Whirlpool

You'd think that installing technology to save $120 a year in water would be a no-brainer. You'd be wrong.

Anyone who has owned a house knows about toilets: every few years you have to replace the stuff inside the tank. It was that time, so I made a trip to da 'Po (Home Depot) for parts. You wouldn't think there would be much in the way of new technology for toilets, but this time I ran across some flap valve replacements which are intended to allow you to either do a "half-flush" or a "full-flush" under the presumption that some visits ... introduce more of a load into the toilet bowl.

We're environmentally conscious, and water conservation is an area of increasing focus, so I'm thinking "sure, why not?" I picked up a Fluidmaster model, since i've had decent luck with their fill valves in the past, and brought it home.

These units replace the standard flap valve and chain with a large unit that controls the water that flows into the bowl and a handle that goes either up or down, so it has a cable instead of a chain. Although it's not exactly a simple process, it did go in well enough, and after adjusting seemed to do the job pretty well. Unfortunately, it is a rule of home maintenance that any non-trivial project will require at least 3 trips to the store, so I should have known better. It only took Jan one test before she said "but the handle sticks out too far away from the tank!" It is true that with this model there is about a quarter-inch between the outside of the tank and the back of the handle. I hadn't, until it was pointed out, even noticed that. I'm not sure whether this is because males and females are different physically or psychologically, but the point is moot: this handle simply would not do.

Back to the store to look at other alternatives. There is another manufacturer who makes a slightly different model. It looked like the handle clearance would be smaller, but their design has a split lever with a short piece and a long piece instead of a solid lever which moves in two directions, so we had to evaluate the aesthetics of that. It looked like it might be ok, so that box came home, where we discovered that all the parts related to the flush valve were there, but the fill valve was conspicuously missing. I only wish it had been conspicuous to me when I was looking in the box at the store.

By this time it was too late in the day to consider doing anything else, since this is the only toilet in the house. That gave time to do some online research and consider things overnight. Online reviews are mixed, and it's not clear that using these valves is any more effective than just putting a brick in the tank, so the end result was to go back yet again to get the old standard model flap valve and fill valve. It's in, it works, and the handle snuggles right up to the tank. Saving water will just have to wait for another day.

Now all I have to do is make trip number 4 to da 'Po to return the ones that didn't make the cut. Of course, one of them has to dry out first...