Once again a premature curmudgeon yells at clouds.  You have been warned.

Always appropriate. -sloopy

When I bought my house the toilet that came with it was too small, to the point of being uncomfortable, and prone to clogging.  So when I had a contractor fixing some exterior woodwork (I knew it would need to be done at the time of purchase, so this was not some shock) I inquired about people to replace the toilet.  (It was a general contractor, so they had plumbers either on staff or in their contact list).  The price quoted was cheap provided I got the actual replacement unit.  Fair enough, it would let me pick what I wanted in a replacement.

Except for a proper water volume.

It is illegal to sell a new toilet that uses more than 1.6 gallons per flush.  The canned answer I get to the question “Why?” is always “to conserve water”.  This annoys me on three counts.

Low flow toilets: scourge of ISIS

Count one – If a toilet clogs I end up cycling it three to four times in the process of clearing.  Meaning 4.8 to 5.6 gallons go down the drain.  This ends up using more water anyway while wasting my time unclogging the system.

Count two – I live in New York.  New York is a literal swamp.  Admittedly, one that was drained before the founding of the EPA.  It gets more precipitation per annum than Louisiana (one of the random facts I learned in our less than stellar public schools).  My house in particular is near the confluence of two rivers.  Millions of gallons of water flow past it towards the sea each minute undisturbed.  (The Mohawk spits an average of 5,900 cubic feet of water into the Hudson per second.  Or 2,651,694.5 gallons per minute.  Then add in what’s already in the Hudson from up north…)  We have water to spare.

Count three – I get billed by the gallon for my water usage and that amount is doubled to cover sewerage.  I am paying for what I use.  I should be the arbiter of how much gets to be allocated to what purpose.  A rule that was written by econuts living in a desert with no idea how physics works just isn’t appropriate to my circumstance in a swamp.

The only upside of the tale is that innovators will find a way to work around horrible rules until they literally fly in the face of the laws of physics *cough*automobile emissions*cough*.  So the new Kohler is actually fairly reliable.  But just because there are people smarter than the regulators out there is no excuse for stupid rules to be on the books for stupid excuses.