Your bathroom is one of the most frequently used rooms in your house. Time can take its toll on the fixtures, pipes, tiles, and tub in a one bathroom, large family household . There are many reasons for a bathroom remodel, including being outdated, mold or mildew, or fixtures needing a face lift.
When you start with a bathroom remodel, it helps to work with a professional who can give you ideas on how to do a bathroom retrofit. With many years of experience, bathroom professionals can make the process easier, less stressful, and save you time and money.
Retrofit Your Toilet
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As you retrofit your bathroom with updates, you can also consider installing low-flow options for your shower, tub, sink, and toilet. Did you know that every time you flush a standard toilet uses an average of 4.5 gallons of water? By updating your toilet to a newer low-flow model, it will only use around 1.5 gallons per flush, saving water equal to about 40 showers!
Contact Bath Planet of Madison. We offer beautifully crafted showers, bathtubs, and secure ADA-compliant products at amazing prices, so everyone can have a safe, clean, and beautiful bathroom. Our skilled, professional, and courteous staff look forward to working with you to offer a custom strategy to make your home improvement dreams come true on a realistic and affordable budget.
As talk of water shortages becomes more common in the United States, as well as in other countries around the world, water-conserving initiatives and regulations are becoming the norm. One way to handle this is to install high-efficiency toilets vs. regular ones, since toilets account for almost 30 percent of water consumption in a home.
The benefits of switching to a high-efficiency toilet are not only related to water conservation. By changing your regular toilet to a high-efficiency toilet, you could reduce your water bill substantially. Keep reading to discover how to retrofit your current toilet, and reap the benefits of a water-saving toilet.
Energy-efficient toilets (also known as high-efficiency toilets or water efficient toilets) are designed to remove waste by using water velocity instead of removing waste by using water volume. What this means is that energy-efficient toilets increase the velocity of the water when you flush and only use about 1.28 GPF (gallons per flush) as compared to older toilets that can use between 1.6 and 7 GPF.
Like ENERGY STAR for appliances, WaterSense is a label for products that meet the criteria for water efficiency. The current federal standard for toilets is 1.6 gallons per flush. This federal standard passed in 1992, so if your toilet was installed before 1992, it most likely uses 3.5 GPF to 7 GPF.
A power flush toilet, unlike a conventional gravity flow toilet, uses pressurized air in the tank to achieve additional force when you flush. If you are choosing between a power flush and a gravity flow toilet, you should consider three things: noise, the quantity of toilets, and who is maintaining it.
Technology is not only changing the way that you control your temperature, your lights or your appliances. Technology is also changing the way toilets are designed and how they function. Nowadays, a toilet can have a massaging bidet wash, an air dryer, a heated seat, a self-deodorizer or an emergency flushing system that works during power outages.
If you are looking for the best modern toilet, it would all depend on your needs and your budget. Alina Bradford, writer for CNET, says that the best modern toilets can vary in cost from a couple hundred dollars to thousands, and they can have other features like:
If getting a new toilet seems unrealistic at this moment, there are other options to conserve water. To convert your current toilet into a water-efficient toilet, you can use a water-saving kit or you can retrofit it. Water-saving toilet kits have all the tools you need to convert your single-flush toilet into a high-efficiency dual flush toilet. These kits can usually be installed without removing the tank or using any tools.
To retrofit your toilet, you can install a toilet tank displacement bag that will displace 0.5 gallons of water in your tank so the toilet uses less water each flush. You can also install a toilet fill cycle diverter, which is a plastic device that sends less water to the bowl and more to the tank while they both refill. Like the toilet displacement bag, a toilet fill cycle diverter could help you save 0.5 gallons per flush.
Is there any DIY technique that you use to make your toilet a water-efficient toilet? Let us know in the comments. To read more about water conservation and other energy tips, check out our shower energy consumption conservation tips and our recommendations on selecting top-load vs. front-load washers.
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There are dual flush conversion kits for all different makes and types of toilets. You should choose the correct kit based on the size of the inside drain and the style of toilet and actuator that you have. Here is a tool to help you choose an appropriate kit: Help me choose a dual flush conversion kit.
Having a toilet shouldn't be a privilege, but it is. One in four people don't have a decent toilet, according to WaterAid America, and that contributes to poor hygiene, serious illness and even death. But toilets require a lot of water to do their dirty work. And water is a precious commodity we can't afford to, well, flush down the toilet.
After outdoor irrigation, toilets use more water than any appliance or fixture in a residential home. Older, inefficient toilets use as much as 7 gallons (26.5 liters) per flush. And old toilets are also often the cause of household leaks.
But what about low-flow or ultra-low-flow toilets (ULFTs)? Since 1992, U.S. law has mandated all new toilets sold in the United States use 1.6 gallons (6 liters) or less per flush. Of course many homes still have inefficient toilets and haven't replaced them with newer, low-flush toilets. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says the average family could save as much as 13,000 gallons (49,210 liters) of water a year if they did. So how do low-flow toilets get the job done?
First let's talk about how low-flow toilets got to your bathroom. In the early 1990s, Congress mandated the first real law on toilet efficiency as part of the Energy Policy Act. Toilet manufacturers had to redesign their toilets to use 1.6 gallons (6 liters) or less per flush. Some were effective. Some weren't. Many manufacturers just reduced the size of the toilet tanks, and consumers complained the new toilets just didn't function effectively.
That led to a new testing protocol called Maximum Performance (MaP) testing. In 2002, a group of 22 Canadian and U.S. organizations developed the program to test toilets based on their flushing ability. The scores represent how much waste (soybean paste and toilet paper) that the toilet can totally remove in a single flush. It's now the de facto flushing performance test for toilets in North America.
Today's low-flow toilets are much more effective than those that first came onto the market. Low-flow toilets usually use one of two methods to clear waste: gravity or power flush. Both types use no more than 1.6 gallons (6 liters) of water or less per flush.
As the name implies, gravity toilets use gravity to remove the water and wastes from the toilet bowl. You just flush and water goes into the bowl, then into a trap that creates a natural syphoning effect that helps everything head into the sewer pipes. Gravity-assisted toilets are easy to repair; the technology has been the same for decades, it's just been improved.
Power flush toilets, by contrast, use pressurized air in the tank to force the water and waste as you flush. The air is compressed in a vessel inside the tank each time it refills. Pressure-assisted toilets are very efficient, but they're noisy and usually more expensive than gravity fed toilets.
As we've said, modern low-flow and high-efficiency toilets perform far better than the water-wasters of the past. But there are differences among toilets, and the following factors influence how well a new toilet performs.
Another way to retrofit a toilet is to use a displacement dam. These plastic dams are wedged into the tank on both sides of the flush valve to decrease the amount of water per flush. One advantage they have over homemade displacement devices is that they're less likely to move around in the tank and disrupt the flushing mechanism.
One more retrofit device is the early-close flapper. It shuts off the water flow to the bowl before the toilet tank is empty. Early close flappers are adjustable so homeowners can adjust the water level so they can save water and still achieve a clean flush.
Still, all retrofit devices generally affect how well a toilet functions, and retrofitted toilets simply don't work as well as new low-flow and high-efficiency toilets in clearing waste. And since low-flow toilets with excellent performance are available at a range of price points, it's hard to find reasons to retrofit instead.
This policy mandates that all plumbing fixtures, including toilets, showerheads, and sink faucets, be low-flow. Verification or replacement is required within 90 days upon a change in ownership or account holder. 2ff7e9595c
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