Thursday, May 19, 2011

Toilet Troubles

So, our toilet stopped working. The inflow thing stopped working, so the thank wouldn't fill up. Rather than get a new inflow thingie, we decided to go out and buy a new toilet. After a bit of internet research on Rona and Home Depot, we went to Home Depot and bought a $169 toilet.

Nowadays, there is a lot of incentive for people to get rid of their water-guzzling toilets and replace them with low-flow models. Any toilet with a tank bigger than 13 litres is considered a gas guzzler. There are all sorts of eco-efficiency scales, but the toilet we bought qualifies for a $50 rebate from the city as well! So bonus all the way around.

A few days ago, we removed the old toilet and installed the new toilet. I had watched a toilet installation before... but this was the first time I did one... and it went pretty much without a hitch! So, we have a new 4.8 litre low-flow toilet. It's tiny... like I mean... tiny! The tank looks to be half the width of the old one and it flushes so quickly and fills up really fast as well.

Part of the city rebate program is that you have to measure the water capacity of your old toilet and then make it unusable. So I measured the tank... the width... the water level height and the depth from front to back... Let's see that is... hmmm... 22.4 litres. I did the calculation again and yup... We had the Cadillac of toilets... a real 12 cylinder water guzzler! That means that every time we flush today, we save 17 litres of water or thereabouts... We save 4 milk jugs worth of water everytime we flush now... amazing...

Which means we need to look at the toilet in our spare bedroom bathroom... it too is a Cadillac in the toilet department... Might be time to buy another toilet!

No comments: