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In the Toilet, Part 2
 (In Part 1, my family wrangled with toilets that plug. Now, here is the gripping conclusion.)
After living in our carriage-home-above-the-garage-with-the-bad-toilet for six years, finally the House Adjacent neared completion. It would have three toilets, which, adding the existing one makes four. To a pessimist, that’s four mutually exclusive opportunities for disaster at any given moment. Could we dip any deeper into the bowels of heck?
My gal, Cindy, wanted to be intimately involved in the selection of new commodes. For some reason she didn’t trust my judgment. So, hand in hand, we went to our plumbing contractor’s home office for a little down-and-dirty potty talk. His name was Spike and a good old boy if there ever was one.
“So, Mr. and Mrs. Garrison, what’re you looking fer in the way of a toilet?” he asked. “We’ve got any brand you want: Kohler, American, Delta, Pan Am, United or Aero Mexico. And any style: fluted, bell-horned, bongo-lipped or banjo. Not to mention we can also special order any of the following dee-luxe features: wide mouth, narrow tooth, low boy, high rise, low flow or Niagara Falls. You jes’ name it.”
“Do you have the kind that don’t plug?” I asked.
Cindy shot me a glare. “What my husband means is, while we want a fashionable water closet, we also care about functionality.”
“I know zackly what you mean,” Spike said with a wink. “You’re a large-turd family trying to make something ugly look purdy. Have I got the answer for you! It’s called Power-Flush. We love this unit so much, we have one ret here in our home-office showroom. Step ret this way.”
Opening the door to the showroom, which looked to me like a slack-janitored one-holer with a heaping backlog of spare plumbing parts scattered about, I heard a growl.
“Sounds like you keep a pit-bull in here,” I joked nervously.
“Oh, don’t worry about thet,” he chuckled. “Thet’s just the Power-Flush. It sometimes growls when people get near. But it don’t bite. Haw haw!”
Grisly thoughts of what the results of an Attack-Toilet might be tore across my brain.
The Power-Flush was a simple-looking unit. White, (well, I presume it was white at one time) plain, no fancy sculpting. Its manufacturer made no effort at trying to disguise its true identity. But it seemed to have an energy about it. I could swear it was moving slightly: vibrating, shifting, bouncing — kind of like an alcohol-fueled dragster that had just inched up to the starting line.
“Now, let’s say you drop a stank ol’ spike into this baby,” Spike said with another chuckle. “Spike, get it? Thet’s my name. Anyways, you finish up yer bidness then reach over to the handle here…”
His hand jutted forward, but instead of going for the handle he grabbed Cindy by the wrist and thrust her suddenly claw-like hand at the greasy-speckled metal handle. A revving sound emanated from somewhere.
“… and then you give 'er a dip.”
As he said “dip,” he pushed Cindy’s hand down hard on the handle. Suddenly a thunderous roar filled the cramped space as the Power Flush surged to life. I watched in awe as the water in the bowl swirled at startling velocity precisely three-quarters of a revolution, then, whoosh, was gone. It looked like a tornado touching down on a mud puddle.
Spike puffed out his chest as if his only son had just homered in the Little League World Series. “See what I mean?” he beamed. “There ain’t a turd knowed to man thet can stand up to this little honey. In case yer wondering, what makes it work is inside the flush tank there’s a little black box with a je’et engine. Yep, that’s right, jes like a 747, but smaller. A je’et. When you press down the handle, the je’et fires off and shoots exhaust down the hole. Lemme tell you something. When you install one of these babies, you better make sure to bolt 'er down good. Heh, heh. Can you imagine the wild ride if you didn’t!”
I toiled against another grim toilet scenario. Finally, after coming to grips with the fact that it is somehow possible to get two syllables out of the word “jet,” I said, “Great! We’ll take four. What do these hummers cost, Spike?”
“Whal, they retail fer nigh on eight hunnerd. But for you good folk, I’ll sacrifice 'em fer the rock-bottom price of four-fifty.”
“Four hundred and fifty dollars!” Cindy choked. “That’s four times the cost of a regular toilet!”
“I got lotsa regular units if that’s what you’d prefer, ma’am. I can get you into a nice USA model for a measly hunnerd and twenny-nine.”
