Renovating an entire house to LEED standards - while we're living in it
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Proficiency Toilets - 18 months later
It has been a while since my last post. Between family, work, renovations and the blog, the blog often finished last. The good news is that the renovations kept moving forward with good progress on several fronts. I am hoping to starting posting on a regular basis so that the blog can catch up and share all that news. But to get back in the rhythm, I figured I would make this a quick and simple follow-up to my review on the Proficiency toilet (or Stealth as it is sold in the states).
One concern I had when writing my original post was that my initial impressions may not reflect long term performance. Now that we have 18 months of use under our belt, I am much more confident stating that this toilet exceeded all my expectations.
As a reminder or for those that did not read the initial post, at 3L per flush this toilet is arguably the most efficient flush toilet on the market. It uses 77% less water than our old toilet and 25% less than most other very high efficiency toilets.
Has it clogged? Yes. But under conditions that would have stymied our old 13L as well. We have a toddler in the house and it is amazing what ends up in our toilet bowl. But under regular conditions it has performed virtually flawlessly. We did have one issue early on when there was a significant reduction in performance. For several flushes it seemed sluggish and struggled to clear the bowl. Even though water was flowing, we plungered the bowl and the performance returned to normal. I believe what happened was that there was an obstruction in the vacuum tube. Without the vacuum assist is was just 3 litres of water trying to clear the bowl.
One of the most telling things about the toilet: we get no comments. We have had numerous house guests and visitors filter through in the last year and a half and no one comes out of the bathroom perplexed: it looks like a conventional toilet (including the size of the water spot) and it performs like a conventional toilet . It just quietly and consistently does it job, which to be honest is all we were asking of it..
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Was the plunging normal? Some on the Internet suggest that the vacuum would cause plunging to go into the water fill storage area.
ReplyDeleteThinking of getting one but worried of maintenance issues more than performance issues.
When we plunged, it was normal but the clogs were normally right at the bowl exit (usually a half roll of toilet paper attempted to be flushed down). I could see that if the bowl was below the vacuum port that you might lack suction when plunging. You would then need to remove the tank and cover the vacuum port while plunging. Not ideal, but not insurmountable. The plugging has been really rare, we have two in the house and I don't think the plunger has come out in the last 9 months.
ReplyDeleteHello David,
ReplyDeleteI want to buy that 3L toilet and I want to thank you for all the information and comments you posted about it. It is very helpful. There is a few things I wanted to know: is there special maintenance with it, for instance with the transfer tube ? Do you consider the mecanism fragile ? Did you install it yourself ? Is it simple tio install ?
Thank you in advance for your answers.
Patrice Godin
Québec
There is no special maintenance required to my knowledge and I haven't had any reason to date to be concerned over durability.
ReplyDeleteAs far as ease of installation, I did the installation myself and found the process identical to any other toilet The only perceivable difference is that there is a second port between the tank and the bowl but that doesn't change the instal at all.
Merci beaucoup for all this useful information.
DeletePatrice
just linked this article on my Facebook account. it’s a very interesting article for all.
ReplyDeleteCommercial Office Cleaning Quebec
I have this same toilet installed in my house in London, ON. I also have toddlers who put various objects in the toilet. The manufacturer states in the manual that this toilet should never be plunged, and should only be snaked. I can verify from experience that this is true. Plunging this model can cause waste to enter the pressure chamber, and cause additional problems. A toilet snake (which will not mark the china bowl) is a must with this model, and other pressure-assisted toilets as well.
ReplyDelete