Toilet Information

Basement toilet

If you need a toilet for the basement or spare room, Saniflo toilets require no floor drain. This toilet can be easily installed in less than a day. Waste is flushed out of the back of the toilet into a box where it is broken down. The result is pumped through a .75-inch line into the household soil stack. This completely reversible system doesn't require breaking into the floor, and it works as far as 9 feet below the sewer level (and up to 150 feet away). The cost is $600 to $1,000 depending on the Saniflo model.

If you're interested in composting toilets, we found some good general information. This green building website, Oikos.com, has some good diagrams and explanations on how composting toilets work.

Wikipedia has a page on composting toilets, along with some manufacturer links.

Laura Allen has an article on the Greywater Guerrilla site on eco-toilets and composting entitled "The Poop and Pee Revolution: Ecological Toilets for Everyone!"

As for regular toilets, HowStuffWorks.com has an article on the basics of how a toilet works. This multi-page article explains it in simple-to-understand terms. It includes a nice animated diagram (with a button that states "click to flush") to demonstrate the many parts and mechanisms involved in a toilet's basic operation.

The Maximum Performance (MaP) Testing of Popular Toilet Models report published by several American and Canadian water conservation groups, including the Alliance for Water Efficiency, is the easiest to read report we found, and nearly every toilet has been rated. You can easily compare models based on performance, although the amount of information presented can appear overwhelming at first. The report is in PDF form.

The Environmental Protection Agency website discusses the WaterSense certification process for toilets.

You can find specifications and measurements on manufacturers' websites:

American Standard

Briggs

Caroma

Eljer

Gerber

Kohler

Mansfield - (877) 850-3060

Niagara Conservation

Saniflo

TOTO