I can confirm this. My house had cheap low-flush toilets that were absolutely horrible. They clogged daily and were difficult to plunge and I began storing a bucket near every toilet so I could efficiently carry out the routine plunging sessions.
I was hesitant to buy new toilets because I figured they’re all low-flush, so what difference would it make? I found a top-reviewed model on Home Depot and it made a huge difference. Went from everyday clogs to a clog maybe once every few months. I replaced all my toilets and it’s the best home upgrade I ever did.
Exact opposite experience for me. The traditional toilets in my childhood home (mid-90s) were (still are) slow, took several flushes for solids, and clogged constantly. The modern low-flow toilet in my current home flushes quickly, never needs more than one flush and never clogs.
Anecdata is anecdata. It's most likely that some toilets are just bad and some are good, regardless of flow amount.
> We haven’t talked about toilets but this much is true: they used to work well but the low-flow model is vastly inferior. Combined with low water pressure, toilets clog and break down, to the point that you always have to have a plunger nearby (this didn’t use to be the case). Folks, we know how to make toilets that work: they need lots of water. Your constant problems with flushing are not your fault!
My experience is exactly the opposite. After replacing an 80's era toilet with a modern one, it flushes much better (despite using a lot less water). Water pressure also doesn't effect toilet flushes (excluding commercial tankless toilets), it just effects how quickly the tank refills.
A modern low flush toilet is excellent. They flush considerably better than the old 5 gpf toilets. I’ve seen plumbers advise replacing old 5 gpf toilets with 1.28 gpf toilets to reduce the frequency of clogs.
For amusement, you can look up MAPS testing. People flush varying amounts of standardized pretend poop to make sure that toilets work well.
(But yes, there was a generation of low flush toilets that were essentially 5 gpf toilets modified to use less water per flush. They worked poorly.)
Also, a covered pool uses surprisingly little water.
For what its worth, look into actual modern toilets. The first batch of low water use ones were somewhat lacking. Modern ones are typically better than the old high water use of a decade ago.
Is kind of like LED lights. First batches were garbage. Nowadays, they are better in basically every way compared to what they replaced.
1. The old 5 gallon per flush kind. Didn’t clog all that often. Flushed very very slowly. Contributed to downstream clogs because the outflow was insufficient to get the solids flowing well through the pipes.
2. The early lower-water-consuming kind. These were awful. Replace them if you have one!
3. Modern toilets. They use 1.28-0.8 gallons per flush, they rarely clog, and they don’t tend to clog the pipes downstream. They are generally quite good.
4. Flushometer toilets. They are often messy - they flush loudly and spray water around. Eww.
Why go backwards?
Modern toilets are tested for their ability to flush well:
You most certainly can improve upon bad implementations. Kohler's most recent line (within the last 10 years) are considerably better than all toilets I've had before. They consume much less, flush once and don't make an excessive amount of noise.
A good, modern low flow works better than the old high flow toilets. A few years ago I lived in a new house with a Toto low flow. It was the best toilet I've ever used.
In my experience, the US toilets from ~2000 to ~2005 were crap (heh), but since then they've figured out how to make a low flow toilet that works, and it's fine.
Just need to upgrade the hardware to something more modern. Any mid-grade or better low-flow toilet made in the past 10 years or so can flush a lot of TP without any difficulty. Some of the early low-flow toilets weren't particularly good at it, and the high-flow toilets from the 70s were amusingly bad given the sheer quantity of water they use.
Also, encourage people to use bidets. Those are the best.
You can't cheat physics. If you dump X gal of water from Y height it will have Z kinetic energy minus efficiency losses. We've greatly improved the efficiency of the water dumping mechanism over the years but a high end low flow toilet of today is still nothing compared to a high end toilet of decades past. That said, there's a lot of crappy old toilets out there that don't flush any better than a modern low flow toilet and take 5+gal to do it.
Source: Moved into a house that was once owned by wealthy people. The upstairs toilet was clearly top of the line circa 1940s and is awesome. The downstairs toilet was clearly subject to some serious compromises for packaging reasons and is nothing special.
As for the issues flushing large, ahem, amounts of waste with the low-water toilets, it's mostly just cliche now. When the restrictions were first added, the toilet manufacturers weren't ready. Probably a lot of the complaints were from experiences with these early models.
Now, low-flow toilets have an amazing amount of research and design put into how to meet the guidelines while still performing as well as, and often better than, old 4+ gallon flushes.
A few (ill-informed) complainers aside, this actually seems like a win all around. Toilets don't cost more than they used to, they use less water, and perform better than ever.
I have a toilet that uses probably 5 times less water than one used 30 years ago, and it even flushes better (feels like a power-flush without being one).
I was hesitant to buy new toilets because I figured they’re all low-flush, so what difference would it make? I found a top-reviewed model on Home Depot and it made a huge difference. Went from everyday clogs to a clog maybe once every few months. I replaced all my toilets and it’s the best home upgrade I ever did.
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