North American toilets are bizarrely complex and seemingly designed to clog.

Cross section : https://www.maven.co/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/toilets-00.j...

This is because they use a siphon mechanism, which also results in a narrow diameter pipe. Old style ones use an enormous 14L of water per flush and still jam.

Other countries use gravity flush which has lower water usage and less blockages, but forces you to periodically clean the toilet bowl. Personally I would rather clean than plunge.

This article has a rather biased overview: https://toiletfound.com/siphonic-vs-washdown-toilet-which-is...

Personally I find US toilets need to be flushed repeatedly because you don't want to risk a blockage.

A lot of the complexity you see in that image is the trap. It holds water in it to prevent sewer/septic gasses from entering the home. Sinks also have them.

Both types of toilets have a trap. The complexity is due to the siphon mechanism.

(speaking on behalf of euros) thank you so much for making this thread make sense!

No poop shelf either.

Literally the most confusing thing about German toilets, from someone who grew up in the US... WHY would you want your poop to be entirely exposed to the air like this, on an elevated pedestal, as if it is some prize?

My wife has two daughters from a previous marriage. It's been my first foray into having girls in the household. I've learned to just accept that the shower will clog with hair occasionally, and we have to buy 4 times as much toilet paper now. I've become a part time plumber.

I've gotten very good at snaking, clearing clogged traps. I despise doing it.

These SinkShroom's have greatly improved my life. I put one each in my SO's tub and sink. They catch an impressive amount of hair.

https://www.tubshroom.com

Interesting, I'll check that out. What's always surprising to me is that along with all the hair, there seems to be some grease/black stuff that builds up with the hair. Not sure if that's something other people find.

I find those too. I assumed it was all the various products that get used in the shower / tub like conditioner etc.

I assumed that stuff was makeup, like eyeliner.

Get bidet seats. Everyone will thank you and you'll thank yourself.

It’s so cheap and easy to install too, it’s shocking how it isn’t widespread yet.

It is cheap, but if you have an electric outlet near by (or can invest in a minor renovation), the high end ones are worth every pennies. Auto cleaning, misting the edge of the bowl to avoid stuff sticking, warming the seat and water, adjustable jet, and even auo closing seat and auto flushing, or being able to flush with a button on the wall. It's glorious.

That's actually a good idea, as far as I'm concerned. Do you think the girls will appreciate it, or is it a big adjustment for them?

If the girls want to give it a try they will almost certainly appreciate it. Everyone who has tried a bidet that I personally know has preferred it to just TP. Plus, I believe (from experience) that a bidet is essential if you're a mensurating girl or woman who uses sanitary pads.

But the best thing about a bidet attachment is one or more toilet users can choose to not use it and it's not any different from a bidet-less toilet. It doesn't get in the way or anything, so it's there if you want it but not any inconvenience if you don't. My husband didn't use ours for the first year we owned it but after he eventually gave it a try he's now a regular user.

Plus it's so ridiculously cheap ($40) that it's worth trying out.

It takes them a bit more getting used to be they benefit more, too. Make sure to get a model that can adjust the jet angle sufficiently.

Do most bathrooms have electrical outlets right by the toilets? Mine sure don’t.

Many bidets have mechanical valves and do not require electricity. Ones like this can be had for $20-30 on Amazon. We used one like this for many years, although when we bought our house we upgraded to electric.

Cold water and wiping with a community towel.

You forget how advanced we've become with disposable toliet paper.

Modern bidets heat the water and the seat, and nobody I know with one (including myself) doesn’t have TP next to the toilet too, you just need very little of it.

As someone with a bidet, there's no way in hell I'm sharing a butt towel. The bidet wash isn't completely effective. It's not the same as sharing a hand towel.

Snaking the shower drain is one of my guilty pleasures in life, it’s so disgustingly satisfying to pull all of those hair clumps out.

I've had good luck with Whink Hair Clog Blaster making hair clogs vanish with minimal work.

Are you a single adult male with no children and few visitors?

I've always had a flatmate. Now my flatmate is my wife. Although, not that many visitors. The toilet was already old when I moved in.

American toilets are somewhat more mechanically complex than European ones, and they have smaller waste pipes.

The best toilets I've found yet are the Australian ones; the pipes are huge! I can't imagine ever clogging one.

If it does ever clog, you can be 90% sure it's an issue downstream, like tree roots getting into the pipes. It's also common to have a toilet separate to the bath/shower, and we have the dual flush options.

I never really appreciated how advanced we are at plumbing. Perhaps it's a product of having to take water management more seriously.

Agreed. The U.S.-style fixture, floor, pipe flange, and wax ring all have to work together. A terrible interface design. I haven't seen the Australian style, but when I saw a UK style I was very impressed by the pipe-to-pipe link in the rear.

