Happy Hunting Grounds

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FullySprinklered

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Installed 5 Totos today; a personal best. I sent four Glacier Bays and one Eljer to the happy hunting grounds.

Interestingly, there were no broken flanges in the house, and all five were able to use 12" supply tubes. I stopped buying 12 inchers years ago after coming up an inch short a couple of times, and having to pull off the job to get longer ones. The customer provided the tubes; I would never have chanced it.

Only problem was the 10" rough toilet in the basement. I needed a 9 7/8 rough in toilet but I made the 10 work. It's totally hugging the wall, needless to say.

I spent some time thinking about the change-over to water saving toilets today. Used to, we would set out a house, then come back a week later after the CO and snatch out the 1.6 toilets and install 3.5 s. Everybody hated the water savers. And they did suck. They would streak badly and often took two flushes to make the snickers bar go away.

Toto came along with something that would actually function on 1.6 gallons of water. At first it was the least expensive toilet to be had at the supply house. But it worked. It was the first to be designed from the ground up to get the job done using the least possible amount of water. The other guys put trick flappers and Clorox jugs in the tank to make existing technology work, but it fell flat.

There are plenty of really good toilets out there nowadays. Toto is not the only good one. But they were the first and I became a fan from the start. The quality is high and I feel like I can trust them to keep it that way.
 

FullySprinklered

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Two Drake IIs 1.28, and three Drake 1.6s. The Drake IIs had the Sanigloss finish. Vespin IIs it said on the box. The ten inch rough-in down in the basement was mighty tight. There was an offset flange there that got it out to almost ten inches. I considered putting a spot of grease on the baseboard, but it went down without it. The supply stop as just a couple of inches off dead center and that had me worried for a moment but it did clear.
 

Wallijonn

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So you installed two Vespin IIs and three Drake IIs. Nice.

I take it that you installed one of the Vespin IIs in the 10" Rough In.

Will you be doing a courtesy call to see how they like the Totos?, or which ones they like best? If the reviews are positive they may serve as recommendations t others.

Which Eljin was replaced? I find that the 1.6gpf Elgins with the short inverted "U" trap ways are excellent toilets, albeit non-siphonic. What was the trap way like on that Elgin and how big was the tank, 1.6gpf or 3.5gpf?

I wonder if the 10" RI Drake 1.28gpf would have fit as well as the Vespin II. The Drake has a larger water spot. Just saying...
 

FullySprinklered

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There were two toilets labeled Drake II, Vespin II. They were 1.28s and went in the powder room and in the master bathroom. The other three were labeled Drake 1.6 and one was different from the rest and was a 10 inch rough. The bowl was different on the 10.

I make recommendations to the customer and they take it from there. This customer did all the research, made his choices, called me back and I came and installed whatever he buys.

The other toilets would not have fit in the place where I installed the 10". The others had a much wider backside, and the shut-off would have caused problems because it was so close to dead center.

I probably wont be doing a courtesy call to the customer. I'll wait for him to call me if there is an issue. In the meantime, I'll probably spending my customer relations time crawling on my belly like a reptile under somebody's house.

I don't have a huge amount of experience with Eljer toilets. What little I have has been less than positive. If you monitor the NYTimes best-seller list for the next couple of months, you may see my 450 page opus concerning my installation of a black, one-piece Eljer toilet, and all the trials and tribulations I endured installing this goat, and stopping all the leaks from the cast-in cracks in the "tank". It'll make Gone With the Wind look like a dime comic book.

Do I exaggerate too much?
 
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