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Friendly flushing: Water-efficient toilets help make sustainable homes
Northwestern.edu ^ | DEC 06, 2012 | MELODY CHANDLERAND, WILL GRUNEWALD

Posted on 12/06/2012 7:20:37 PM PST by ExxonPatrolUs

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To: Slump Tester
Friendly flushing: Water-efficient toilets help make sustainable homes...
But it takes water to get the big logs to go down. What are we supposed to do, keep a coat hanger handy?

A combination of ignorance, smugness and environmental zealotry makes for some embarrasingly stupid grandstanding.
It's 1:30 am here for me now and I need a clear head to sytematically respond to the almost total lack of any useful knowledge of the scope of attention and analysis that goes into the design of sewage collection systems and treatment facilities.

I'll try to do a more thorough job of responding tomorrow.

101 posted on 12/07/2012 1:42:59 AM PST by publius911 (Formerly Publius 6961, formerly jennsdad)
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To: CrazyIvan
"ceases to exist"

I'm sure many millions of Americans (mostly Obamatons) are quite unaware of this thing called the hydrologic cycle.

102 posted on 12/07/2012 3:22:15 AM PST by driftless2
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To: Chickensoup
I think peple used to plant daylilies over the old privy site . . .

My great grandmother planted pansies around her outhouse. When I was little I adored those large, lush beds of multicolored pansies. When you're 5 years old, you don't make the connection.

103 posted on 12/07/2012 3:51:21 AM PST by RightField (one of the obstreperous citizens insisting on incorrect thinking - C. Krauthamer)
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To: ExxonPatrolUs
So, are we or are we not to rinse out recyclable cans and glass jars?

Not that I recycle now . . . I finally moved out of California

104 posted on 12/07/2012 3:57:27 AM PST by RightField (one of the obstreperous citizens insisting on incorrect thinking - C. Krauthamer)
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To: Chickensoup

I know several people who have a hobby/business of digging up old filled-in privies looking for antique bottles. Some of those bottles are worth thousands to collectors. The theory is that nature has cleansed the nastiness out of the organic stuff in the hole. Most of the time, that is true.


105 posted on 12/07/2012 4:09:54 AM PST by Fresh Wind
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To: rfp1234

Then I’ll s$%t in the government provided trash container. (our city owns the trash collection)

Don’t worry, I’ll roll it in to the garage first and shut the door. need a ladder to get high enough anyways.

They tried pay toilets before my time. I can only assume they went away for similar reasons.


106 posted on 12/07/2012 5:23:53 AM PST by cableguymn (The founding fathers would be shooting by now..)
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To: Oldexpat

Studies show you’ll likely NEVER recover the extra costs involved in all that fancy equipment you installed.


107 posted on 12/07/2012 5:26:27 AM PST by cableguymn (The founding fathers would be shooting by now..)
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To: Louis Foxwell

I had the same problem when I ran my saltwater fish store. I sold a TON of water to customers. Someone setting a new tank up would borrow my 80 gallon plastic tank, toss it in the back of their truck and fill it with RO water. Not to mention the .5-1 gallon you sent home with every fish purchase.

The RO filter however was kind of wasteful. I got it down to about 1.5 gallons waste water to every gallon of filtered water it produced.

But I plumbed that usable waste water in to 4 300 gallon cubes in the basement and the dry cleaner plumped that water in to his washers and steamers so hardly any of it went down the drain with out being used.

My landlord showed up with the first water bill he got after we moved in. man was he livid.


108 posted on 12/07/2012 5:32:35 AM PST by cableguymn (The founding fathers would be shooting by now..)
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To: ansel12

glad you think the problems where worked out. But what about all the people that paid good money for these perfect condition poorly designed crap catchers?

Seems a recall or good will adjustment should be made for them.


109 posted on 12/07/2012 5:34:36 AM PST by cableguymn (The founding fathers would be shooting by now..)
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To: hinckley buzzard; All
At my new workplace, the Urinals are "no-water". In truth, I've not bothered to find out how they work, Looks like it might have some sort of filtration device on the outlet.

