Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - It’s World Toilet Day and It’s No Laughing Matter - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139



GTY world toilet day 1 jtm 131119 16x9 608 Its World Toilet Day and Its No Laughing Matter
Jasjeet Plaha/Hindustan Times/Getty Images
It’s World Toilet Day today — not as much a celebration of the porcelain throne as a call to action to help the 2.5 billion people worldwide who do not have access to a basic, clean toilet.
One in three people around the world do not have access to proper sanitation, according to the United Nations, putting many of them at risk of diseases such as diarrhea, cholera and typhus, and a host of other health problems.
About 2 million people — many of them young children — die every year from diarrheal diseases, according to the World Health Organization. Almost 2,000 children die every day from preventable diarrheal diseases — 760,000 children total in 2011, according to UNICEF.
The United Nations established World Toilet Day this year to spark movement on sanitation-related issues, like improving the water supply in developing areas and changing the behavior of the billions of people who don’t have a safe place to relieve themselves.
GTY world toilet day 2 131119 16x9 608 Its World Toilet Day and Its No Laughing Matter
EyesWideOpen/Getty Images
As populations in developing countries shift from rural to urban areas, people have increasingly packed city slums that aren’t equipped with sewage systems, latrines, basic toilets or readily available clean drinking water, according to William Moomaw, a professor of international environmental policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, in Medford, Mass.
“It’s literally like walking around in a cesspool, with the amount of waste that’s produced,” Moomaw told ABC News. “The waste is just flowing in the streets in some of these places.”
Sub-par sanitation often creates contaminated drinking water and, when facilities aren’t safe, can put women and disabled people at risk of sexual violence.
And the economic impact is severe, according to the World Bank. It estimated economic losses stemming from lack of access to sanitation at $260 billion annually.
On a more personal scale, farmers and others who don’t have a clean toilet can contract a waterborne disease and stop contributing economic output, Moomaw said. “You can’t farm if you’re sick,” he said.
by Ben Gittleson
 
 

Monday, November 25, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - You Never Know What You Will Find in the Toilet - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139

Gold bars worth $1.1m found in plane toilet in India

Indian saleswoman arranges gold bars at a jewellery store in Ahmedabad (file image)As gold import duties have risen in an effort to curb domestic demand, the incentive to smuggle gold has risen

A stash of 24 gold bars worth more than $1.1m has been discovered in the toilet compartment of a commercial plane in eastern India.
Cleaners found the haul in two bags on board a Jet Airways flight at Kolkata airport, officials said.
India is one of the world's main gold consumers and imports are seen as a major contributor to the country's account deficit.
It recently raised duty on imports of gold jewellery to 15% from 10%.
It was the third increase this year as the government attempts to curb demand for the precious metal, which many Indians traditionally hoard in the belief it will bring financial security.
The plane on which the 1kg (2.2lb) gold bars were found on Tuesday had reportedly come from Bangkok, local media reported, before making stops in India.
"The cleaning staff of the airport were going though their routine duties and found two bags in the toilets of the plane," airport director BP Mishra told AFP news agency.
He was quoted as saying that no arrest had been made in connection with the find, though OneIndia News said a suspect was being questioned.
 

Friday, November 22, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Half as much water - twice the flush - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139

 

If the toilets in your home are from the mid-1990s or earlier, consider installing new ones to save big on your water bills. All new models are “low-flow” toilets — by law they can use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. Prior to 1994, most toilets on the market used at least 3.5 gallons, or about 20 gallons of water per person per day — the most water used by any household appliance. What a waste! Not only did this add to your water bills, but as recent droughts and water shortages remind us, clean water is a resource we need to conserve. Low-flow toilets now save the average U.S. household (2.64 people) about 25 gallons of water per day, or more than 9,000 gallons per year (according to the book Water Use and Conservation by Amy Vickers).
But while some low-flow models work well, others do not. That’s because to comply with the federal regulations on toilets’ water use, some manufacturers initially reduced the volume of water that discharges from the tank, without also making the necessary design adjustments. New designs have improved the performance of many models, but some still do not flush thoroughly.

