Missed Fix-A-Leak Week? You Can Still Save On Your Own

Even if you missed this particular opportunity, you can still put water-saving fixtures to work in your home. Low-flow toilets can use less than a gallon of water to provide an impressive, bowl-clearing flush. If you don’t want a low-flow toilet, you can also install a special dual-flush valve that reduces your water consumption. The dual flush valve allows you to flush and clear the bowl with running water, rather than using the 2 or 2.5 gallons that are stored in the toilet tank. This low-consumption flush is good for clearing liquid waste. When the flush is complete, the bowl refills with running water.

Water stored in the tank is used only when you need to “power-flush.” These dual-flush valves can reduce your toilet’s water consumption by one-third to one-half. They’re also easy to install, adjustable and are available at most home improvement stores.

Water-saving showerheads can limit flow to no more than two gallons of water per minute while still providing an excellent rinse. These fixtures are also available at your local home-improvement store are easy to install. In most cases, the shower fixture has a threaded connector. Simply disconnect the old one and connect the new one. You can also install an inline temperature control for your shower that can help prevent scalding injuries. Just like the showerhead, the inline temperature regulator is threaded and simply screws into place.

A leaking faucet that drips at a rate of once every 6 seconds can waste about 700 gallons of water per year! That’s significant when you look at your overall water consumption. Put another way, that’s the same amount of water you’d use showering daily for a month, or doing about 25 loads of laundry using a large-capacity washing machine.

Sometimes a leaking faucet requires a simple adjustment to stop leaks, but depending upon the faucet’s design, you may need to replace the entire fixture to stop a drip. Replacing a faucet isn’t hard and requires only a few basic hand tools, like a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench. The effort is definitely worth it when you consider how much water you can save on an annual basis.

If you have leaking sink, tub or toilet fixtures and you can’t address them yourself, please contact us at Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating at (617) 288-2911. We can recommend low-consumption fixtures that will address your leak problem and save water in the process!

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What Can You Do With Rainwater?

So besides shunting it down the storm sewers, what exactly can you do with rainwater?

As-is, rainwater isn’t considered potable. It’s not clean enough to drink and may contain (or collect) biological and chemical contaminants that make a person sick, either immediately or over the long term. That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything with rainwater, though!

Some homeowners have installed rainwater collection systems to “harvest” rainwater and use it for landscape watering and gardening. Used this way, rainwater is actually returned to the natural aquifers, just like nature intended. Rainwater collection systems can be as simple as rain barrels that hold 50-75 gallons of runoff from the home’s roof, or they can be somewhat more complicated, and include cistern water storage and gray water collection. In this setup, homeowners install a separate plumbing system that can collect and distribute the non-potable water to gardens and lawns.

Rainwater toilets are also gaining traction among the environmentally conscious, and have caught the attention of the City of Portland, OR. Toilets use potable water – the same water that comes out of your tap. There’s no need for toilet water to be drinkable (except maybe if you’re thinking about the dog), but attaching the toilet to the municipal water supply is the easiest way to ensure that you have enough water to flush the toilet. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of toilets use ultra-purified water.

A rainwater toilet uses collected rainwater to provide the flush. The toilet fixture is no different than what homeowners have in place now. Depending upon local codes and whether the toilet is being used in a residence or in a commercial building, it may not be sufficient just to put untreated rainwater in the toilet.

A rainwater flush toilet must be plumbed separately from the municipal water supply, and once the toilet is converted to use non-potable water, you can’t just reconnect it to the municipal supply. (You’d need to replumb with fresh pipes if you wanted to convert back.) For commercial applications, the rainwater must also be treated locally with chlorine and/or UV light, and special filters may be required to block organic debris from entering the system.

The immediate benefit of a rainwater toilet (or other rainwater collection system) is that it reduces the use of potable water for applications that don’t require super-pure water. On a large scale, this would reduce the demand for treated water.

Rainwater collection systems are relatively inexpensive to install and depending upon the size and type of the system, can reliably collect between 10,000 and 30,000 gallons of water per year.

If you’d like more information about rainwater collection systems or plumbing for non-potable water delivery, contact us at Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating at (617) 288-2911. We’ll be happy to provide a consultation.