In short, the men's room - which is cleaned and scrubbed at least on a daily basis - still always reeks like pee.

I gotta tell ya, I'm not a slob, but neither am I overly fastidious. Just an average guy. If the smell in the john bothers me ... it's gotta be pretty bad.

110 posted on 12/07/2012 6:06:43 AM PST by wbill
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To: theBuckwheat
Given how much in resources building a house and then maintaining it for 20 years consumes, saving a gallon of water with each flush is just a silly concern.

Preach on! And Don't Get Me Started On "CFL's"! :-)

Now - I can hear my father saying "Turn off the faucet! Do you think I work for the water company?!". So - purposefully *wasting* water is foolish, too. But so-called "water saving" devices (low-flow showers that take longer to use....low flow toilets that require multiple flushes....and so on) just wind up wasting more than they save, IMO.

111 posted on 12/07/2012 6:12:27 AM PST by wbill
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To: muawiyah

“San Diego is a DESERT ~ they have a severe fresh water shortage and have to pump it in from hundreds of miles away.”

You appear to have fallen for this specious rhetoric. THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF WATER, especially for a town located ON the ocean. It is only a shortage of facilities to bring water of suitable quality to the user at a price he is willing to pay.

Israel desalinates sea water and it costs less per gallon than the water I buy from a co-op utility. In both cases, the customer can have all the water the customer wants to buy.

In fact, I can go to a local convenience store and buy as much water that I want from Fiji and from Iceland. It certainly costs more, but again, the folks who sell it are happy to sell me as much as I want.


112 posted on 12/07/2012 6:13:57 AM PST by theBuckwheat
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To: JRandomFreeper
I could flush a small government functionary down it in one flush

Have you tried?

I'd bet that you could make a fortune on Pay-Per-View, just from Freepers alone. But we'd need to be able to choose the government employee.

113 posted on 12/07/2012 6:15:11 AM PST by wbill
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To: theBuckwheat
Fine, San Diego should import water from Israel.

They are in the throes of coming up with a desalinization plant in Oceanside ~ actually putting the San Diego county beach to useful purposes.

The eco-nuts opposed the project.

114 posted on 12/07/2012 6:24:10 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: KoRn
Back when $50k per year USED to be GOOD money..... Now days that salary will have you living paycheck to paycheck with near zero savings

I'm in IT too. I don't want to discuss salary specifics. Let's just say that my family is solidly middle class and leave it at that.

If you had told me back when I was 25 that I'd be making what I am now ... I'd have said "OK, sure, I believe you. I have a job, I'm a hard worker, I have a college education. That sounds like an excellent salary and certainly would be attainable."

HOWEVER ... if you had told me back when I was 25 that I'd be making what I am now .... AND needing to cut corners, shop the sales, cut coupons, shop consignment sales religiously, stop eating out, stop taking vacations, basically cut out all the fat and leave only the essentials just to stay above water ....

I'd have told you that you were crazy.

What the heck, I can't complain too loudly about my situation. I have a job and am (barely) staying above water, which is far better off than most people. The thing that bothers me this year is that, due to some large unforseen expenses over the past few months, I've cut out the charitable donations that we usually do. Mrs WBill and I just did something with our church, and that was it.

It's a small thing, I know, but it bugs me. I'm planning to try to make up for lost ground next year.

115 posted on 12/07/2012 6:30:47 AM PST by wbill
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To: JRandomFreeper
I could flush a small government functionary down it in one flush.

One should not let such abilities go to waste (so to speak).

116 posted on 12/07/2012 7:27:20 AM PST by tnlibertarian
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To: wbill

I could have almost written your post myself. Near identical situations, and same reactions if someone would have told me long ago what my wife and I would be earning now, and would have thought they were nuts if I also found out it would be tough making it on that.
I believe the mad money ‘printing’ at the Fed, and reckless spending by the Congress has cheapened the dollar, and as a result everything costs more, cutting into ‘disposable income’. There isn’t much ‘fun money’ anymore.....


117 posted on 12/07/2012 7:35:41 AM PST by KoRn (Department of Homeland Security, Certified - "Right Wing Extremist")
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To: cableguymn

Why the tone? Don’t make me the enemy by pretending that I have anything to do with any of this, I’m just trying to share some hard learned knowledge.

