Low-Water Toilets: 1.6-Gallon Answer to California’s Drought

Southern Californians must look to their bathrooms for drought relief.

This was clearly established by the recent decision by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to pay consumer rebates to people who install water-stingy toilets.

My wife and I were already considering buying what the plumbing industry calls a low-flush toilet when our old toilet forced our hand.

Typically, it was one of those episodes that happens just when the entire household is trying to leave for work. The toilet, an older model that probably required 5 to 7 gallons per flush, gave up the ghost.

Buying time through furious use of a plunger and drain-clearance chemicals, I set out to hurriedly investigate replacement. And in doing so, I found that what seemed like a comparatively simple home-maintenance task was a consumer challenge.

As plumbing fixture manufacturers have discovered, the market is now crowded with low-flush toilets, a line of products that virtually didn’t exist five years ago.

Los Angeles city officials responsible for enforcing ordinances mandating use of water-stingy fixtures say there may be two dozen brands on the market.

They illustrate the evolution of water conservation concerns in plumbing design. Thirty years ago, toilets required seven gallons to flush. Then, 5-gallon models were introduced. Within the last decade, 3.5-gallon toilets--now misleadingly called “water-saver” models--appeared.

Within the last five years, the standard has dropped to 1.6 gallons--even as little as one gallon.

Pressure on manufacturers to develop low-flush toilets has intensified in the last year with introduction of legislation--now pending in Congress--that would mandate that only toilets requiring 1.6 gallons or less per flush be used in new construction or sold as replacements.

The federal toilet bill is held up in the House and Senate, where action isn’t likely before later this year, at the earliest.

But several cities and states have passed laws mandating 1.6-gallon flushing. The California drought illustrates why the rush to codify has occurred. Another dry spell in the East as severe as 1988’s would probably hasten a federal mandate, congressional observers believe.

Yet these developments don’t address the consumer’s first and vital question: Away from the testing laboratory and advertising agency photo studio and installed in your home, will a toilet that flushes with just 1.6 gallons of water really work?

Since we finished our frantic consumer research and had our new toilet installed in early January--an Eljer high-pressure model that uses 1.4 gallons per flush--it has never required a second flush to clear the bowl.

But in arriving at this point we encountered divisions of opinion and conflicting advice.

First, the plumber we use warned that low-flush toilets may not introduce enough water into drain lines to propel wastes to the sewer quickly enough. This, in turn, could eventually result in clogs in the drain line leading across the yard and to the sewer, he said.

Besides, the plumber said, three or four brands of low-flush toilets he had installed right after they were first introduced simply didn’t function as advertised. Customers who bought them insisted that they be ripped out.

For people who rely on septic tanks, he said, the low-flush water amounts could inhibit the natural degrading of wastes by not introducing enough water into the septic tank and leech fields.

These concerns had also attracted the attention of the plumbing industry. In turn, the American Society of Plumbing Engineers organized a study, retaining Alfred Steele, a noted Florida-based engineer.

Concerns over septic tanks are groundless--the reduced water flow probably is beneficial, Steele said. And although the sewer line research is not yet complete, Steele said preliminary studies indicate low-flush toilets won’t damage or plug drain lines and will clear wastes just as readily as models that use three or four times as much water.

“It’s become a public and emotional issue more than it is technical,” Steele said of the controversy.

Tests show that low-flush toilets push wastes 40 feet down a drain line with each flush cycle--the same distance required of toilets that use much more water, he said.

To make sure that there is no difference in this performance between laboratory studies and field conditions, Steele said, tests will be conducted in homes in Florida, Arizona and Massachusetts.

Our experience may or may not be scientifically representative, but our 1.4-gallon toilet has resulted in no perceptible change in drain behavior anywhere in our house.

Is there any reason, I asked Steele, to put off the purchase of a low-flush toilet or have any concern that today’s water-conserving models won’t function as intended? “None that I can think of,” Steele said. But, he cautioned, “buy from a reputable manufacturer.”

The decision on which brand was more difficult. There are several considerations. First, some low-flush toilets--especially foreign-made models--use mechanical components that are not standardized with what can be bought at the average hardware store.

Second, some manufacturers have jumped into the low-flush market, only to bail out.

For example, we had seen an effective low-flush toilet in use at a hotel in Big Sur. The hotel referred me to its plumbing contractor, who reported that the distributor had vanished, leaving owners of the toilets unable to find replacement parts.

Our search for a brand to buy included review of half a dozen domestic and foreign-made toilets. Eventually, the field narrowed to two candidates: Eljer and Kohler.

Even major manufacturers have had some trouble with the products. Kohler’s 1.6-gallon model has experienced some problems with its filler-valve not closing properly in the flush cycle.

As a result, said a Kohler spokeswoman, the firm was forced to temporarily suspend shipments from the factory and send replacement valves to wholesalers and retail outlets. The problem never affected the toilet’s flushing efficiency, Kohler said.

There are two generic low-flush types. In one, the entire contents of the water tank empty through the bowl, propelled by gravity in the same way most home toilets have always worked.

The second type--and the type we bought--has a large reserve tank, but the tank has an inner compartment containing the 1.6 gallons of water, while ours contains 1.4 gallons.

When the flush cycle begins, these models--called pressure toilets--use the gravitational push mustered by all 5 gallons to make the 1.6 gallons actually used rush through with significantly increased force.

The sides of the bowl are at a much higher angle than in conventional toilets and water in the bowl remains at a much lower visible level than in conventional toilets. Our low-flush Eljer is about as noisy as the old one, but refills much faster.

Eljer said it has sold about 200,000 of the model we bought--called the “Ultra-One G.” It’s named that, ironically, even though it uses 1.4 gallons. The name was adopted when the model was introduced in 1984, an Eljer spokesman said, and it actually did use just one gallon. But that wasn’t enough water to clean the bowl, the company said, and the design was modified to 1.4 gallons a year ago.

Shopping around, we found most discount plumbing suppliers offered the Eljer for $180 to $195--the approximate price range for all of the basic models of new pressure-operated low-flush toilets.

Gravity models can be found for as little as half that price. Our plumber wouldn’t install it if we bought it from someone else because of concern the unfamiliar new toilet could be damaged. But having said that, he agreed to price the toilet we bought competitively--just $10 more than the lowest we found at discount stores. Fair enough, I figured.

Ours was the first such toilet our plumber had ever installed. I did some calculations as he worked and figure that our household--two adults, no children--may save between 8,500 and 12,000 gallons of water this year.