AGAINST THE FLOW

Terry Love's Consumer report on toilets

TerryLove.Com

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An NAHB Research Center survey of builders, property managers, and homeowners last year found that “builder reported they receive more callbacks on low-flow toilets than anything else.”

“Plumbers install low-flow units without knowing anything about performance.  ‘They’re cling to some ancient memory of what worked well 20 years ago." 
Terry Love

TOTO Ultramax

Gerber Ultraflush

Western Clinton

As homeowners look back in anger, they blame the stinker who installed their lousy low-flow toilets. Are you sitting down? They may be right.
BY MATTHEW POWER
Humorist Dave Barry wants to make low-flow hoppers an election issue this year.  “Don’t let a bunch of elitist, infrastructure-obsessed, organic-tofu-eating whale-saving, opera-listening, earth-tone-wearing PBS viewers set the election agenda for you,” he writes.  “Let’s start a movement, voters!”

Recent events put a fine edge on his satire.  Last July, during one of the worst U.S droughts in 50 years, Michigan Representative Joe Knollenberg masterminded H.R. 623, a bill intended to repeal the water conservation standard for fixtures.  More than two dozen organizations, including public utilities, environmentalist, and even plumbing manufacturers, immediately came out against the bill, warning that such a knee-jerk policy could have disastrous consequences.  Toilets already account for 40 percent of household water usage.  Imagine trying to get a water-guzzling new subdivision permitted in places such as Las Vegas or San Jose, Calif, where communities already live on the edge of water rationing. 

FLUSH OUT THE ISSUES
In new homes, chronic problems with toilets typically flow downhill, and complaints eventually reach the builder. An NAHB Research Center survey of builders, property managers, and homeowners last year found that “builder reported they receive more callbacks on low-flow toilets than anything else.” Homeowners blame builders for using inferior products or failing to supply adequate water pressure.  A majority of all survey respondents said they had experienced problems with low-flow toilets in the last 12 months.

What happened? Did the entire building and remodeling industry embrace a product with the reliability of a Pontiac Fiero?  Bring on the lawyers, the media, the John Grisham novels. 

But first, maybe everybody should hear what plumber Terry Love, owner of Love Plumbing & Remodel in Redmond, Wash., has to say.  A self-made toilet wonk (everybody’s got to have a niche) Love believes the problem, dear contractor, lies not with low-flow toilets as a caste, but with misplaced brand loyalty.  Translation: idiotic stubbornness.

“Plumbers tell me they’ve been doing the same thing for 20 years and nothing works,” Love says.  “Wouldn’t it occur to them that they should try something else?  They’re using the same brand.”

Most plumbers who work with home builders have no way to track the performance of toilets they install, he adds, because their companies operate beneath the homeowner’s radar screen.  Many of them are not even listed in the Yellow Pages under plumbing repair or service.  Homeowners will call a repairman – or the builder – to fix a misfiring toilet – not the installer.

IDENTIFY THE BLOCKAGE
About two years ago, Love started installing and testing various low-flow toilets in his home’s three bathrooms.

“Certain brands kept coming to the top,” he explains,

“Plumbers install low-flow units without knowing anything about performance.  ‘They’re cling to some ancient memory of what worked well 20 years ago.  Some brands not performing well now worked fine then, before they were re-engineered.  They try one brand and assume that none of them work.  It’s ludicrous.”

Other research backs up Love’s frustration.  When Consumer reports compared low-flow toilets, the least expensive model tested – the Mansfield Alto (about $75) – had the poorest overall rating. 

“Those are exactly the ones I’m taking out of people’s homes now,” says Love.  “And they’re the ones going into 65 percent of new homes.  I’ve even seen them in $500,000 homes.”

GO WITH THE FLOW
Within reason, Love says, the more you spend, the better toilet you get.  He likes the pressure-assist models, although he adds that a few of the gravity-fed models work well too.  The Toto Ultramax being his favorite.  He notes that these models accommodate people who can’t seem to adjust to the “startle factor” of pressure assist flushing. 

Most important, he notes, is to recognize a hierarchy of performance.  No two models behave the same way, but many will do the trick.  He says that he has never had a clogging callback on any unit he has installed. 

“My father-in-law lives downstairs, and has a Western (toilet), He doesn’t even own a plunger.”