Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
So there I was out to enjoy an apolitical day with the family. You see, the wife had recently threatened to ground me from Ricochet, so a family day in the city seemed the perfect way to get my mind off the elections, the economy, and the general direction of the nation. The oldest offspring wanted to visit the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and the guitar player in me had no argument with the idea. The day started exactly as planned. We arrived at the ferry terminal just in time to catch the next boat an hour later since men are from Mars and women are from some planet where clocks don't work the same way. In the interest of unity I clamped my pie hole shut and read a little Ricochet on my phone while we waited.
The remainder of the trip was less stressful. The museum was delightful, and the Avatar exhibit alone was worth the trip. After we dismounted the monorail at the Westlake Mall (I know, the juxtaposition of socialist transportation against a capitalist bastion is breathtaking) we stopped to partake of the public facilities before walking the rest of the way back to the ferry. I ignored the three cans that commanded me to separate my trash into garbage, compostable material, and recyclable. However, my apolitical day was train wrecked by a urinal.
The first thing that tipped me off that my conservative sensibilities were about to be ransacked was the dead ended water pipe sticking out of the wall. Where one would normally find an example of plumbing ingenuity there was nothing but a plain, galvanized cap. Now, I'm not normally the kind of person to go around snapping photos in the john, but I was overcome by the PC, enviro-fascist printing on the porcelain. Here is what I found.
The picture is a little grainy because of the rage I was shaking with as I took it, so I'll transcribe it for you:
Waterless Eco Urinal
The crises over the shortage of potable water is occurring; this waterless urinal technology is addressing the problem. This urinal utilizes a trap with an elastomeric check valve that enable the displacement of urine into the sewer without releasing odors. The Eco Urinal Cartridge Trap uses no sealant or chemicals. It saves 100% of the water over a flush type urinal and is hygienically superior to traditional flush type urinals.
Yes, our nation is going down the toilet, but at least we can salve our souls with the knowledge that it is a waterless, flushless toilet.
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Jul '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
"Yes, our nation is going down the toilet,..." without a paddle.
May '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
Unless said urinal was governmentally mandated, what's wrong with technology that saves money? Water and plumbing maintenance are expensive. If those urinals were installed after a careful cost-benefit analysis and have a proper payback, they are the ultimate in engineering/market-driven economics.
Edited on August 22, 2011 at 2:47pmDec '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
2Evil4U: Unless said urinal was governmentally mandated, what's wrong with technology that saves money? Water and plumbing maintenance are expensive. If those urinals were installed after a careful cost-benefit analysis and have a proper payback, they are the ultimate in engineering/market-driven economics. · Aug 22 at 5:46am
Edited on Aug 22 at 05:47 am
One sniff of the place and you'd know they aren't all they're supposed to be. It's a step up from peeing in a bucket, but not by much.
May '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
Interesting. BTR has them on all their urinals and I've never noticed anything offensive. Maybe some brands are better than others.
Dec '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
I probably would have glossed over the whole thing as technological innovation if not for the uber PC spiel printed on the thing. Wanna save money? Great! Wanna make a new product that improves efficiency? Swell! Wanna force some manufactured PC/environmental cause on the public? Take it somewhere else.
Dec '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
Here's what's wrong with waterless urinals and low-flush toilets:
San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.
Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.
Jun '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
I attended a wedding at an environmental center on Chesapeake Bay that used composting toilets. These were perfectly nice -- not offensive in any way. I am sure the technology is like any other, with products that run from poorly designed to higly efficient. Also, it's likely that some are installed & maintained properly while some are not. Seattle screws up lots of stuff, no?
Dec '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
The concept is nice, but knowing men (cause I am one), I cannot imagine simply trapping the urine that goes down the pipe and blocking the sewer gasses from coming back up are the whole of the sanitation issues. Not to be too explicit, but bored men will urinate on every square inch of porcelain within the apperatus. With no water to wash that down it is left to slowly make it's way into the trap by force of gravity or simply air dry where it lands. Sure, there's no aerosol effect from the flush, but there's no continuous cleaning of the surfaces exposed to the urine either.
Apr '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
I'm doing a consulting gig at the Comcast building in downtown Philadelphia. The building is about 5 years old and is certified "green" (scrub brush on the roofs, areal temperature control), including no-water urinal and automatically flushing toilets. The urinal uh...retains the urine in an allegedly odorless way and is emptied every week. As King Prawn mentioned above, this does nothing to clean the bowl, and it smells more than just a little stale.
