Bowl type for flushometer valve

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Sukey

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Are there any specific requirements for toilet bowls when using a flushometer valve? I'm talking about a tankless toilet - not the type that has the Sloan flush valve in a tank.

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Redwood

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Yes, it has to be a toilet designed for a flushometer, and there has to be a larger water supply to it than a tank or, flushmate toilet would need.
 

Sukey

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Thank you for your reply, Redwood.

Why would you need a larger water supply for the 1.6 GPF or dual flush 1.2/1.6 models?

I have an old Sibley toilet that is original to my house and I would like to move it to our upstairs bathroom. It's one of those with the tank mounted on the wall and the L-shaped inlet pipe from the tank to the bowl. This is the toilet that I was wondering whether I could use with a flushometer valve instead of the gravity tank with a regular flush valve.
 

hj

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At least four.
1. a toilet with a 1 1/2" top or rear inlet spud.
2. minimum 1" water supply at a point at least 24" above the floor and within 5 1/4" of the center of the toilet.
3. at least a 10" distance between the wall and the center of the outlet pipe in the floor.
4. adequate pressure
 

Sukey

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I think maybe I just figured out the answer to my last question - takes more water to build up the pressure for the valve to operate?
 

Sukey

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The Sibley has a 11/2 inch rear spud. All the requirements could be met, but the size of the water supply line. Ours is only 3/4".

I'm not a plumber, so I appreciate your input and hope my questions are not too annoying.

I'm new, but I have been reading the toilet threads for quite some time and I think this site is wonderful. Just the link to the MAP statistics alone made this a place well worth visiting.
 

Jimbo

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The supply of water is the big issue, not to mention actually trying to hook a flushometer to that bowl.

A modern closet flushometer will flush with the 1.6GPF, and it will operate on modest water PRESSURE...perhaps as low as 40 psi. What it takes is VOLUME. I can't find the graph right now, but I seem to recall that they need an instantaneous flow rate of about 35 gallons per minute. A pipe smaller than 1" just can't deliver that.
 

Redwood

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Ah Sukey,
That toilet is a true museum piece... Not worthy of being carried up the stairs. It uses a huge amount of water every flush somewhere in excess of 5 gallons probably as high as 7 or, 8.

If you are interested in maintaining the antique look, you should look into replica toilets. There are a number of suppliers out there that can provide new toilets that flush very well with 1.6 gallons of water per flush. Some even have tanks mounted high on the wall with pull chains and long chrome pipes.

Here are some pics of but a few that are out there. Terry may have some recommendations as well.

redwood-fm-4.jpg
redwood-fm-3.jpg


redwood-fm-2.jpg
redwood-fm-1.jpg
 
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Sukey

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It used to use that much water, but I took the guts out and now it works with a third of the water - still probably around 2 GPF, though.

I've looked at a lot of toilets on the web. I won't bore you with the details, but deco style toilets that will fit are tough to find.

I don't really mind the new, sleek, skirted toilets, but they're all too big.

My bathroom is so small that your knees dig into the bathtub when you're on the toilet...
 

hj

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Here is what the Sibley looks like, just in case you've never come across one:

Oh, we have seen hundreds like that, just not in the past 40 years or so, (and even then we usually removed them when we came across them, we did not install them). They had absolutely nothing going for them. They were impossible to snake when something got stuck in them, and they were an inefficient flushing design. How did you modify the toilet so it uses less water? You would have to have done that in the tank feeding water to the toilet. A flushometer doesn't need a larger line to build up pressure, it needs it to maintain the pressure while the toilet flushes.
 

Sukey

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How did you modify the toilet so it uses less water?

Well, I'm totally ignorant and so that may have helped.:)

Somewhere on this site I read that the first gravity toilets sold to comply with the new lower water use requirements were simply the existing models with fill valves that used less water. (It might have been Terry who said that.)

So I put in a fluidmaster. After unscrewing the shank to 14 inches and still not being able to get it high enough above the overflow tube, I replaced the old tube with one I cut down by 4". Voila.

The hardest part was getting the flapper assembly links aligned just right again so the flapper seated properly.

Actually, that wasn't the hardest part, but that's another story - wasn't directly related to the toilet itself.
 
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Jimbo

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It is true that early 1.6 toilets just use some gizmo to reduce the volume flushed. That is still true. If you look at any tank, it obviously holds way more than 1.6 gallons. So they control the flush, but that technology has improved, and now they have improved the bowls as well, to match the lower flow.
 

Sukey

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jimbo - I just went down and measured the water level in the tank and did the math. It's using slightly over 4 gallons per flush.

I've certainly made myself look like an idiot. A huge tank is still a huge tank and getting the water level down low enough so that it only uses 1.6 GPF is impossible with that Sibley.

I think the new toilets are great and will continue to improve. My plan has always been to get a new one. I just got nostalgic when I looked down in that old tank and saw all those old brass gizmos.
 
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