Toilets

I am not really prepared to write this post. Hopefully I can find what I want on the internet and link it in. But this post has been brewing for a long time. Toilets. We all use them. A modern living necessity, the benefits of plumbing. It's funny, what you notice when you live in another country. What you miss. And I my friends, miss my toilet.

American toilets are far superior to anything I have yet to experience (except perhaps Japanese toilets which I may write on at another time) and particularly superior to British toilets. I can break this down into two very simple points. First, when dealing with a removal system, gravity is your friend. Second, swirling suction action works far better than trying to push anything slippery with a jet of water action.

Lets look at this in section:


This is actually an example of a 'low-flow' toilet, which works because it uses swirling suction action and gravity. The suction helps to pull any items in the toilet past the initial trap and gravity ensures that it all keeps dropping down. Please note the exit point for all refuse is DOWN.

This is even more useful when used in a large building flush-valve situation:


When you flush one of these babies, you know it's going to work. The standard 'toilet flush' noise often used as a sound clip is always a flush-valve toilet. Powerful stuff. Also note relative position of 'down' drain to bowl.

Now I haven't been able to find a section image of a UK toilet. Probably because it's embarrassing. Mainly, they don't drain through the floor. They push everything out the back into the wall. I mean, all you have to do is consider gravity in this, and you realize that you are automatically dealing with an inferior flush. Add to that, that instead of intelligent swirling action which assists in sucking everything down the hole, UK toilets use a system of water jets that try to shove anything of importance towards the drain. This often results in 'floaties'. Don't get me started on limescale either and how that can mess up the 'jet' action (really, 'jet' isn't appropriate... more like, 'gush of water in a general direction').

Anyway, please carefully note in the following picture the exit for the toilet is straight out the back. Higher, frankly, then where anything would be in the bowl that you wanted to get rid of. DUH!


Not to be too hard on British toilets of course, there is always the German toilet that takes water pushing to a whole new level. Why? Because you get a shelf on which to examine your pretty creation before the water has to push it off the shelf and into the sewers. Observe:


Now, before you think I'm obsessed with toilet functions, I'm not. It's just a pet peeve. I want my good old American toilet, damnit. It's one of those things that I'm just not going to get used to here, ever.

And what's really funny? Is that some of my Brit friends actually have the audacity to -complain- about American toilets. Why? Because they can't get used to the fact that in public toilets we have the gap at the door connection points meaning you can see out and also, the dividers between stalls they think are too tall and you may be able to see someone else's shoes. Here, you sit in a completely isolated little cubicle. Fuck me. I just want a toilet that fucking flushes right!