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World Plumbing Day: A Time To Think

More than 3 million people each year die as the result of preventable diseases and conditions related to inferior water quality and poor sanitation. The majority of deaths occur in children under five years of age. By itself, that’s a lot to think about – especially when you consider that you can go to just about any tap that’s connected to a municipal water supply, and get safe, clean, drinkable water from it 24/7/365, year after year in this country.

Despite our access to clean water and sanitation, water-borne illnesses can still affect us. Relatively recent outbreaks of the SARS virus and Legionnaires’ Disease come to mind as proof that improper plumbing and air-handling can serve as a breeding ground for major threats to public health.

Aside from thinking about the role of clean water and sanitation, it’s also good to think about the role that plumbers play in modern society. Plumbing may not seem like a glamorous job, and it’s not. But according to the World Health Organization, competent plumbers are responsible for a lot:

Plumbing is a trade, but it’s one that evolves over time. In some cases, modern plumbing codes are responses to changes in the way people live, the applications of new technologies and materials, and our impact on the areas in which we live. In other cases, plumbing codes are the products of the knowledge and experience plumbers gain when they handle both clean and dirty water. In still other cases, our plumbing reflects what we’ve learned about diseases, and how they spread in urban areas.

So, as World Plumbing Day approaches, spend some time thinking about the role of clean water and sanitation, and how much of a difference it makes in the lives of the 7 billion people we share our planet with.

If you have any questions or concerns about your plumbing, heating or cooling systems, contact us at Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating at (617) 288-2911 anytime. We’re always available to help! Friend Boston Standard Plumbing on Facebook and don’t forget to celebrate World Plumbing Day on March 11.

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Best Toilet Brand? Consider This!

At Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating, we recommend the Toto brand toilets above other manufacturers, in part because Toto is the largest manufacturer of toilet fixtures in world today. Toto offers operational innovations that distinguish their fixtures from standard toilets and use less water per flush. Toto also offers a wide range of artistic fixture designs and colors that will enhance the visual appeal of a bathroom.

Toto offers a series of toilet fixtures that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). An ADA-compliant fixture can allow older persons to stay in their homes more comfortably and safely for a longer period of time. The design of the fixture can assist people with sitting down and standing back up, two activities that can be notoriously difficult for the elderly and disabled.

One excellent reason consumers should be considering Toto brand is the issue of replacement parts. Toto fixtures in the GMax series use common replacement parts, while fixtures from other manufacturers like Kohler and American Standard use parts that are unique to each model of toilet. The use of common parts ensures that replacement parts are easily acquired and will be available for a long time, even if the particular model a consumer has installed is no longer manufactured.

Toto fixtures are priced comparably to toilets from other manufacturers, so you won’t spend a lot of extra cash to get a high-performance fixture that meets your needs, works well in your bathroom and is easily maintainable over time. Toto toilets also score well on Maximum Performance (MaP) testing. MaP performance testing was developed in 2003 to gauge the actual water efficiency of toilet fixtures using realistic testing media. MaP testing information is available for nearly 2,000 models of toilets and provides standard performance comparison measures. The results demonstrate how well a particular toilet design clears the bowl using a given amount of water and test flush material – an important consideration when toilet shopping!

If you’d like more information about Toto toilets, toilet selection or toilet installation, contact us at Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating at (617) 288-2911 anytime. We recommend Toto fixtures and can help you select the toilet that will work best for you.

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Toilet Troubles: Curing Common Toilet Problems

Clogs. Most residential toilets use a traditional gravity fed design. The water pressure from the tank on the back of the toilet fills the bowl and pushes the waste material down a trapway and into the soil pipe. If the toilet is clogged, the bowl may not clear properly, or at all. In this case, use a toilet plunger to clear the obstruction. The plunger will put additional pressure on the material in the trapway and force it into the soil pipe. You shouldn’t have to plunge more than once or twice to clear a simple clog.

If the trapway is clogged because an object has become lodged in it, you have a couple of viable options. If you don’t care about the lodged object, you may be tempted to try to push it through to the soil pipe, using a plunger or a toilet snake. Keep in mind that you may be setting yourself up for a clog in your soil pipe or worse, your main drain.

