[Greenbuilding] Toilets that Work: throttling flush volume on good performers

[Reuben Deumling]

Update on the American Standard Cadet 3 toilet:
For the first year of operation we've settled in at 0.95 gallons per average
flush. As some of you may recall from the start of this discussion a year
ago, this toilet faired very well in the study which simulated quite
realistic loads for toilets, and Lawrence discovered that it was cheap, too.
We are very happy with the performance of this toilet. The fill valve
supplied with the toilet did give up the ghost about 8 months in, which I
thought was inexcusable. I replaced it for about $7 but called the
manufacturer whose rep promised to send one free of charge--which has not
arrived yet. But other than that this is the least expensive and best
performing low flush toilet I've come across.

Reuben Deumling

On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 7:54 AM, Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've just installed a Cadet 3 model toilet from American Standard, per
> Lawrence's price sleuthing, and can report some early successes.
>
> (1) the fill valve in the tank came preset to the lowest permissible flush
> volume setting. I didn't change it. Default flush volume as installed:
> 1.25 gallons.
>
> (2) My local water authority gives away a device I'd never heard of called
> a "fill cycle diverter." It is a tiny plastic manifold that goes on the end
> of the flexible fill tube that diverts some of the refilling water directly
> into the bowl through a vertical tube in the toilet tank. The one I got has
> four ports. By directing three of them (3/4 of the water) destined for the
> bowl into the tank, I saved an additional .25 gallons =1gpf.
>
> (3) Next I rustled up a toilet dam, one of those flexible sheets of steel
> coated in rubbery plastic that we used to jam into the toilet tank to keep
> some of the water in the tank from whooshing through the trap valve when
> flushing. The initial position I picked keeps a further 1/3 of a gallon out
> of the flush.
>
> So preliminarily I have achieved a 0.65 gpf toilet for $130 and some free
> or quasi free toilet water-saving devices. I can't yet say whether I'll be
> adjusting these parameters up or down, both are feasible with the two add-on
> technologies I'm using, and in another few days I'll know more.
>
> Adding these 2 conservation devices took all of 4 minutes. What took
> longer was installing a water flow meter inline next to the toilet, so I can
> track progress without running out to the city's water metre at my curb
> every time I flush. :-)
>
> Reuben Deumling
>
>
> On 12/22/06, Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for the in-store work on price & performance, Lawrence. Very
> > helpful indeed.
> >
> > My question, which I've occasionally put to the folk who do this
> > delightful testing over the past few years, is what the possibilities are
> > of, for instance, taking the inexpensive Cadet 3 model you discovered and
> > throttling the flush volume.
> >
> > Assuming the mechanics in the tank permitted this one should be able to
> > buy and install one of these and then ratchet down the volume from the
> > 1.6 gpf level until it failed to perform adequately in normal use. In my
> > view we should have considerable room to throttle in a 1,000 g model. I
> > had hoped Bill Gauley et al. would try this, but so far no luck. Any
> > thoughts? Any idea if the Cadet model tank innards would permit such
> > experimentation? Or if not what the next cheapest high performance model is?
> >
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Reuben Deumling
> >
>
>