Kinds of Toilets

To be an informed shopper, it helps to know the two basic kinds of toilets available on the market.
Gravity-flush toilets. These are conventional toilets for residential use that have been engineered to use less water. When you press the knob, a flush valve opens and the water in the tank drains into the bowl through rim openings and a siphon jet. The force of the water pushes the waste through the trap and down the drainpipe. While they are usually less effective at removing solid waste than pressure-assist toilets (described below), gravity-flush toilets are generally less expensive and easier to maintain, because most use standard parts.
Pressure-assist toilets. Best suited for commercial use or in homes with poor drainpipe carry, these models use the pressure of the water supply to the toilet to compress air in an inner tank. When you flush the toilet, pressurized water is forced into the bowl, blasting waste down the drainpipe. Pressure-assist toilets have a distinctive whoosh sound that’s much louder than gravity-flush toilets, but they are more effective in removing solid waste.

Toilet Testing

Finding a low-flow gravity-flush or pressure-assist toilet that performs well is now easier than ever, thanks in no small part to a guy named Bill Gauley.
Gauley publishes toilet performance results several times a year in a report that has become the industry standard for rating toilets.

Gauley’s an engineer by training, and back in the mid-1990s he was curious to know how much water his new low-flow toilet actually used. Although the unit was rated at 1.6 gallons per flush, Gauley found it used a gallon more than that. Surprised by the results, he tested other so-called “water-saving” toilets and found they all used significantly more water than the amount mandated by law. Most flushed pretty poorly, too.
Sensing an opportunity, Gauley launched a new career testing and reporting on low-flow toilet performance. The firm Gauley founded more than 10 years ago — Veritec Consulting — has helped revolutionize the toilet industry. The toilets that enter the Veritec test lab all face the same technical challenge: They must prove how much human waste (simulated with extruded soybean paste) they can flush away cleanly. The threshold for acceptable performance under Veritec analysis is 250 grams of waste cleanly expelled in a single flush (almost twice the weight of an average “deposit”).
Many toilets can successfully flush that amount and much more — the toilet models listed on the opposite page all flushed up to 1,000 grams of waste. But a surprising number of toilets currently on the market fall significantly below the 250 gram level.
“The marketplace is really beginning to demand better performing toilets,” Gauley says. “For example, the U.S. EPA is currently initiating a water efficiency labeling program to parallel their popular Energy Star program that will require models to flush a minimum of 350 grams of waste. Right now, the best-performing 1.6 gallon toilets can eliminate 1,000 grams or more of waste cleanly in a single flush — far more than many of the older 3.5 gallon toilet models that flushed with more than twice the volume of water.”
By choosing a low-flow toilet that works well, not only will you save money on your water bills, but you will get a reliable toilet that helps conserve water.

The History of Flushing

Today’s low-flow toilets use only 1.6 gallons of water per flush compared to more than 5 gallons in the recent past. In fact, an average household with a low-flow toilet now saves 26,538 gallons of water annually when compared to households that used toilets with 7.0 gallons per flush!


source:  http://www.motherearthnews.com/green-homes/half-the-water-twice-the-flush.aspx#ixzz2ks08oE4D
by Steve Maxwell

http://www.thisoldtoilet.com

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - toilet quiz - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139



"Gardez l'eau" is French for "Watch out for the water". When would people say this?

When they were chucking the contents of their potties out of the window.

What was a 'close stool'?

A royal toilet.

How many times a day does the average toilet get flushed?

About 8

source: http://www.bog-standard.org/pupils_quiz_history_ans.aspx

http//www.thisoldtoilet.com

Monday, November 18, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - toilet quiz - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139









How many different words can you think of for 'toilet'? e.g bog,

Powder roomBathroomRestroomWater closet (WC)
LooDunnyPotty (pot)John
Lavatory (Lav)BogPrivyCan
OuthouseKhaziThe smallest roomLittle girls' room
LadiesGentsCloakroomLittle boys' room
ConvenienceGarderobeLatrineThrone room
WashroomNecessaryPlace of easementFacilities
Men’s roomWomen’s roomDo you know any more?


