139


For the High-End Bathroom, Something Unexpected


AMONG the features of the new 6,000-square-foot, $3 million entertainment wing in Kevin Scherer’s home in Plano, Tex., are two bars, a theater, a video game room, a shuffleboard table and a golf simulator that projects images of top courses onto a big screen.

Oh, and a urinal.
“It fit the theme of the golf simulator room, which is a men’s activity,” said Mr. Scherer, a 44-year-old retired Internet executive, speaking of the $1,269 Kohler Bardon urinal he installed in an adjoining bathroom and unveiled at a Christmas party, as though showing off a ceramic trophy. No guy would ever use the toilet, he added, “if he knew the urinal was there.”
While the thought of a home urinal may seem vaguely “Animal House,” Mr. Scherer’s interior designer, Ashley Astleford, wasn’t surprised by his request. This was the second time in the last few months that she was asked to install a urinal in a luxury residential project, and she said she knows many other designers and architects who have been specifying home urinals in their projects. According to Ms. Astleford, who is based in Dallas, home urinals are becoming “a definite must for luxury master suites.”

If an increasing number of men are looking to bring the amenities of a football stadium into their high-end homes, manufacturers now seem ready to oblige. Several companies, observing growing consumer interest in their commercial models over the last few years, have begun to produce residential urinals, bringing a sleek, designer aesthetic to a device long relegated to plumbing supply stores and public restrooms.

Duravit U.S.A., a division of the German bathroom fixture manufacturer — whose headquarters in Hornberg, designed by Philippe Starck, features a gigantic toilet embedded in the facade — currently sells three models for home installation, including the $1,250 Utronic, which has an infrared-triggered flush.

In 2005, Toto U.S.A. began selling the wall-mounted Lloyd home urinal, also with a motion-sensing flush feature, for $975, as part of its luxury bath collection. David Krakoff, vice president of sales at Toto, said the company has gone from selling dozens of urinals a month to hundreds since introducing the Lloyd. And Villeroy & Boch has introduced eight residential urinals in the past four years.

“This is found business,” said Tim Schroeder, president of Duravit U.S.A., adding that residential clients are more receptive to the idea now that they have seen fancy versions in boutique hotels and restaurants.

The new urinals bear little resemblance to the grungy fixtures you might see littered with cigarette butts and hanging from the wall of a truck-stop men’s room. Consider, for example, Duravit’s McDry, an elegant, teardrop-shaped model that sells for $895 and doesn’t require water to flush (instead it uses a biodegradable blue oil, penetrable by a stream of urine, which acts as a barrier to odors).

For the modernist, there is the Spoon, by the British firm Philip Watts Design, made of polyresin, sculptured in the shape of a teaspoon and available in an array of colors for $1,369. Also available are the Contour ($1,674) and the Prizm ($1,431), two stainless steel residential models made by Neo-Metro, a California company known for making metal fixtures for prisons.

Some urinals are even being personalized. When Tad Dinkins, a 35-year-old Caterpillar equipment dealer from St. Louis, remodeled his basement bathroom, he installed one of Villeroy & Boch’s Subway models with an etched image of a golf flag that serves as a target — the finishing touch in a tricked-out bar and gaming space. “My wife didn’t like it, but I put it in,” said Mr. Dinkins, who is not alone in encountering resistance from the woman in his life.
Indeed, there is still a certain amount of squeamishness about home urinals, particularly among women, so marketers are focusing on designer style and claims about cleanliness in an effort to overcome negative associations. Kohler U.S.A., for instance, says that its “human factors group” — a team that studies, among other things, how people urinate — has found the best urinal shape for keeping the bathroom clean. A result is Kohler’s funnel-shaped Steward series, introduced last April.


“When you go at a flat wall there’s lots of splash,” said Shane Judd, product manager of Kohler’s fixtures group, whose job it is to know these kinds of things. “The conical shape eliminates splash.”

