Going with the low-flow

Coincidental with Houseapalooza, a couple of things happened.  Two of the toilets in the house started giving us problems — the downstairs one jamming up a bit frequently, and the master bath one refusing to fully flush.  The answer, of course, was to replace them.

Now it so happens that Denver Water has (well, had, at the time we did this) a very nice rebate program if you bought a low-flow toilet — 1.28 gallons per flush (gpf).  So, in fact, that rebate made all the difference at Home Depot between buying a Nicer Brand-Name Toilet at $250-300, or a You’ll Regret Buying That Crap (So To Speak) Toilet for $80.

We went with the former option, ending up with a pair of Kohler Highlines (yes, they all have very chi-chi brand names in the toilet business — they all sound like Cadillacs, or perhaps suburban housing tract home models).  In so doing, I learned a lot about toilets I hadn’t really thought about until now.

First off, there’s the whole water flow thing.  Current  “standard” is 1.6 gpf.  That’s actually down from older models, but the new low-flow models are 1.28 gpf.  (There are also split models with double handles — often a 1.6 gpf for solid waste, 1 gpf for liquid only.)

Now, everyone jokes about low-flow toilets, and having to flush 2-3 times to do what a single flush used to, but the word seemed to be that there have been a lot of advances made in “doing more than less,” and you get technology terms like “Class 5” and “Class 6” bandied about in the literature a lot.  The latter is the latest-greatest, and seems to add another $50-100 to the price, so we ended up with a “Class 5.”

More importantly (in some respects), there are now different height toilets — the standard height we all grew up with, and what’s called “comfort height” or “chair height” or “ADA-Compliant Height.”  Which is an inch or two higher, which, yes, makes for a much more comfortable sit-down as an adult (though, in point of fact, the whole internal process is more straightforward and less strained if you’re squatting further down).

Yeah, we went for the taller height.

So the toilets were installed while I was off in another hemisphere.  And how do I like them?

Well, comfort-wise, they’re fine.  The Kohler seats are kind of light-weight and will probably need replacement soon, but the higher seat (and enlongated bowl) works just fine.

Flushing-wise?  Well, I’ll quote one guy on Amazon (on another Kohler model): “The flush, somehow, seems — well — not emphatic enough. I realize that’s very subjective, but you want to see action when you hit that flush lever. And instead everything just quietly disappears. That’s a real plus, I know, but it’s difficult to get used to.”

And that’s pretty much it — there’s a light swirl of water, the bottom level rises, then whoosh it all sucks away.  Very quick, and while not quiet it’s less noisy than a the previous toilets.  And it gets rid of mostly everything — sometimes  some skid marks remain in the bowl, but generally vanish at the next usage.  It’s within the parameters I’m comfortable with.

So, overall, success to date.  Or at least no troubles to date.  And, after all, isn’t that (with a bit of water efficiency) what we want from our plumbling?