 Garderobe was a toilet in a castle. Why was it called a 'garderobe'?

People kept their clothes in it, as the smell kept moths away.

source: http://www.bog-standard.org/pupils_quiz_history_ans.aspx

http://www.thisoldtoilet.com




Friday, November 15, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Sustainable Innovation: Gates Foundation Reinvents the Toilet - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139

Bill Gates, second from right, views innovations in toilet design at the Reinvent the Toilet Fair in Seattle, on Aug. 14. Oara Neumann, center, of Rice University in Houston, Texas, explains the solar waste sanitizing device.

With 2.5 billion people in the world not having access to proper sanitation, sustainable development experts are thinking a lot about toilets.  That’s because our modern toilet, whose technology has been around for centuries, requires a lot of running (and fairly clean) water.


In August, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted the Reinvent the Toilet Fair in Seattle, Washington. The event was billed as a “showcase for creating new vision for the next generation of sanitation,” and groups already receiving funded by the foundation were invited to show their progress. 

The fact the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest private foundations in the world, is focusing on the solution of the global sanitation problem, might help underscore the importance of the challenge. The foundation has allocated more than $26 billion in grants since its creation in 1994 — more than $3.6 billion of that has gone to support global development and more than $15 billion to improve global health. The foundation has an endowment of $35.6 billion, according to its own figures.

The ultimate goal of Reinventing the Toilet is to develop an independent sanitation system that eliminates waste without the use of running water.

This video explains the situation:



 
“We are defined by the necessity for sustainability, it’s not a luxury,” said Carl Hensman, a program officer of the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene team of the foundation, who helps decide which projects the foundation funds.
Projects suited for the challenge of accommodating many users, often with little or no power and no running water while eliminating any harmful output, are — by definition — sustainable, explained Mr. Hensmen in a telephone interview last week.
“We’re defined by our environment — everything has to be contained and self-contained,” he said.
The most successful systems are the simplest and the most robust, said Mr. Hensman. Above all they assure that waste products are safely and completely converted or disposed.
Other factors that influence funding decisions are ease of maintenance and beneficial by products.
The winner of the competition was a design that used solar energy to process waste and even produced a little electricity as a by product.  It was designed by a team from the California Institute of Technology, which received a $100,000 funding boost for their efforts. The Cal Tech system breaks down human waste and water into hydrogen gas.
A team from Loughborough University in the United Kingdom won the second prize of $60,000, with a system that would turn human waste into a non-odorous, hygienic form of bio-charcoal.
Of the 13 teams participating in the fair, eight came from universities from around the world. The university teams received previous funding from the foundation last year to study the problem and build and test prototypes.
“We’ve had the competition, but we would love to see collaboration,” said Mr. Hensman.
Though the 13 teams were competing, Mr. Hensman said collaboration is one of the most important tools in developing these sanitation systems. During the fair, teams discussed the common problems and some solutions.
The public and media were invited to the showcase event to understand both the global problem and the challenges faced by development teams. Besides providing a long-term solution, the foundation’s aim is to publicize the problem.
The inventions will be field-tested over the next year.
Professor Michael Hoffman of the California Institute of Technology with his team's entry: 'self sustaining photo electrochemical wastewater treatment toilet.'
by Christopher F. Schuetze
 

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - A Necessary Stop - Now it is Art - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139




