Flushometer toilet with washlet

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Honore

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I'm looking for a new toilet for my apartment. But it's unclear whether there are strong flushometer toilets that also have a washlet component or feature. Or if not, is it possible to add a washlet to an already-acquired flushometer?

If there are flushometers with washlets, which models would be the best? I have to install one of the water-saving toilets that are required in NY City, so it also needs to conform to those requirements.

I was hoping someone could give me a better understanding of the real facts on water-saving flushometer toilets--such as do they really work?-- and also, alternately, how washlets do or don't combine with them.

Honore
 

Terry

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The new bowls designed for low water use work just fine.
And they do make Flushometers for use with a Washlet. You will need a 1/2" feed for that.
 

Honore

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Hi-- thanks for the quick reply.

Is the 1/2" feed compatible with toilets that meet the 1.28 gfp requirement? The fixture I used to have was a flushometer toilet, but in the switch-over, the subcontractors hired by my building replaced the wide pipe from the toilet to the wall with a narrow pipe, which limits the types of toilets I can use.

Also, could you give me the models numbers or names of any flushometers with washlets? They don't seem to surface on a google search, although I see lots of kits or seats that have washlet features.
 

WJcandee

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Post a picture of what the plumbers left you with. It's not going to be a flushometer toilet with a 1/2" line, at least as far as I know. Perhaps they left you with a 1/2" line and a carrier for a wall-mount toilet? Or does the toilet discharge into the floor? Give us an establishing shot and a couple of close ups. We can really help you much better then. You may have more options than you think. Also, you can measure the inner diameter of the pipe they left you with with a tape measure. Makes it easier than guessing.

Also, since I, too, am in NYC, I can recommend a good plumber to you if you need it. Or perhaps the building has the Super do the work or he has favorite guys, which is fine.
 

Honore

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This is an overall shot of the toilet, and a close-up of the connection to the wall. It's pretty narrow. My approximate measurement of the outer diameter of the current pipe is 1 1/2".

20141224_1105.JPG 20141224_1150.JPG
 
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Reach4

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What is 1-1/2 inches in diameter? Something in your picture?
 

Honore

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yes-- the somewhat twisting pipe reaching from the horizontal pipe that connects to the wall to the bottom of the tank.

And I take that back about the diameter. Actually it's the circumference, not the diameter, which leaves a diameter of about .47.
 
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Reach4

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Is your flushometer similar to this one?

Flush_Toilet030_DJFs.jpg
 
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WJcandee

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Okay, so what you have there isn't a flushometer, which maybe was your point. It's a Kohler Santa Rosa, I'm guessing. It's called a "lowboy", not a flushometer. The connection they gave your from the wall basically lets you install ANY toilet that fits on that rough-in, which is the distance from the finished tile wall to the center of the closet flange, usually demarcated by the closet bolts holding it to the floor. Measure that distance. If it's 12", congratulations you can install basically any toilet you want. If it's 10", your choices are more limited, but they are plantiful. Toto has a lowboy with a good flush, as well as toilets with tall tanks that have a good flush, as well as one-piece, taller toilets with a good flush, all of which can be installed on 10". They're not cheap, but I suspect that either is your apartment. Confirm that we understand what we're looking at, and we will help you go from there.

What reach4 showed a photo of is a true flushometer toilet. That thing with the handle is the flushometer.
 

Honore

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Right, I don't have a flushometer, although based on the photo by Reach4, I had one in that bathroom, before the switch-over. The toilet is a Kohler.

I measured the distance between the wall and the closet bolt, which was in fact about 12"-- there were large white covers over the actual bolts, so I measured to the center of the covers.

I have a flushometer in the other bathroom. This would, I think, be my first choice here. Certainly -insofar as possible--I'd like something that approximates the flushing power of one.

On price, I'd like to pay a moderate price for the toilet-- nothing high-end or fancy-- but one that leaves no doubt about its efficacy.
 
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WJcandee

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You don't have to spend a lot of money for a toilet that works well. The Toto Entrada, Toto's least-expensive quality toilet, is obtainable for about $220 in elongated version, maybe a smidge more here in NYC. A little more for the Toto Drake II, another excellent performer. If you like the look of the Entrada, there's really no reason to get anything more-expensive. It has a 1000-gram MAP rating (meaning it flushes stuff as well as any other toilet), and people seem to like it. It's a gravity toilet, which means it uses gravity to PULL the waste from the bowl; it doesn't need force to accomplish its task. No need for "power". Just flush, slurp, gurgle, done. All on 1.28 gallons per flush. You'd be shocked at how well these work with no drama, unlike a Flushometer toilet.

The money you save then allows you to buy yourself a schwanky Washlet (which is a Toto brand name; there are several other Bidet Seat brands, including the Inax line, which has perhaps a more thorough wash). You can look at Terry's lineup here: http://terrylove.biz/12-bidet

You can also ask questions about the bidet seats to Terry. He sells a good number of them, and has personal experience with them.
 

Honore

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That's interesting, because my current toilet, probably as you say, a Kohler low-boy, has never flushed adequately. It barely draws even a little paper, and usually needs to be flushed repeatedly and fiddled with to get it to stop running, often only temporarily. This has been the case since it was installed at which time I was assured that it was new. I'm concerned since the pipes in my building have become seriously eroded--even in my apartment, several pipes have developed large enough leaks that my kitchen/bathroom wall and floor had to be torn out to repair them. Half of the lobby was opened up for six or seven months to accommodate large-scale repairs. One concomitant is that toilets in some lines are marginal at best.