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/garden/25urin.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&ref=bathroomsandtoilets&adxnnlx=1379260428-XVzPJANunZG8zosdKr3CAQ
by Suzanne Gannon

http://www.thisoldtoilet.com

Monday, September 16, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Rise of Computerized Toilets leads to hacking concerns - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139




The rise of computerized toilets in Japan has sparked concerns by a US security company that the devices could be hacked by saboteurs who could make the commodes repeatedly flush or squirt water at the user.
Source: ABC News |

http://www.thisoldtoilet.com

Friday, September 13, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - NY Judge Beaten With Toilet Lid After Arraignment - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139 ~ 800-658-4521





Authorities say a judge in an upstate New York village has been choked and hit on the head with a toilet tank lid as he locked up court after an arraignment.
Police in the Seneca County village of Waterloo say acting Judge Roger Barto was attacked from behind Saturday night with a toilet tank lid that had been placed in a nearby garbage container during building renovations.
Officers found Barto lying near the front door of the courtroom entrance. He was taken to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, where he's listed in guarded condition.
Officials in the Finger Lakes village say Barto had been presiding over an arraignment for serious traffic violations, but police aren't connecting it to the beating.
No arrests have been reported in the case.
 
 

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Worlds Craziest Toilet Bowls - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139 ~ 800-658-4521






 

World's craziest toilet bowls

As people around the world prepare to celebrate World Toilet Day (Nov. 19), CBS News is celebrating the world's strangest toilets. Why? First, to make you laugh, but also to help focus attention on the 2.6 billion people who don't have indoor plumbing.








source: http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-204_162-10005644-13.html
credit purpleslinky.com, Kitty's World,  Socyberty.com,

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - New toilet-themed restaurant where diners eat out of bidets opens in China - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139 ~ 800-658-4521

You wouldn't expect to see your meal to come to you in a bowl like this - not until after you'd eaten it, that is.
But this is exactly the kind of experience that awaits diners at one of the many toilet-themed restaurants that are springing up across China in a craze for food that - hopefully- doesn't taste as it looks.
The latest loo eatery, which opened in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, at the end of August, serves up lavatorial delights such as brown, curly wisps of soft serve ice cream - as well as more standard noodle, meat and vegetable dishes.
Bog roll: Diners can choose from a menu of lavatory-themed dishes
Bog roll: Diners can choose from a menu of lavatory-themed dishes

All of them come in individual, toilet-like vessels, from bidets to potties to - in the case of the ice cream - little cups, where the plumbing at the back forms a dainty handle for diners to hold their end-of-meal digestif. 
The restuarant itself is equipped to resemble a bathroom, with showers attached to the walls and seats that look like toilet bowls topped with cushions in the shape of large piles of poo.
Toilet restaurants have become popular across China, with cities including Chonqing, Shanghai, Kunming and Hangzhou boasting their own loo chains, and others in Korea and Japan.


Beijing's version - Pian pian man wu, which translates as 'House full of poo' - has an extensive menu covering dishes that also includes the apparently signature 'super constipation black dry s***' ice cream, in this case topped with red beans and sprinkles in a mini squat toilet and coming at a price of 26RMB (around £2.60).
Visitors may be surprised to find so may toilets in a restaurant, where many other eateries in China do not actually have their own toilet, and patrons are required to relieve themselves in public lavatories in the street outside.

WC decor: The walls are decorated to look like the inside of a bathroom
WC decor: The walls are decorated to look like the inside of a bathroom

Groom of the stool: Waiters serve patients at seats that are adorned with poo-shaped cushions
Groom of the stool: Waiters serve patients at seats that are adorned with poo-shaped cushions

Toilet bowl: Diners share food from bowls shaped like sinks, bidets and WCs
Toilet bowl: Diners share food from dishes shaped like sinks, bidets and WCs

Seated toilets like the ones that feature in the dinnerwear at these establishments are also less common in China, as hygiene tends to dictate a preference for squatters.
In Beijing, a municipal law literally states that 'Only two flies' are allowed in a public toilet at any one time.
Yet China is no stranger to quirky themed restaurants - including those of a less lavatorial nature.
Beijing boasts a string of weird dining experiences that include a Kung-fu themed restaurant, where waiters perform karate chops as they deliver dishes, a Hello Kitty restaurant, and an Eighties schoolroom restaurant where entry is only on production of ID that shows you would have been at school in the decade.
Outside of Asia, themed restaurants can be just as bizarre.
The Hospitalis restaurant recently opened in Riga, Latvia, giving the chance to eat cakes that look like human organs and bandages on a dentist's chair and be served by waiters in doctor and nurse uniforms - or opt to be tied in a straitjacket and have their meal spoonfed to them.
Posh poo: The restaurant has shower heads and toilet rolls attached to the walls
Posh poo: The restaurant has shower heads and toilet rolls attached to the walls