If the object is something you want back, (like your car keys) or something that simply won’t budge (like a toothbrush or a razor), you’ll need some tools and a new wax ring because you’re going to take the toilet off to remove the obstruction.

To remove the toilet, turn off the water supply and flush to clear the water from the bowl. Using hand tools, detach the fresh water tank and set it in the bathtub. Any excess fresh water in the tank will drain in the tub, and will reduce the cleanup.

To remove the stool, loosen the bolts near the floor that hold the toilet fixture onto the flange. Again, you’ll only need common hand tools. Be careful not to turn the bolt the wrong way. If you do, you may overtighten the bolt and damage the toilet, the bolt or the flange.

Carefully remove the toilet from the flange. Remove the old wax ring. (Don’t attempt to re-use this.) Locate the stuck object and remove it. Position the new wax ring on the bottom opening of the toilet’s trapway. The wax side goes against the toilet, and the neoprene seal will go into the soil pipe. Reposition the toilet over the soil pipe and line up the screw holes with the flange. You may want a helper at this point to reposition the toilet properly. Also, toilets weigh about 50 pounds. If you can’t dead lift and control that much weight, you’ll definitely want help!

When the toilet is in position, gently sit on the toilet to press the wax seal against the flange. You may want to rock the fixture slightly while you’re sitting on it to improve the seal. Stand up carefully and avoid moving the fixture. Replace the flange bolts. Replace the tank and reconnect the water. Flush the toilet to check for leaks around the soil pipe. If it leaks out the bottom when you flush, you may need to start over with a new wax ring.

Next week, I’ll talk about other common flushing problems and how to resolve those.

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Dual Flush Valve Great Plumbing DIY Project

Water-saving toilets will play an increasingly important role in urban water-conservation efforts. If you live in an area where fresh water is relatively plentiful, you may not think much about water conservation. On the other hand, if you live in the desert, your water bill may be as much of a concern to you every month as heating in Boston would be in the winter.

Enter the HydroRight dual flush valve, designed to fit to conventional toilets. The valve replaces your standard flush handle with a two-button control. Use the upper button when you want to flush away liquid and paper only. This empties the holding tank just halfway and still clears the bowl adequately. For clearing solid waste, the lower button provides the standard full flush. Using this approach, you can reduce the water usage of an average toilet by about 30%.

This is the ideal DIY project. Installing the HydroRight valve requires no tools, no tank removal and is a done deal within about ten minutes. It also eliminates the dreaded chain and handle – common failures in standard flush toilets – and replaces the flapper valve – one of the usual suspects when it comes to leaky tanks. You can also find the HydroRight valve at your favorite home improvement stores for about $20. Depending upon how much you flush, you can recover the cost of the dual flush valve in less than a year, and you’ll be doing your part to help the environment, too.

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Grey Water Recycling In Boston Can Save Money

What is grey water? Grey water is any water that’s not fit for drinking, but that’s not contaminated with biological waste materials either. For example, waste water from your laundry system is considered grey water. Collected rainwater is also considered grey water because it hasn’t been purified for drinking.

Normally, grey water (so named because it tends to be cloudy) is washed down the drain and flows into the sewer. While grey water isn’t very appealing for drinking and cooking, it still has some marginal value for non-drinking applications like flushing toilets and watering lawns.

Some systems on the market today allow the homeowner to “recapture” grey water and recycle it for use in toilets. Why does grey water make a good use for this? If you look at how water is consumed in the average American home, you’ll immediately see why there’s benefit to separating potable from non-potable water.

All water that’s delivered to your home from the municipal water supply is potable. That means it’s safe to drink and use in cooking. Certain other water-consuming tasks require clean, potable water – like washing dishes. You probably want clean water to wash your clothes, too, and certain heating systems – like boilers – require clean water.

About 70% of the water you consume on a daily basis is required to be clean. This includes water for showering, drinking, cooking, washing and heating. The other 30 percent doesn’t need to be pristine to accomplish what you’re aiming for. This includes flushing toilets, washing your car, and watering your lawn. About 25% of the water you use each day comes from flushing the toilet. There’s no requirement that toilet water be potable, yet we use potable water to supply our toilets because that’s the only kind of water that comes from the municipal water supply.Likewise, when we water our lawns and wash our cars, we’re throwing drinking water on the ground.

