Dual Flush Toilets make “green” sense if you ask me! Why didn’t I think of this great environmentally friendly dual flush toilet? Think about it, do you really need to flush down 1.6 gallons of water every time you go pee? Now way…that’s why the dual flush toilet makes so much “green” sense.
Low flow toilets are nothing new, in fact in 1994 Federal Law required that all new toilets use a maximum of 1.6 gallons of water for each flush. Prior to that toilets would use up to 7 gallons of water per flush. Today’s low flow toilet designs have come a long way and they flush just as well or better than the old water hungry models.
Dual flush toilets are quite simple. They use the same design features that allow us to use less water and allow two volumes of water to be used. In the first stage you can use 0.8 gallons (half the maximum) of water to flush fluid waste. If you need to flush solid waste you can use the 2nd stage which uses the maximum 1.6 gallons of water. The picture is a model by Kohler.
Just think about the water savings that are possible with this great new design feature. Realistically I’d bet that more than 70% of the flushes in a household are fluid waste versus solid waste. Even if you only flush fluid waste 20 times in a day, that’s a savings of 16 gallons per day or 5,840 gallons of water each year. That’s just for one household, so you can see the savings of water could be very significant.
So what if you don’t want to buy a new toilet? You’re in luck! There are several manufacturers selling retrofit kits to change a normal low flow toilet into a dual flush toilet. Aquanotion makes a conversion kit to fit regular toilets.
The bottom line is dual flush toilets make “green” sense. Whether your building a new green home or renovating your existing home to be a little greener dual flush toilets are one more way to help out the environment.
Great! And the profile of that model looks so sleek! We need to redo our entire bathroom – this will definitely get a look! Plus our toilet is so old it is probably on the 7 gal end of the spectrum.
Now, we just don’t flush (or we try to go right after each other) after every #1…this is much better idea!