Pots of potty: Every detail is intended to be as authentic as possible, including flushes that actually push
Pots of potty: Every detail is intended to be as authentic as possible, including flushes that actually push

Fine faeces: This diner appears impressed by the morsels on offer
Fine faeces: This diner appears impressed by the morsels on offer

Tastes as good as it looks: An ice cream desert at the restaurant in Taiyuan
Tastes as good as it looks: An ice cream desert at the restaurant in Taiyuan


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2416133/New-toilet-themed-restaurant-diners-eat-bidets-opens-China.html
by Ellie Buchdahl


http://www.thisoldtoilet.com

Friday, September 6, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - City workers recover flushed ring - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139 ~ 800-658-4521



 


Wastewater employees with the City of Hampton recovered an anniversary ring accidentally flushed down a toilet.
The process took four days, but thanks to the hard work of city employees, the Richmond woman was able to get her possession back. The incident happened around 11:30 p.m. Friday when the woman was visiting family in Hampton.
When a professional plumbing service was unable to recover the ring, she thought it was lost forever.
Monday, she called Public Works because she wasn't aware crews worked seven days a week. Staff members with Wastewater Operations were sent to help search. Crews were unable to find the ring Monday, but went back out Tuesday.
The family was told to run water into all the drains and flush everything in the house while crews set up a debris trap. The debris was taken back to Wastewater headquarters and the ring was found.
The ring's owner wrote the City of Hampton, "We cannot express enough gratitude to everyone who had a role in recovering this very special ring to us. It's not only the monetary value of the ring, but also the sentimental value that could not be replaced…Please do anything and everything you can to acknowledge their dedication, honesty and hard work."
Each of the Wastewater employees received a $25 "Delightful Dollars" gift card, part of an awards program offered by the city to employees who go above and beyond.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Teen girl hit with portable toilet while driving to school - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139 ~ 800-658-4521






THORNDIKE, Maine — A teenage girl had an unhappy surprise first thing Monday morning when a portable toilet fell onto her Jeep as she was driving to Mount View High School.
A man who had just made a portable toilet delivery to the school forgot to lash a second one down and it fell off his truck after he pulled out of the parking lot onto Route 220, Chief Deputy Jeff Trafton of the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office said Monday afternoon.
The girl swerved to avoid the flying toilet but it hit her red Jeep Cherokee despite her efforts.
“Fortunately, it was clean,” Trafton said of the toilet.
The other driver, Ronnie Furrow, whose age and town were not yet available, was issued a summons for having an unsecured load, Trafton said. The chief deputy did not release the teenager’s name because she is a juvenile and was not at fault in the accident.
The teenager made an emotional 911 call to report the accident, and the Mount View School Resource Officer responded to the scene.
“It was a true Monday morning happening,” Trafton said.
 
by Abigail Curtis
 

Monday, September 2, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - More people have access to cellphones than toilets - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139 ~ 800-658-4521





A new United Nations study has found that more people around the world have access to a cellphone than to a working toilet.

The study’s numbers claim that of the world’s estimated 7 billion people, 6 billion have access to mobile phones. However, only 4.5 billion have access to a toilet.
At a press conference announcing the report, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson announced the organization is launching an effort to halve the number of those without access by the end of 2015.
“Let’s face it—this is a problem that people do not like to talk about. But it goes to the heart of ensuring good health, a clean environment and fundamental human dignity for billions of people,” Eliasson said at the press conference.
In August 2012, the Bill Gates Foundation began its own effort to “reinvent the toilet” as a way to help curb the number of people around the world without access to sanitary waste disposal.
Interestingly, the report states that India alone is responsible for 60 percent of the world’s population that does not use a toilet, an estimated 626 million individuals. Yet, at the same time, there are an estimated 1 billion cellphones in India.
Conversely, in the world’s most highly populated country, China, only 14 million people do not have access to a toilet. However, there are also fewer cellphones in China, 986 million, according to the Daily Mail.
Driving the point home, more than 750,000 people die each year from diarrhea and one of its primary causes is from unsanitary conditions created in communities without access to toilets.
And there are other benefits of installing more modern sanitation options that don’t immediately come to mind.
“This can also improve the safety of women and girls, who are often targeted when they are alone outdoors,” said Martin Mogwanja, deputy executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund. “And providing safe and private toilets may also help girls to stay in school, which we know can increase their future earnings and help break the cycle of poverty.”
 
by Eric Pfeiffer