Tonight I watched a cable channel about refitting ones house so that one uses less energy and I noticed that a solution that came up was to get rid of your old toilet and replace it with a low flow toilet. It seems to me that one can take a water bottle of an appropriate volume (one quart or one gallon) , fill it with water and put it in the water hold tank at the back of the toilet to displace said volume of water thus turning your toilet into a low (less) flow model without the waste of putting your old toilet in a landfill or the energy needed to transport it to another location for reuse. Any thoughts on this idea are welcome.
John
7/6/2008
Ok, me again. I left one comment but I figured I would continue the experiment in thought here. Ok, so, I put some Gatorade bottles in the holding tank and we have some issues with buoyancy. I believe the bottles move about a bit because they are not tall enough to support a significant mass of water above the refill line to keep the bottles stationary. This photo shows a most general working situation with a buoyant bottle becoming lodged in the flow hole (happened once with countless gallons lost) only once but that is bad enough. I figure that replacing the 3 right bottles with one plastic half gallon of water will solve this problem.
Then, I thought "mmmm, bricks?". I am taking a certain amount of water out of the cycle of nature and that water might be needed in some way beyond my mind. A brick allows that water to go on it's merry little way. But, a brick? Even if clean wont it have sediment gradually released from it? And what of the energy to make a brick? Is it more then the energy to make the bottle or clean the water to tap specs?
Well, I like my water bottle idea so I will continue with that for a while. Besides a brick I have not.
3 comments:
So far I have 4 Gatorade bottles (about 1 gallon total) in one toilet and two in another. They are a bit short so I think that a taller (maybe a half gallon plastic milk container) would be more stable. Beth also said to just try a brick which I recognized as hearing before so maybe that is where this idea originated.
turn off the ater supply and empty the tank...fill your bottles with gravel, put the tops on, and then with a small amount of silicone sealant stick them in the bottom of the tank in desires positions. let the silicone dry and turn the water back on......taadahh!
Thanks for the tip Jason.
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