Water has four uses in your toilet: to wash the rim and bowl; to keep the water seal (that is, to keep your logs covered so they don't stink); to carry away waste; and to facilitate siphonic drainage.
Siphonic drainage is the same process that allows you to siphon gas from your neighbor's car. When you flush, a gush of water is released from the tank straight down into the sewage pipe. This creates negative pressure that sucks the water in the bowl down the hole, along with all the poop and bits of corn it contains. The water that flushes into the bowl itself is actually more for cleaning off your smears than it is for flushing down your dooks.
In 1992, the US government mandated that toilets should flush with 1.6 gallons of water, as opposed to 3.5 gallons that was the 80's standard (or 5 to 7 gallons, as it was in the 70's). And despite the career Dave Barry has made for himself complaining about low-flow toilets, they do work -- if they're designed and installed properly. Admittedly, a lot of them aren't.
But 1.6 gallons is still a lot of water. A person should drink at least 48 ounces of water a day, so even in with a low-flow toilet, your poop is commandeering enough water for four people. With droughts and climate change and, you know, Al Qaeda and everything else that threatens our way of life, it seems to me that steps should be taken to drastically lower the amount of water per flush before it's too late.
So I was relieved to get an email from a Brazilian inventor named Daltony. He's designed a toilet that eliminates siphonic drainage from the flushing process.
Actually Daltony toilets don't have a hole cut in the side. This is a model.
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"By substituting a tipping cup, a counterweight and a latch for the conventional siphon in the flushing toilet, I have considerably bettered the water economy as well as the overall performance of the commonplace water-flush toilet. When one 'flushes,' the latch releases the tipping cup, which in its turn, drops the contents directly into the sewer pipe in a quick and precise way."
The result: a flush that requires only four liters for solid waste -- just over a gallon. A savings that may one day represent nearly two human beings not dying of thirst while Al Qaeda-affiliated sun-poisoned mutants crawl all over the smoking remains of New York.
The Daltony toilet is a typical toilet in every other way. You still poop into a pool of water. Water still comes down to clean off your smears. The only difference is that the sewage is dumped out instead of flushed out. Water still washes your log down the sewer pipes -- although with a bit less velocity. But a well-designed piping system means that's not a problem. No matter what Osama has planned, gravity will still work.
But seeing how the US is trending towards ever more wasteful forms of consumption, I doubt the urgency of water conservation will catch on until it's too late. But at least Dave Barry will have a successful career.
Daltony's last word:
"The Daltony toilet system is efficient and silent, won't leave 'skid marks' behind, will never clog, makes the wastes disappear from sight right away and even effectively prevents snakes, toads, rats and other pests from getting into our houses."
-- Dave