When I say “hard learned”, I mean that because of my primitive, old school ways, I always gave a 1 year guarantee, parts and labor for every toilet that I sold.

In my world view, when a customer hired me as a plumber, then I was being hired as the expert, their personal expert, like when I hire an attorney.

If you had me install a toilet and had a stoppage, I would clear it for free, if it happened a second time within an unreasonable period, and I felt that it was the toilet, then I would tell the customer so, and tell them that I was going to try a different brand, luckily this only happened a couple of times and it was only near the beginning of the 1.6 standard.
I quickly learned to study which toilets were working, since all, of what I perceived as my own bad choice made in behalf of my customer, came out of my own pocket.

Once I had an old customer that called me to replace 3 brand new toilets from Home Depot. While having a handyman do some other work at the house, they had let him install 3 Mexican toilets from Home Depot, and they were so bad, that they paid me to replace them with my choices, and throw the other ones away.

It was a costly mistake for them, but at least they had the sense not to live with those badly designed toilets for 20 years.

I don’t know how things worked for you guys who bought your toilets from stores like Home Depot, I guess you could have inquired if there was a guarantee of some sort, maybe taken them back.


118 posted on 12/07/2012 8:00:42 AM PST by ansel12 (The only Senate seat GOP pick up was the Palin endorsed Deb Fischer's successful run in Nebraska)
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To: theBuckwheat

You sound like a liberal talking about solar energy, or wind.

Fresh water is not equally dispersed around the state, or the nation, or the world, and we use clean, sterilized drinking water for everything that we do.

Market forces have hindered the sell of expensive desalinated water, besides, that is only on the coasts anyway, water is still rare in place vast regions of the US.

As far as advances in technology, that goes for devices also, there is no rule that says that something has to use as much energy, or as much water, as it did at some point in the past, the problem is like you and desalination, it needs to be ready for the market and workable and cost effective, before you make it mandatory.

“”3. The Poseidon Carlsbad desalination project
Having just argued that desalination makes more sense than water transfers through the ocean from water-rich to water-poor regions, it turns out that not all desalination plants make sense. It is a proven technology – thousands of desalination plants are operating around the world – but it is a costly one to do properly. An effort by a private development group, Poseidon Resources, to build a plant at Carlsbad, near San Diego, has become the textbook case of how NOT to build a desalination plant (ironically replacing the previous textbook case of how not to build a desalination plant – Poseidon’s earlier venture with the Tampa Bay desalination plant in Florida). The Carlsbad plant was originally projected to cost around $270 million. A year ago, the costs had risen so much that Poseidon was trying to get $530 million in tax-free bonds to help them finance the project, on top of a massive subsidy from local water agencies. A month ago, they filed a new application for $780 million in tax exempt bonds, suggesting the cost is approaching a billion dollars. The company’s current estimate is that the cost of delivered desalination water has skyrocketed over the past few years to around $2000 per acre-foot, which is nearly triple San Diego’s current supply costs. And their design is still controversial because of concerns about location, environmental impacts, and financing. Moreover, the complete lack of transparency about contracts, permit decisions by local governments, Poseidon financial structure and funders, and the true economics of the plant have soured even strong proponents of desalination. This zombie refuses to die only because outside investors (either unbelievably gullible or incredibly smart) keep putting in money.””


119 posted on 12/07/2012 8:37:24 AM PST by ansel12 (The only Senate seat GOP pick up was the Palin endorsed Deb Fischer's successful run in Nebraska)
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To: theBuckwheat; muawiyah
There is a shortage of water, just as there is a shortage of most everything in the normal usage of the word "shortage" when discussing regional shortages.

How many times can you mock someone living in the Sahara, because they mention their own REGIONAL shortage of water, by pointing out to them that there is plenty of water elsewhere on the planet, and think that you are making a profound argument?

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120 posted on 12/07/2012 8:53:17 AM PST by ansel12 (The only Senate seat GOP pick up was the Palin endorsed Deb Fischer's successful run in Nebraska)
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