Cindy thought for a moment, then said, “We’ll take two Power-Flushes and two Eau-de-la-France, scalloped, elongated-chasm, regular units.” Then, turning to me, she whispered, “We can put a Power-Flush in the kid’s bathroom and one in the master bath. We’ll put the pretty, regular ones in the powder room and mud room — they won’t get used enough there to make any difference but will look good for company.”
Which brings me full-circle back to the starting point of Part 1 of this information-packed column. After we had been in the House Adjacent for a little over a year, Cindy found herself at wit’s end with the two pretty, regular units. For some strange reason, each acts as a laxative on her system. She can not walk past one without becoming overwhelmed by an urgent calling of nature. This wouldn’t be a problem except that the pretty, regular units don’t have the jet thruster and so they plug — every time.
For the record, and I’m not making this up, neither Power-Flush has met acquaintance with a plunger since installation. Lucky thing, for the plunger.
I hate to say I told Cindy so, but I did. Ret there in Spike’s showroom. Recall I said we wanted four Power-Flush units, but Cindy, Mrs.-Paranoia-About-What-the-Company-Might-Think-of-Too-Plain-Toilets, countermanded me and insisted on two pretty, regular units. Which, I might add, with all their fancy sculpting and extravagance, cost a good bit more than $129 each. So now, back I’ll go to Spike, hat in hand, and have him trade out the two pretty units for Power-Flushes. Which rankles me no end because there is no trade-in value on a previously-used toilet.
Postscript
After Part 1 ran, I got a couple of Truly Information-Packed e-mails in response (along with a good many that could have cared less about toilets and wondered whether or not I would ever write something actually worthwhile again).
It seems that lots of testing has been done on the plugability of toilets. One e-mail came from Jeff Patchell, the publisher of an Australian family of magazines similar to our Builder magazine family. He graciously let me know of an article in Volume 1 - 2006, World Plumbing Review (WPR) in which the science of toilet testing is discussed. The article, unlike my column, is as serious as a heart attack. On page 50 is a picture of a scientist in a white lab coat with the same solemn expression one might have standing eye to eye with a police officer, roadside, at 1:00 a.m. In his latex-gloved hand is a stool. A fake stool, of course. He’s in the toilet testing business, and, as the article explains, they go to great lengths to simulate the real McCoy. To make sense of the following passage you need to know that my commentary is in [brackets], the article’s author’s in (parentheses).
“… We have made it easier to conduct performance testing by encasing the 50 gram (1-3/4 oz) test specimens in a latex skin (like a sausage) such that it can be reused. As a result, the media [fake turd] is no longer messy and the cost is no longer a problem. Each encased test specimen can typically be used 100 times or more before showing wear and tear.[Wear and tear? Apparently being flushed down a toilet 100 times can be a rasping experience.]
Mr. Koeller points out that some water authorities would like UNAR [Uniform North American Requirements] to also include a test for washing down the sides of the bowl to eliminate what is commonly know as ‘skid marks.’”
[It’s nice to know that a skid mark is a skid mark regardless of which side of the globe you’re on. You can check out WPR here: www.wpr.com.au
The other serious e-mail came from professional engineer, Thomas Kenney, at the NAHB Research Center in Upper Marlboro, Md. Here it is:
“We have done quite a bit of research on toilet performance and there are a few reliable documents that can help buyers make purchase decisions based on performance… check out these sites:
There. Now that this column has flushed out a cornucopia of Truly Hard-Hitting Factual Information, I believe something worthwhile has indeed been accomplished.
I sincerely thank Mr. Kenney and Mr. Patchell for their input.
Tim Garrison of ConstructionCalc.com, is a professional engineer, author, and software producer for the building industry. Check out his new book, "Cracks, Sags, and Dimwits — Lessons To Build On," available at www.lulu.com, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Send e-mail to buildersengineer@constructioncalc.com. Tim reads every one.
This column cannot be reprinted without permission from the author.
The views expressed in this article represent the personal views, statements and opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, statements, opinions or policies of the National Association of Home Builders. NAHB does not necessarily endorse any of the views expressed by the author and NAHB is not responsible for any direct or indirect consequences arising out of the views expressed in this article.
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