It is more for convenience for the landlord. A second bathroom can give them time to fix the problem for what's broken.

> Never had a problem that made it useless for unacceptable amount of time.

The acceptable amount of time for a toilet in a 1 bath rental to be useless is zero, at least from the perspective of the tenant. It is true that toilets are pretty reliable, though. I've had one problem with a toilet, but that was somewhat of a freak accident.

It depends on your renters- I’ll bet there are plenty out tenants out there who are so mechanically averse they won’t plunger out their TP; I know I met a few kids like that in college.

I’ve also seen my kids managed to do amazing things to the innards of the flush mechanism- break the chain, tangle the chain, move the plug out of position, and in one notable instance get the toilet to start “auto-flushing." All fairly easy fixes, but you have to be willing to get in the (clean water!) reservoir and jiggle parts around.

Older houses, especially those on septic, have additional issues with the plumbing becoming overloaded (my dad TWICE backed up our entire house by trying to send an half a fridges worth of food down the garbage disposal) but that will often take out multiple bathrooms.

A LOT of people just don't understand how to use a plunger.

You never know what kind of idiocy you'll get into with renters. The kinds of things that people think they can put down drains is endlessly astonishing.

I had one guy who kept putting kitty litter down the toilet, even after I started charging him to get it snaked out.

Another one that I have seen too often is people dumping paint down the drains...

No, only if you use too much toilet paper. In my almost four decades on this Earth I've never clogged or otherwise broken a toilet, yet I know people who this is a regular occurrence for them. I never owned a plunger until I lived with an excessive toilet paper user. Made me buy a bidet attachment.

People don't always respect the limits of what you can/can't flush down toilets, especially renters.

Tampons and "flushable" wipes that aren't really

And condoms. I've had more than one former partner tell me to go flush the condom. So I'd just wad it up in toilet paper and toss it in the trash. From what I've read around the internet this seems to be pretty standard in the sex trade too (and probably with hotel/motel guests in general).

You have to consider American diets. :-)

This is a nice joke, but the reality is that standard American sewage pipes are smaller in diameter than in Europe, and European toilets tend to flush with more pressure.

Most toilets in the US are created to be "green" when it comes to water usage, but the reality is it takes at least 2+ flushes most of the time instead of 1 because of it - but as long as the amount of water per flush is low it passes regulation.

In my experience, the US toilets from ~2000 to ~2005 were crap (heh), but since then they've figured out how to make a low flow toilet that works, and it's fine.

Or if they are Trump 10-15 times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VygBCFQVFgM

Low flow toilets are the worst.

A good, modern low flow works better than the old high flow toilets. A few years ago I lived in a new house with a Toto low flow. It was the best toilet I've ever used.

They used to be pretty bad, but with time I think they've gotten to be just fine.

You can't cheat physics. If you dump X gal of water from Y height it will have Z kinetic energy minus efficiency losses. We've greatly improved the efficiency of the water dumping mechanism over the years but a high end low flow toilet of today is still nothing compared to a high end toilet of decades past. That said, there's a lot of crappy old toilets out there that don't flush any better than a modern low flow toilet and take 5+gal to do it.

Source: Moved into a house that was once owned by wealthy people. The upstairs toilet was clearly top of the line circa 1940s and is awesome. The downstairs toilet was clearly subject to some serious compromises for packaging reasons and is nothing special.

You most certainly can improve upon bad implementations. Kohler's most recent line (within the last 10 years) are considerably better than all toilets I've had before. They consume much less, flush once and don't make an excessive amount of noise.

Could you talk more about this? Anecdotally I've found american diets to not be fiber rich and full of fried foods, resulting in less solid BMs, but maybe you have more information?

edit: any explanation for downvotes?

I don't know why you are being downvoted by I can chime in with my own experience. I switched to a largely whole food plant based diet last year, instead of getting 1/4-1/2 of the recommend fiber intake I now get 2x+ the recommend fiber intake. My stool has gone from clay logs that often took considerable effort to pass and would stick to the porcelain to effortlessly (amost freakishly so) pass and tend to have a considerably smaller diameter that breaks up more once it is in the bowl.

My pre-whole food plant based diet bowel movements would also leave considerable residue, often requiring 4-5 different wads of toilet paper AND 2-3 wet wipes to wipe clear. Now 1-2 wads of toilet paper leave me rarely even needing a wet wipe.

Honestly it's the biggest difference I've noticed since switching to whole food plant based. Frequency of bowel movements and just how easy/clean they are, I used to regularly have to clean part of the toilet bowl where clay-poo would stick and I've not had to do it once since switching my diet. Then mu grocery bill as the bulk of my kcals come from oats/bananas/potatoes now.