If we can recapture some of the “grey water” – from showers, laundry, car washing, hand-washing, etc.) we can use this non-potable water to reduce our fresh water consumption significantly. We can also capture rainwater that runs off the roof of our homes for later, controlled use in the garden and on our lawns.

The benefits of grey water recycling are tremendous. First, you can get two or more uses out of water before it gets returned for purification. You can also cut down on your water bill by using rainwater (which is free) and grey water for functions that don’t require high quality water. By limiting your consumption of the highest quality water, you can help ensure that the clean water supply is both sustainable and cost effective as the population changes.

If you would like more information about grey water recycling in Boston, please contact Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating at (617) 288-2911. We’ll be happy to show you how you can put grey water recycling to work in your home.

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Macerating Toilet May Be Ideal Boston Plumbing Solution

Adding fresh water lines to a room in your home is easy. Adding a waste line… not so much. Adding a toilet in the basement can be a major hassle because it normally requires you to break the concrete foundation and add a waste pipe under your home. Don’t forget the vent stack! On upper levels, a traditional toilet requires a hole in the floor for waste disposal, a new soil pipe, (which could be hard to disguise on the lower floor(s), a new vent stack and a fresh water supply.

A macerating toilet can be installed just about anywhere, even in tight spaces like attics and closets, or under a stairwell. They’re the ideal solution for adding a toilet to a basement, where you have good access to your home’s fresh and waste water lines. Macerating toilets are relatively quiet and use less water than a conventional toilet does. (Most macerating toilets use about 1 US gallon per flush.) They’re also 100-percent safe for septic systems.

Macerating toilets don’t work quite the same way conventional gravity-fed toilets do. A macerating fixture operates much like a garbage disposal does. While some units still have the fresh water supply at the back of the toilet to flush out the waste and clear the bowl, a box at the base of the toilet catches the waste and grinds it into a liquid slurry. A pump forces the waste liquid into your existing soil pipe via a small-diameter pipe that can be concealed easily in a wall, or in the case of a basement, run overhead. Some models conceal the macerating unit behind an access panel in the wall; other designs incorporate the pump and allow direct access to the mechanical unit. You can even find one-piece (tankless) designs that attach directly to the wall, like a commercial toilet would.

A macerating toilet is more expensive than a conventional toilet, but if you’re planning to add a bathroom to your home, the savings you’ll see from avoiding extensive plumbing rework will more than make up for the cost of the fixture. Generally, you can expect to pay anywhere between $700 and $1,000 for a macerating toilet fixture, but when you compare this to the increased plumbing costs associated with adding a conventional toilet, the macerating toilet turns out to be a really fast and economical way to increase the number of toilets in your home.

If you’re interested in adding a macerating toilet, or just want more information about the process, call us at Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating at (617) 288-2911. We’ll be happy to help you choose and install the right macerating fixture.

Photo Credit: Saniflo

Boston Standard Plumbing: Toilets, Part 2

Today, the design of water-conserving toilets has changed, and many low-flow toilets offer excellent performance, both in water consumption and flushing action. Toto, a Japanese manufacture has been selling toilets in the US for about 20 years. They have a significant portion of the US low-flow toilet market, and their designs are aesthetically pleasant and very efficient.

How does a modern low-flow toilet work? Toto’s low-flow toilets use the same siphon design with a modified trapway and a larger flapper valve to make up for the decreased amount of water in the tank. Low-flow toilets can use between .5 and 1.6 gallons per flush. Some designs also allow the user to adjust the amount of water used during each flush. Designs from other manufacturers use pressurized air or incorporate a pump to help clear the bowl of waste material. Dual flush toilets, which aren’t too heavily used in the United States, offer the option of flushing either liquid-only waste using just .8 gallons of water, or solid waste, using 1.6 gallons of water. Some low-flow toilets even forsake the traditional siphon design and use a cascade or cyclone of water to clear the bowl after use.

Is a low-flow toilet worth the expense? Yes, it is. Low-flow toilets can trim as much as $100 annually from your water bill per unit, based on where you live, how much you pay for water and your usage patterns. Depending upon the manufacturer and the design you choose, low-flow toilets (1.6 gallons/flush or less) can range in price from about $200-$300 for traditional, round or elongated designs to about $7,000 or more for designer and custom fixtures.