The breakout star of “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” the new fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is neither the maverick designer Vivienne Westwood nor modern punks like Gareth Pugh and the sisters of Rodarte, but a toilet. At the show’s entrance, visitors are immediately confronted with a re-creation of a filthy restroom of CBGB, the Bowery club that was one of the birthplaces of punk, as it would have appeared in the mid-1970s — drawing reactions, at least among those who remember the original facilities, ranging from amazement to ire. There are three urinals, two toilets with the seats up, two sinks, a bare light bulb, a brick wall, countless used cigarette butts and a whole lot of graffiti, mostly the names of the bands that performed at the club.Patti Smith once said “all the action happened in the toilets,” according to Andrew Bolton, the curator of the exhibition, and it is a place where history is literally written on the walls.
Not everyone is amused by the Met’s treatment of the toilets as a period room. “CBGB was a dump, but for the Met to reduce its essence to a toilet is obnoxious,” said Richard Hell, a seminal figure in the punk scene. (Mr. Bolton’s response: The toilets, like Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades, “are intended to challenge the limits of good taste.”)
· The most repeated name on the walls is Diodes, a band from Toronto whose first release was a punk cover of “Red Rubber Ball.” Elsewhere you might spot Pure Hell, the first all-black punk band, or names like the Hammers and the Motels, or a few anatomical body parts we’ve all seen scrawled on bathroom stalls.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/fashion/a-necessary-stop-at-re-creation-of-cbgb-restroom.html?ref=bathroomsandtoilets

by Eric Wilson

http://www.thisoldtoilet.com

 
 

Monday, November 11, 2013

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



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.”
The environmental benefits are also an attraction for some, since several of the new models use less than a gallon of water per flush, while an older toilet can use as many as five gallons. Eric Cadora, a 42-year-old actor and consultant on green building, installed a Duravit McDry model, which uses no water to flush regularly, in the 2,800-square-foot home he shares with his wife in Malibu, Calif. He estimates the urinal will save thousands of gallons of water a year. Maintenance, he added, has been minimal; every two months, he flushes the fixture with a gallon of water and then refreshes the sealant. “It never smells,” Mr. Cadora said.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Although the appeal of urinals has more to do with function than form for most people, the notion of the urinal as artwork is being revived by one enterprising sculptor 90 years after the artist Marcel Duchamp unveiled his “Fountain.” Kathy Dorfman, 36, spent $10,000 on a one-of-a-kind urinal hand-sculptured from porcelain by Clark Sorensen, a San Francisco artist, in the form of a pink orchid and gave it to her husband as a gift. The couple plan to install it in the master bathroom in their 11th-floor penthouse in Edgewater, N.J., which is decorated in white and lilac marble. “The pink orchid is the most beautiful piece,” Ms. Dorfman said. “It’s very sexual.”
Until now, home urinals have been installed largely in testosterone-laden basement bars and dens, according to Paul Rice, an architect who installed a urinal in his own home in Amagansett after specifying one for a client in Manhattan. “This is another way to make men feel pampered, the way the bidet made a woman feel her bathroom was complete,” Mr. Rice said.
 
But as urinals get the high-design treatment, they may increasingly move into master suites and powder rooms. One model with a distinctly feminine appeal is Villeroy & Boch’s Oblic, which costs $910 and resembles an egg. Petite and popular in smaller bathrooms, where it can be mounted in a corner, it is likely to meet the approval of women like Deborah Wiener, an interior designer who said she hides terrycloth slippers in each bathroom of the house she shares with her husband and two sons. “My fourth design mantra is never, ever go barefoot in a man’s bathroom,” said Ms. Wiener, who runs Designing Solutions, based in Silver Spring, Md., and has recommended urinals to clients.
 
Even developers and builders are taking note. The Duravit Utronic comes standard in roughly half of the 260 units of the new Turnberry Ocean Colony towers near Bal Harbour, Fla., where homes ranging in price from $1.4 to $4 million are almost completely sold out.
So will urinals soon become a mainstay in the American home, as common as the kitchen sink? Ms. Wiener, for one, does not rule it out. “There are many things we have borrowed from commercial design for residential use,” she said. “They start slowly and expand.”
 
by Suzanne Gannon
 
 

Friday, November 8, 2013

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

 

 Most Toilets take about how long to flush?

