Grist - Comment Feed for Ask Umbra’s video advice on saving money (and water) in the toilet

Comment #1 by GreeningTX

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:40:36 -0700

It's easy to flush with water that would otherwise be wasted. For example, use a large jug to catch water while you wait for the flow from your shower head to warm up, then dump from the jug straight into the toilet bowl. You can also flush with water from mopping your floor, shampooing your dog, washing your car, backwashing your pool. How about rainwater from a downspout? Get creative and you'll rarely have to use the flush lever! Spill no drop before its time!

Comment #2 by normbear

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:08:26 -0700

My technique: Take one large, empty liquid laundry detergent bottle; pop out the pour spout (grab it with a pair of pliers and yank--it just snaps in); pee in the bottle and keep it capped; when it's time for a brown flush, pour into toilet, rinse, spray with a green cleaner, and repeat. The advantage is that the toilet doesn't get smelly from accumulated pee, and you can get by with one or two flushes a day. It's a bit more convenient for guys, but the large-mouthed jug makes it possible for women, too.

Comment #3 by Going Green

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:35:53 -0700

There was some seriously icky stuff in that video!

But great info and well edited. Nicely done.

Did you know that right now, there are also lots of rebates for replacing toilets?

Thanks for the great vid!

Jonathan
www.GreenJoyment.com

Comment #4 by amazingdrx

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:14:47 -0700

This whole topic tends to be offensive, hehey. Let's face it, in order to go waterless and compost/recycle our waste, it has to be just as automatic as a regular flush toilet. That has happened already. But has been barely noticed by any media anywhere. There are several systems that use air pressure (kind of like the tube system at the drivein bank) to move the waste out of your bathroom, using only air, and into the composting toilet tanks, outside your house. A service can even come in and remove the composted waste for you once a year or so. And it's all much cheaper than regular urban/rural sewer systems. Then there are the other huge advantages of keeping hormones, antibiotics, and GHG out of our environment. Waterless flushing using just a shop vac type blower on a composting sewer tank outdoors, with a flush button on the toilet. Suction power! Urnie and solids can even go in separate containers. That allows the best recycling of each waste stream. Urine is easily dried and can be collected and processed into zero carbon organic fertilizer to replace GHG intensive oil based fertilizer.

Comment #5 by WaterConsNYC

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:17:39 -0700

I think you're making completely no-water sanitary waste disposal, particularly in urban or suburban areas seem a bit easier than it actually is. If you live in New York and would like to see no-water disposal in action by people who have experience with all kinds of poop, visit the new comfort station near the Bronx River Parkway entrance to the Bronx Zoo. Their old facility drained to a septic system that was deemed inadequate. It was either run a new sewer line more than a quarter of a mile or go waterless. Being the Wildlife Conservation Society they turned the whole thing into an educational experience.

Comment #6 by amazingdrx

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:37:12 -0700

Well of course it would take bigger systems in large buildings, but they do have bigger plumbing systems already. Many city sewer systems are in dire need of very expensive upgrades. This sort of system would be cheaper. Once the water is removed from waste, and much of the mass itself, it occupies a fraction of the volume. And without the flushing water the whole system transports much less mass. Sure retrofitting the whole country would be costly and time consuming, but that's a lot of jobs. Payed for with perpetual water, $$, and energy savings there ever after. A relatively small tank, less than half the size of a rural sewer tank would compost a years worth of waste before needing pumping. Larger tanks would be installed in larger buildings where all the waste would be transported by suction/gravity. A large skyscraper design in China proposes to biodigest waste to power the building with methane. This degrades the waste to an even slighter volume&weight;. Producing organic fertilizer.

Comment #7 by amazingdrx

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:54:59 -0700

The other part of this water conservation strategy is to go to Bucky Fuller's "fog gun" for washing and showering. It cuts water use by using a compressed air stream misted with water/soap. It has the potential to save 90% of domestic water use. Washing machines and dishwashers can use fog gun technology too. Water issues are sewrious enough alone to necessitate these sort of water saving systems. Energy/GHG savings add to the green side of the financial equation.

Comment #8 by amazingdrx

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:34:11 -0700

Consider another factor: only a fraction of the world even has plumbing. It is much more feasible to provide them with these water saving water&waste; systems. Chinese industries will jump on technology like this mass produced for emerging economies. That will lower the cost further. Even people off the grid and municipal plumbing can flush and shower with low power/low water use suction flush composting and fog gun washing. The much smaller volume of water can be filtered and transported from a local water source or rain water with a very small solar electric or hand pump. Likewise for compressed air for the fog gun. In this case green tech makes for a plumbing system that costs orders of magnitude less than standard plumbing, sewers, & wells. And that increases the speed of adoption and quality of life for the people in these emerging economies. Either we here in the US start manufacturing these products or others will, our best business plan as a developed economy would be to organize local distributed manufacturing, where we use our knowledge and capital to help out and then get a nice return on our investment. Create local jobs from Peoria to Pakistan with customers for the products generated by the business. Rather than colonialists or neoconman corporate feudalists, who mainly specialize in exploitation and weapons trading, and starting (maintaining endless) wars based on lies; why not try to act a little more like google-style capitalists. Do well by doing good. A few pennies profit from each water system or solar system, instead of huge windfall manipulated profits from resource war. This is sustainable business, based on knowledge, invention, inovation, and competition. If you risk capital and develop a better product that people want to improve their quality of life, then your profits are deserved.

Comment #9 by amazingdrx

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:29:20 -0700

From http://synchronofile.com/?p=204 : The Fog Gun appears in Dymaxion World illustration 88-92 but not in Inventions. Dymaxion World, Buckminster Fuller’s Universe and other sources quote Fuller claiming that while in the Navy he was able to clean grease off his hands by the mist eternally surrounding ships at sea. The fog gun was a means of directing atomized water under pressure for hygiene purposes. The fog gun is mentioned in Fuller’s 1938 book Nine Chains to the Moon. Dymaxion World claims the fog gun was tested at the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1948 “and subsequently at Yale and other universities.” In these tests a one-hour “massaging pressure bath” used one pint (.47 liters) of water. In session 11 part 2 of Fuller’s 42-hour lecture “Everything I Know,” Fuller claims professional dermatologists were consulted in researching the fog gun. Dymaxion World continues by saying “If fog gun bathing were done in front of a heat lamp, [all the effects of bathing] could be effected without the use of any bathroom. Since there would be no run-off waters, tons of plumbing and enclosing walls could be eliminated, and bathing would become as much an ‘in-the-bedroom’ process as dressing.” Buckminster Fuller’s Universe claims the test of the fog gun found it to be “a completely satisfactory system of cleansing, which, in fact, caused less damage to skin than ordinary soap and water. Thus, another significant artifact was created and left until a time when future generations would require it.” Has that generation arrived?

Comment #10 by Username

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:41:10 -0700

Thanks for the video and article!

Comment #11 by tootall

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:49:11 -0700

Great video!

Check out this video of me throwing on the wheel. Share it please........... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc4oJgRsqEI Thanks, Matt