The water saving toilets are a hoot. They work on a motion-sensing principle, and you can't get out of the stall with fewer than three flushes. Now, maybe that is part of the design, to compensate for low-volume flushes, but it doesn't look like it is saving water to me.
p.s.Maybe it's the shock of being assigned my first Apple workstation, complete with off-white peripherals and organically curved surfaces, but the new bathrooms, especially the urinals, look like they came from the same design shop.
Edited on August 23, 2011 at 8:27pmFeb '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
your conservstive sensibilities were offended by the toilet, but not by Avatar?! I'm a little confused.
Dec '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
More evidence of the Luddite Left. Most people consider "indoor" plumbing a tremendous step forward for the advancement of civilization. If the Left has its way, we'll soon be peeing in open trenches.
We're already so bad at prioritizing public expenditures, my city decided to turn off some street lights (causing increased crime in those neighborhoods) and stop collecting garbage in neighborhood parks (yep - you know what happened). I wish I had asked city council, "What, exactly, are we paying the city to do?" I think I know the answer though... we're paying to keep union employees employed.
I've often thought the garbage man is the linchpin of civilization. I'm reconsidering now. Maybe it's functioning toilets.
Oct '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
These gizmos stink. Literally. I first faced these no-flush urinals at several of the large companies that I call upon for business. These include a leading no-frills, cost-conscious retailer at their headquarters buildings. No-flush toilets are unpleasant.
Clearly they must be cheap or such companies would not use them internally. In California I can accept their use as having another motivation. In Arkansas they simply must be low cost.
Dec '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
Full sized AMP suit. Moar power and all that. The movie was terrible politically but technically stunning. Plus, the movie was fantasy, the toiled was all too real.
Feb '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
I thoroughly dislike them. They wreak even worse than the regular ones. Does anyone EVER clean them?
Water saving toilets are another farce. Since they never work on the first flush, most people flush them at least twice, often more, ultimately using more water than the evil old style at its worst. If they aren't flushed twice the results are aesthetically unpleasing in the best case scenario.
Then there are the drought emergencies when the assorted governments recommend that you not flush at all. The lavatories end up disgusting beyond belief, and worse, once the drought emergency is over, the congenital slobs fail to revert back to civilized behavior.
While on a rant, one last slightly off topic item - plastic gasoline cans. If anything illustrates government incompetence it's these things. The engineers who design them must get their degrees from some place advertised on match books. Rube Goldberg would be awed by them. Each one is an awkward leaky monument to government stupidity. Mine have cumulatively spilled enough gas to qualify my farm as a superfund site. Government mandated garbage.
On that dreary note, I'm off to gas some equipment. Don't tell the EPA.
Jul '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
Can we add Jane Fonda urinal targets. A lot of vets with prostate issues need help.
Apr '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
Besides the obvious point that these toilets will be obsolete and discarded long before Seattle and San Francisco will run out of water, I would be remiss if I didn't offer: "Dude... Chill"
May '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
That would help. The ones at our local airport have a cartoon fly on the porcelain to help with the aim point. Thorough research on my part has shown that it is placed for optimal drainage and minimal splash.
Mar '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
Mr Royal Shrimp, you just don't understand. Seattle is in a desert comparable to the Sahara and there isn't much water around there. The water is rare and must be saved!!!
I hope the city fathers, I mean city persons, in Seattle don't read the book "Dune". They will have everyone wearing suits so they can stay hydrated with their own sweat and urine.
Don't liberals just love manufacturing crises which they can solve by making our lives miserable??
Mar '11
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
Hey, just had a thought- do the betters who run Seattle realize that all those salmon are peeing in the water without any filtering at all? And bears pee in the woods and it runs off into the water? Sounds like they need a project.
Dec '10
Re: Flushing Away Our Future, Sort Of
The crises over the shortage of potable water is occurring !?
Enviro nut cases assume that water once dispensed magically disappears from the earth. No matter how it is used, it returns to the earh by drain or treatment to return again through natural processes to rivers or seas and some of it eventually evaporates into the heavens to form clouds and rain down again.
I have had it with low flush toilets that require three flushes to work, waterless urinals that stink to high heaven, and while we're at it, curlie light bulbs that cost too much and are made in China. And those winmill farms that make the lanscape after a forest fire look picturesque. And .............