Inside Third & Bond: Week 42

At the GreenBuildingsNY this week at the Javits Center, there is a display of Toto fixtures including a couple of their low water use toilets. One of these toilets is the model we’ve picked for Third & Bond… and that we had installed in our office bathroom about six months ago.

Before we put in 80 dual flush toilets into the project, we wanted to make sure they would work. Dual flush toilets that can provide a satisfactory little flush means that we can actually save water, which is the goal of a dual flush toilet. If the little flush didn’t complete the job and a second flush was needed for every flush episode then there is little point in having the little flush option and the toilets end up as greenwashing. We also wanted to make sure that the big flush works when it is needed. And beyond our sustainability goals, we want a toilet that works so that buyers are happy. Can you imagine the calls from 44 new homeowners if their toilets don’t function properly??

We started out by reading the 10th edition of the Maximum Performance (MaP) testing of popular toilet models. The study reviewed upwards of 500 toilets in terms of the number of flushes it took to clear the bowl of soypaste medium made to mimic, well you know, based on a study of the average British male’s well you know.

Then we researched models for look and cost. We settled on the Toto pictured above which has a little flush of 0.9 gallons and a big flush of 1.6 gallons. So far, the reports from users are very good. This toilet replaced a conventional toilet that often had to be flushed more than once to clear the bowl. Many users report only ever using the little flush for the new toilet. (Our other toilets are American Standard models with only the 1.6 gallons per flush.)

We did have some difficulty with the installation. The contractor hadn’t installed a dual flush toilet before and struggled for a bit. We think this had more to do with the size of the bowl than hooking up anything related to the dual flush itself, but he attributed it to the dual flush toilet.

But for those of you who want something more from a toilet, the Toto Washlet was also on display at GreenBuildingsNY. The marketing campaign starts off with a series of naked adult behinds with smiley faces on them and advances quickly to a Happiness pitch…Welcome to Clean is Happy. On their website, a pleasant (and fully clothed) woman tells you about the Happiness you can get from the washlet, What’s ordinarily a pretty ordinary task is turned into an opportunity to refresh yourself, to restore yourself, to pamper yourself every day of your life. Or as Beth W. wrote to us, ‘Warm water, warm air, warm seat. Pretty darn good way to start your day.’ The truth is we all need a little pampering.

So what does the washlet do to bring you such happiness? It opens its lid when you approach, it has a heated seat, and when you’ve done what you came to do, you use the remote control to have warm water sprayed exactly where you need it, warm air gently blown and even clean the existing air. What is this washlet exactly? A fancy toilet seat—and probably not green if you consider the extra energy and batteries going into the creation of the happiness experiment. Although you are reducing paper waste… well, we’ll let someone else figure out if there’s any environmental benefit.

Right now we are content to offer what we think is a better toilet than the usual at Third & Bond, the dual flush.

Inside Third & Bond: Week 41 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 40 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 39 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 38 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 37 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 36 [Brownstoner]

From our lawyers: This is not an offering. No offering can be made until an offering plan is filed with the Department of Law of the State of New York.”