[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Re: Toilets that Work

Mon Dec 25 19:33:44 CST 2006

Wal Mart, Home Depot and Lowes, along with  other megastores, trample small mom and pop businesses every day.  Are they evil? No, they are companies run by people, human beings who sleep soundly each night, care about the world,  and go to work to feed thier families.  Each of these giants, at one time, was a ma and pa business in it's own right, I would guess.  They got big because, for whatever reason, more people bought thier stuff. 

Any time we can patronize a small, locally owned business, we are feeding our local economy and experiencing a richness that you won't find at the corporate giants.  If you can buy plants from a local nursery or eat at a small restaurant that doesn't have any franchises, you are making two lives richer, yours and the Owner's.  You probably won't save any money doing that, unless you count the benefit of meeting the owner, asking them questions about thier products, and pumping your local economy. 

That being said, if any of these corporate giants ever do anything right, they do it in a big way.  Lowes and Home Depot have committed to buying FSC certified wood (a whole separate debate, but still moving in the right direction IMHO).  I've bought FSC certified wood doors from HD, stacked right next to non-labeled doors and every bit as competitive.   Both of them carry some "Green" products of various kinds, if you can get HD to recycle anything, then "you go girl!"  Walmart has gone on an energy saving campaign, and simply changing out thier air conditioning for more efficient models will save gillions of kilowatts.  Walmart and Sam's Club have already upgraded lighting to the newest, most efficient type.  Walmart is adopting some Green building ideas into their new stores. I know this because the Ma and Pa business I work for does engineering design for Walmart, among other clients.   Figuring out how to coexist with these giants, and try to influence them in a small way, is the secret to survival in the modern economy.

Lawrence Lile, P.E., LEED AP

________________________________

From: Lawrence Lile
Sent: Mon 12/25/2006 7:13 PM
To: Sabrina Free; greenbuilding at listserv.repp.org
Subject: RE: [BULK] Re: [Greenbuilding] Toilets that Work

Forwarded to the List, from Sabrina......

________________________________

From: Sabrina Free [mailto:sabrinafree at gmail.com]
Sent: Fri 12/22/2006 5:35 PM
To: Lawrence Lile
Subject: [BULK] Re: [Greenbuilding] Toilets that Work

hi,
i am so out of it that i cannot figure out how to reply to the whole list, and somehow have to take a shower and be to a party in 37 minutes.  the party is a half hour away and since i don't have a shower in my house, the place i take a shower is 7 minutes away. 
why i am writing an email is beyond me.
except that i work IN home depot.  i work for the little, family owned nursery that would have been put out of business by HD but instead fought back and got a contract to supply them.  hd has no control over our waste, and i demanded (yes, do this or i quit is what i said - and i sell more than anyone else) that we recycle everything.  so, all of our waste is recycled.  the plastic gets re-used (they saved 15K the first year at my store alone) and the dirt and plant matter all goes to habitat for humanity for compost that they then sell. 
maybe what you are thinking is, what does this have to do with me and my toilet?
well, could you not buy a used toilet somewhere?  rather than buy one at hd?  it seems like all the plumbers around here have tons of old toilets, ones that are old enough they flush without even doing any math.  or fake poop made out of soybeans. 
(i really don't want to go to this party.)
it is positively, absolutely, grossly, (there are just not WORDS for this) disgusting how much perfectly good STUFF HD throws in the dumpster.  my first year there (before i realized i had any power) it was part of my job, and i threw away 250K yes, 250K worth of plants into the dumpster.  oh, that was just annuals, not even counting trees, shrubs and perennials.  
i work there because of the family owned business.  i buy nothing there, and wish everyone realized how truly bad they are.  i do know that i am inadvertantly supporting them by working for their supplier, and make no pretense at justifying it.  i hate that fact, and have been trying to quit for two years but can't find anyone else to do the job right, and don't want the company i work for to suffer.  (their entire family survives on this business) 
they might be waaaay behind walmart, but they are also the closest thing TO walmart.
sabrina,
who will be very late as usual :o)

On 12/22/06, Lawrence Lile <LLile at projsolco.com> wrote: 

	I decided to go this route with a toilet.  I'll have a composter, plus a standard toilet for the un-initiated guests, the Building Inspector, and the Realtor who tries to sell my house in 20 years.  If I'm going to have a zero-GPF composter, there is no point in spending extra money on a super-low water use toilet - the greatest method of conserving water is to avoid flushing.  What I want is a toilet that actually works. 

	If the 1.6GPF toilet takes three flushes and a round of plunging to actually clear itself, then it is really a 6.4GPF toilet, and also only useful as a boat-anchor.

	There is a consulting firm that has done an extensive study of toilet performance.  You can find thier research here 

	http://www.cwwa.ca/pdf_files/freepub_6Ltoiletreport04.pdf

	and an updated version with more models here

	http://www.cwwa.ca/pdf_files/MaP%206th%20Edition%20Feb%2010%202006.pdf

	They measure all sorts of metrics, like gallons per flush, and so on, but they actually worked out a scheme to test the ability of the toilet to clear solids, the metric I'm very interested in.  They call it MaP testing, for Maximum Performance. 

	They make little sausages out of soybean paste, (essentially Miso) and flush them, until they find a quantity that the toilet can't clear.  Now, many people think Soybean products are only good for flushing, and testing toilets might be the highest use for Miso, but I am not one of them. 

	Amazingly, some of the most expensive toilets will not clear 150 grams of solids.  The average waste load is about 250 grams, so these toilets would require two flushes and a plunge nearly every use.  Some water savings, huh?  I think that is the kind I got stuck with. 

	I went through an extensive price/performance matrix at a local Lowe's and Home Despot.  The result is that the American Standard Cadet-3 (not Cadet) Flush-Right model 4021 tank and model 3014 or 3011 bowl was one of the cheapest brand name toilets on the market at $130, yet has the highest solids clearing performance at 1000 grams.  There is no information on the box at the store that would give the consumer more than a clue that a toilet would actually work by any rational metric. There are some that claim to flush "150 feet", which is completely meaningless. Others claim to be "#1 in independant tests" when that particular model was not in the top performers. 

	American standard makes some real losers too, their plain Cadet model is on the bottom of the list.  The worst model tested was a Komet brand, able to flush only 75 grams of material without a plunger.    To put this in perspective, a peanut butter sandwich (on the kind of bread I eat anyway) weighs more than 75 grams. 

	None of the sub-$100 toilets were on the testing matrix, so I didn't look into them, except for the Glacier Bay (Home Despot House brand), which was useless at 175 grams.  All of the major manufacturers - Kohler, Eljer, Gerber, American Standard, have some flush-impaired losers among thier most expensive lines, price had absolutely nothing to do with solids clearing performance. 

	    Lawrence Lile, P.E.
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