 3 seconds - 5 seconds or 10 seconds

 
Answer

3 seconds

Flushing the toilet releases a valve which then allows water to fill the bowl, activating the siphon within about three seconds to flush water and waste away.
 

How much water does a standard toilet tank hold?

 1 gallon - 2 gallons or 3 gallons?

 
Answer

2 gallons - An ordinary toilet tank holds about two gallons of water.

 
How is it possible to flush a toilet if there is no water in the toilet tank?

 
Fill the bowl with 2 cups of water?
Pour a bucket of water into the bowl?
or
It I impossible to flush without water in the tank?

 

Answer

Pour a bucket of water into the bowl?

 
If the water supply has been cut off temporarily, it is possible to flush a toilet manually by just pouring a bucket of water into the bowl. This activates the siphon effect and flushes the toilet.

source: http://home.howstuffworks.com/toilet-quiz.htm

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Waste Not - Going Green - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139



Pete Seeger has one. So do Abby Rockefeller, the Bronx Zoo and Glacier National Park. As of last year, so do I. Mine is a Sun-Mar nonelectric composting toilet.
Andrew Bettles

I didn’t want anything to do with it at first. The idea of human waste sitting in one spot — right next to you — for months at a time is difficult to stomach, but I had little choice. Our solar-powered summer cabin has limited running water and soils that are too shallow for a septic system.
The Sun-Mar promised no smells and easy installation. Vented by a pipe out the roof, it doesn’t smell at all. And the concept couldn’t be simpler: in goes human waste plus a few wood chips; out comes dry fertilizer. I wish I could tell you I have handled the harmless mulch that’s produced, but we haven’t even had to empty it yet.
For homeowners interested in going green, the lowly water closet turns out to be a big player. Americans flush away 4.8 billion gallons of water every day — nearly 40 percent of our total indoor water consumption. Cleaning the sewage stream requires vast amounts of energy and chemicals and is often flawed. So manufacturers are finally making some great-looking, highly efficient privies.
Consumers can choose from a wide spectrum of effective flushiness, starting with low flush (the federally mandated maximum of 1.6 gallons per use), superlow flush (1.28 gallons and under), dual flush — with separate buttons and flow rates for solid and liquid wastes — and most recently, no flush at all.
Enter the waterless urinal. These manly devices are most likely being installed in an airport, stadium or university near you as you read. In such settings, each urinal can save 40,000 gallons of water a year, filling three swimming pools. The units require replaceable cartridges or biodegradable liquid barriers sitting just below the drain to trap odors. (It’s still hooked up to a plumbing drain; it just doesn’t flush.) Nearly 100,000 are already in use, and sales have grown by nearly 50 percent a year for the last three years. The Steward (pictured at right), a sleek, cartridge-free model from Kohler, is so attractive that it is being installed in private homes.
Admittedly, not everyone is ready for the no-flush revolution. Say you are the sort of person who wants a spalike toilet with a heated seat, a gentle aerated and vibrating bidet with adjustable controls, a catalytic deodorizer and an electronic seat-and-lid lowering mechanism. Even this device is available with the relatively eco-friendly Washlet series from Toto. It not only saves toilet paper, but as W. Hodding Carter, a Washlet owner and the author of “Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization,” told me, “The thing about waking up and sitting on a warm toilet seat, well, it just affects your whole disposition.”
Alas, such bliss is not yet attainable at our off-the-grid cabin. We’ll just have to hold out for the solar-powered, rain-fed model.[?][?][?]Florence Williams
 
by Florence Williams
 

Monday, November 4, 2013

Toilet Replacement Parts - Kensington toilet goes on auction for £150,000 - This Old Toilet - Phone: 650-483-1139




 


A toilet located near Kensington Palace, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, has gone on auction, with bids opening at £150,000.
 
The toilet will be auctioned by property specialist Allsop today with a guide price of £150,000, the Evening Standard has reported.
 
by Heather Saul