Since the prior flushometer worked perfectly and without any troubling lapses, and given that this particular toilet is used by several co-workers, I had hoped to reintroduce a flushometer again. If this isn't possible, or is too expensive--since I'm interested in an Inax (probably in another bathroom, that does have a flushometer)-- something more powerful than the average toilet seems in order. I'd rather deal with overkill than underperformance-- despite attendant drama.

Maybe the Drake would be sufficient, but, for the sake of argument, what toilets with a power flush of some sort would you recommend?

Thanks a lot for your help.
 

WJcandee

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Thanks a lot for your help.

Sure, my pleasure. You're on the right track now: it's the marginal-performing lowboy toilet that they installed that's the issue. Put in a Toto of a certain quality, and you're going to be happy with the flush -- any Toto at or north of the Entrada in price is going to do well. The Entrada itself has as good a waste-swallowing ability as any, so it's really a matter of aesthetic design and appeal as far as which one to purchase. You'll get a little-better bowl wash, in my view, from a Toto with the dual-cyclone bowl design, which swirls the water around the bowl from two horizontal jets rather than straight down from rim holes, and the CEFIONTECT coating helps, too, so something like the Drake II (CST454CEFG) is a nice choice. In the country, we have both kinds of toilets (Original Drakes with the GMax flush and the nice-design one-piece Carlyle II with the dual-cyclone flush), and the reality is that they just all perform well. The other four toilets are 1950s-style water hogs in guestrooms and such, which I won't miss now when I replace them. (Before the Totos, I would have lamented the loss of the 5-gallon-flush models.) It was worth paying more for something cool for the master bathroom, but the Drakes work great and look nice in the other rooms.

If you're just not satisfied without that loud Woosh!! that you get from the flushometer, consider a toilet with the Sloan Flushmate pressure tank in porcelain tank. (Avoid at all costs any other manufacturer of a pressure system besides Sloan Valve Company; some of these other manufacturers have now gone out of business because of problems with them; one of our members works in a hotel which installed hundreds of non-Flushmate pressure-vessel toilets, and he spends a disproportionate amount of his time replacing them over and over. I suspect that if he could strangle the person who ordered them (and designed them and manufactured them) he would do so very, very slowly.)

Gerber UltraFlush seems to be Terry's preferred one. However, DO NOT acquire the dual-flush version or any version that has something other than the Sloan Flushmate in it, all of which Gerber offers. I think the thing is ugly, but that's just me. American Standard makes a pressure-assist Cadet that uses the Flushmate. A concern about them is that their porcelain-firing consistency and quality control really sucked a few years ago, with lots of toilets put out into the marketplace that I wouldn't find to be acceptable. Now that they are no longer owned by a hedge fund but instead by a Japanese plumbing manufacturer, word is that that quality is improving, but it's still a risk.

Although the Flushmate toilets look like a gravity toilet from the outside, the "tank" is just a container for the pressure-assist vessel. The bowl design is completely-different, so if you didn't like the noise, you wouldn't just be able to remove the pressure vessel and use the porcelain tank to hold water and a traditional fill valve and flapper. If you did so, as some enterprising folks have found, all that would happen is that you would flush and the water would just sit there. The bowl is designed so that water must come in under pressure or it won't work. (If you try the reverse on a gravity bowl, the water will spray all over the room, so there's a reason the pressure bowls are designed differently.)

One note: on rare occasion, and the consensus is that it's been fixed now, these things have exploded. My favorite youtube video of one (most are like pissed off concerned parents) is the lighthearted Las Vegas Killer Toilet video, in which you can see the black (presumably-) Flushmate with a hunk missing still attached to the bowl, where it has shattered the porcelain tank and sent pieces all over the room. Nobody was actually hurt because it blew while the bathroom was unoccupied. It's probably as likely as being in a plane crash, but it's something that can't happen with a gravity bowl...


And here's a much-linked-to thread from this website from around the time the recall first hit. https://terrylove.com/forums/index....flushing-system-for-toilets.47517/#post348515
 
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Honore

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Hi. I've talked recently to my super and he independently recommended the Gerber toilet with a Sloan tank-- however from what you write, I should ask him about the specific model, ie the ultraflush, vs any other model that has a dual flush version. But basically I would check to see that it's an ultraflush. My super has one of these and is extremely high on them, so I may give it a try.
 

WJcandee

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If he is saying "Sloan tank", he's on the right track. The Sloan Flushmate inner tank is what you want. The one that many people (including Terry) advise to avoid is the WDI inner tank, which comes in the dual flush and also can come in a single-flush. So specify the Gerber with the Sloan Flushmate and you'll be fine. (Now, that said, I personally find that Gerber tank to be ugly as sin. Every time I look at it it just skeeves me out. Don't know why. Just don't like the size and shape. Wouldn't buy it, for that reason. But that's just me.) Your super would be high on the Totos we recommended if he had tried one, but the important thing is that you get something that you personally like.
 

Honore

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I've been waylaying my super at various times and he insists he can't see whether it's a flushmate or not. He says all I need to know is that it's a power-assist toilet. But I want to be totally clear. Is a "Gerber power-assist toilet" all I need, or does it need to be specified beyond that? And where can I tell him to look?

Why, by the way, is the Gerber ugly? I haven't seen it and am not that aware of toilet aesthetics, although I think the Kohler low-boy is ugly. I'm not sure how much this would matter-- but maybe I should be more aware.
 
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