Low-flow toilets typically don’t require any special maintenance, and offer exceptional water conservation without diminishing the performance homeowners expect from a modern flush toilet. The plumbing professionals at Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating can help you choose and install low-flow toilets for your home. If you would like to learn more about low-flow toilet options, contact us today at (617) 288-2911.

Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy of Toto USA, via Flickr

Ancient toilets in Turkey

Toilets have been around for a long time. Archaeological evidence from Britain as far back as the 31st century BC shows us that some households at that time had hydraulic toilets. Virtually all homes in the Indus Valley had flush toilets connected to underground sewer systems in the 26th century BC. Flush toilets were also used throughout the Roman Empire until the 5th century AD, when the Roman Empire fell, and flush toilet technology was for the most part, lost in the Western Hemisphere.

In about 1200, an Arabic inventor developed a combined sink basin and flush toilet. The user would use the toilet, wash his hands and then drain the waste water to flush the toilet. (These water-saving toilets are making a comeback in Asia and Europe today.)

But where did the modern toilet come from and how exactly does it work? Today’s toilet is the product of a lot of small innovations on the user’s end, and the creation of modern sewer (or septic) systems. Most of the important inventions involved valves that started and stopped the flow of water; waste containment systems or sewers; and traps that both hold the water in the bowl and prevent noxious sewer gases from escaping into the living space.

In the 1880′s in Britain, Albert Giblin and Thomas Twyford designed different toilet systems, which Thomas Crapper built. Unbelievably, there is no relationship between Thomas Crapper’s name and the word “crap.” “Crap” (whose meaning hasn’t changed a bit) entered the English language long before Thomas Crapper entered the world!

Crapper popularized (but did not invent) the siphon flush system, which we still use heavily today. Additional innovations have allowed the use of pressurized water to empty the bowl more reliably, provide shorter recharge times between flushes and supply a self-cleaning mechanism to keep the bowl in good shape. These pressurized systems are most often used in commercial appliations.

Modern gravity toilet with visible trapway - Image courtesy of American Standard

Each gallon of water weighs 8 pounds. The toilet tank has a strong flapper valve at the bottom, which prevents water from leaking into the bowl. When the flush handle is depressed, the wide flapper valve at the bottom of the tank opens and the tank water rushes like mad down into the bowl. With older toilets, the more water you have in the tank, the more sustained pressure you can create in the bowl. The newer toilets operate differently, and as you’ll see in my next post, they’re just as effective at clearing the bowl as the older water-hogs are.

A trapway, which is built into the porcelain of the pedestal, is set at a very sharp angle and makes an upside-down U-shaped bend. You can see the trapway built right into the porcelain if you look near the base of the toilet almost directly under the tank. When the water in the bowl reaches the height of the inside curve of the U bend, a siphon is created and the wastewater is sucked out of the toilet and down the soil pipe.

On the topside of the toilet, the water rushes out of the tank and lowers a float valve. When the float valve reaches a certain angle, it opens a fresh water valve to refill the tank with clean water. Meanwhile, the flapper valve at the bottom of the tank closes to hold the fresh water in. As the water level in the tank rises, the float valve rises, too. When the float valve reaches a certain, pre-set level, the fresh water valve closes and the toilet is ready for the next flush.

If the float valve is not adjusted properly, some fresh water may leak into the tank. To prevent overfilling, there’s a relief tube that has a separate drain path around the flapper valve and into the bowl. If your float valve isn’t working properly, you’ll hear regular drainage into the bowl and the water level will rise. Once it fills the trapway, the water will drain out of the bowl.

On the other hand, if your flapper valve is leaking, you’ll still hear draining water, but periodically, your tank will fill for a short period, then shut off. The excess water will also fill the bowl. When it fills the trapway, the bowl will drain.

If you’re having trouble with a leaking toilet, and you don’t have the tools or the time to make a repair, contact the professionals at Boston Standard Plumbing & Heating. We’ll be happy to fix your leak. We can even recommend water-saving toilets that we know you’ll be pleased with. Contact us at (617) – 288-2911 anytime!

In my next post, I’ll talk about new flush technologies and how they can save water without sacrificing performance.

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Photo Credit: American Standard