Also, the low-flow experience ruins household and city plumbing because this permits fungus and sentiment buildup. This promotes stink.
Trump has been issuing orders on this topic from the start but so far he has excluded the really big issue: toilets. This new proclamation specifically names them: “Water conservation requirements for faucets, showers, bathtubs, and toilets … make bathroom appliances more expensive and less functional.”
Be still my heart!
As I looked through the order, however, there was no more mention of toilets but there was a mention of “water closets.” I had to go to the relevant federal regulation and look up the definition:
That sure sounds like a toilet to me! This is absolutely thrilling if there is follow through here. It will not only change household experience. It will kick off an industrial boom that could be worth tens of billions of dollars. We have half a dozen mighty manufacturers in the United States today. They could all be involved.
The old water closets were huge and hung on the wall, like the one in “The Godfather” that hides the gun that kills Sollozzo and the police captain. They could be 5 and 6 gallons, which was great but probably unnecessary. In the 1950s, these became toilet tanks on the ground with a different mechanism. They were typically 3 and 4 gallons.
The activist contingent in the 1970s started getting agitated about this, thinking that it was all a waste, without realizing just how much work was actually being done by this seemingly unnecessary water use. So the fashion was to put a brick in the toilet tank. Lefty guests would come to your house and examine your tanks and denounce you if you didn’t have one.
You laugh but I know this for sure. I had a go-go-boots-wearing aunt who disturbed a Thanksgiving dinner this way! This frenzy over reducing tank sizes continued through the 1980s and manufacturers kept experimenting with smaller tanks.
These included valves now common in Europe that distinguish two kinds of flushing for you know what vs. you know what. That makes sense but even that was not enough to satisfy the water restrictionists.
In 1992, the shock came. George Bush signed off on legislation that ended up reducing the toilet tank to 1.6 gallons per flush. This was absurd and less than half the water that most toilets flushed. Old tanks were grandfathered in but new ones could not be manufactured and installed.
A quiet panic built as consumers found themselves extremely unhappy with the new tanks, and rightly so. The new small tanks didn’t clean themselves properly. They required several flushes. You had to keep a brush right by. And because there was not enough water flowing through, the inside working of the tank broke down with sentiment and otherwise. This led to the creation of plastic parts that could be replaced often.
Now every household needs a toilet technician. It’s all so absurd.
At one point, some entrepreneurs discovered that they could smuggle large tanks across the border from Canada and sell them. Federal police cracked down on that racket in a hurry.
A couple of years ago, I was touring an old hotel that was purchased for renovation. No one had stayed there in many decades. It had been built in the 1930s. Everything was still in the hotel: lamps, fixtures, desks, you name it. Only one thing was missing. Thieves had stolen every single toilet from every single room.
Don’t write and tell me about how the new toilets function just great on 1.6 gallons. It’s not true or only true if you have very low standards for what it means to work. The models that use air pressure break your ears with sounds, while the odd shaped bowls swirl around water and always miss a spot. No matter what you do, you will need to brush it out to get the last bits.
It’s not the manufacturers who are at fault. They are playing the hand they were dealt by the regulators. They’ve done a great job of it, given the constraints. They would do a much better job if unconstrained.
The whole thing is preposterous. Good plumbing is a sign of high civilization, as the ancient Romans knew. We had better plumbing with aqueducts than federal regulations allow now.
Trump is right about all of this. But this time, he has dared to take on the great unmentionable of water closets, a.k.a toilets. The implications are astounding. If only 10 percent of households replaced their existing tanks with new ones of 3 and 4 gallons, 13 million new models could be sold netting billions in profits for many companies.
It would be glorious to have great toilets again. No more fearing the implications of using the facilities at your friend’s house. No more spousal arguments about who failed to clean out the bowl. No more stinky pipes. No more broken fixtures. No more sticking dumb bleach pods in the tank.
All these problems would be over.
What about water use? Yes, they use more but people might be willing to pay. What is it worth to you to have a sanitary home that is not always soiled with the vague smell of human waste? I suspect many people will be willing to pay for that.
For now Trump’s order is only a statement for investigation with a firm resolve to fix the problem. We could see a resolution quickly, however, and it could find itself written into law. After all, we know for sure that this is important to the president. And it is not only his issue. It is important to many of us who have been writing about this subject for 20 years!
The restrictions on water flow in our homes—while factory farming faces no restriction at all—is emblematic of the insanity of our times. We allow government to wreck our lives in the name of saving the environment while corporate water hogs are allowed to run wild. Finally we are seeing rebalancing take place.
Maybe household toilets can be made great again. Maybe we can even have the option of installing a 5-gallon water closet and hiding guns behind it. I’m in!
