Aliris19
Member
I found it difficult to gather information about these products on this site so I'm posting this review in case it's useful for another. It's too long for a single post so it'll appear in parts:
We installed the Brondell swash 1000 on a Toto Drake about five months ago. There's been a long learning curve.
Originally I bought the machine in advance of my elderly mother's visit, thinking she could substitute daily baths with better "real-time" cleaning.
As it happens she did not visit so I cannot comment on the use of this advanced toilet seat as a hygiene device for the elderly. I still think it might be particularly useful for this purpose but, I'm a little leery given the way the use of this unit has played out for us (see below). Can't do this experiment though.
Installation was as easy as advertised. Well… guess I'm forgetting. We experienced some "user error" with me not seating the tube properly to the tank, and visiting Home Depot repeatedly in search of the right length fitting. That was, now that I think of it, all very annoying but not Brondell's fault. It is easy to install the seat, you just have to be careful in seating threads and be vigilant about buying the right coupling.
Upon installation there was a little glitch getting the "economy" setting to work. But this is a mini-computer in the seat, and resetting the thing by unplugging for a few hours was helpful. A quick unplug didn't do it but on the suggestion of tech support, just leaving it while gone to run an errand did the trick. I'm sure a full two hours was overkill, but sufficient.
The "economy" setting means the computer goes to sleep if not used in a certain time. However it is overridden, seemingly, by the seat temperature feature. If you want the seat temperature warm when you sit down, the entire unit does not "sleep" and will not go into "economy" mode. Perhaps this is unavoidable, but it seems to me it ought to have been featured to wake up to a certain seat temperature setting without disabling the sleep function altogether. This is not the only way this computer is a little disappointingly "dumb".
I'm writing a lot about this seat because in researching what to buy I had trouble finding good information about the whole concept of a "washlet" or bidet seat. Without seeing the thing it sounded like a good idea. But it was hard to evaluate relative worth or value of different types and features out there. And what's really hard to know by reading is what the whole thing just *feels* like. That's where the biggest learning curve comes in.
One devoted commenter on GardenWeb (herring_maven!), was helpful in delineating a clear difference between available seat-types as depending on whether the advanced toilet seat uses one or two wands. Our Brondell uses a two-wand system like those most popular in Japan, I gather. Not having ever even seen a one-wand system, like Toto's, I cannot personally compare. But it sounds to me fundamentally different, for women at least.
With two wands women need to sit waiting for each wand in succession to emerge and spray their intended targets, first one then the other (anus and vagina). I find this a bit annoying to wait twice and have to fiddle with the remote twice. It's not a deal-breaker, and having never seen nor tried the other variety I cannot know whether it takes as long to have a single wand turn on twice at its two different angles; that could be as annoying. But as this stands, one irritation with this Brondell is that there is no "memory" to the special features you set. If you want the wand to emerge further than its lowest setting, that takes three clicks of the rocker switch, and if you want it to "feather" back and forth, that's another button-push. And all this has to happen twice for each wand; there's no default setting. All this button-pushing has to happen each and every time either wand is used by any person.
IMO it would be a significant advantage if the seat could be programmed for different individuals' usual, default preference. That would include features such as wand-advance, feathering (where the wand moves back and forth a little bit to enhance cleaning power), water temperature, spray angle, seat temperature. Although that latter setting isn't wand-dependent; the other three are.
The biggest problem, though, is that the settings of these wands just don't really fit where my anatomy wishes them to reach to. I cannot tell whether that's a me-thing, this Brondell-thing or whether it's inherent to any advanced toilet seat. That is there's a requirement for the wand to retract, and be able to do so efficiently and effectively; it could be that the short distance these wands extend cannot be altered and are not among different manufacturers. For me, though, these wands even when I'm sitting all the way back on the full seat, only barely at best reach where they're supposed to reach. And I really can't control the variables electronically adequately. Therefore I find myself literally squirming around back and forth, leaning forward and back every time I use the wands.
We installed the Brondell swash 1000 on a Toto Drake about five months ago. There's been a long learning curve.
Originally I bought the machine in advance of my elderly mother's visit, thinking she could substitute daily baths with better "real-time" cleaning.
As it happens she did not visit so I cannot comment on the use of this advanced toilet seat as a hygiene device for the elderly. I still think it might be particularly useful for this purpose but, I'm a little leery given the way the use of this unit has played out for us (see below). Can't do this experiment though.
Installation was as easy as advertised. Well… guess I'm forgetting. We experienced some "user error" with me not seating the tube properly to the tank, and visiting Home Depot repeatedly in search of the right length fitting. That was, now that I think of it, all very annoying but not Brondell's fault. It is easy to install the seat, you just have to be careful in seating threads and be vigilant about buying the right coupling.
Upon installation there was a little glitch getting the "economy" setting to work. But this is a mini-computer in the seat, and resetting the thing by unplugging for a few hours was helpful. A quick unplug didn't do it but on the suggestion of tech support, just leaving it while gone to run an errand did the trick. I'm sure a full two hours was overkill, but sufficient.
The "economy" setting means the computer goes to sleep if not used in a certain time. However it is overridden, seemingly, by the seat temperature feature. If you want the seat temperature warm when you sit down, the entire unit does not "sleep" and will not go into "economy" mode. Perhaps this is unavoidable, but it seems to me it ought to have been featured to wake up to a certain seat temperature setting without disabling the sleep function altogether. This is not the only way this computer is a little disappointingly "dumb".
I'm writing a lot about this seat because in researching what to buy I had trouble finding good information about the whole concept of a "washlet" or bidet seat. Without seeing the thing it sounded like a good idea. But it was hard to evaluate relative worth or value of different types and features out there. And what's really hard to know by reading is what the whole thing just *feels* like. That's where the biggest learning curve comes in.
One devoted commenter on GardenWeb (herring_maven!), was helpful in delineating a clear difference between available seat-types as depending on whether the advanced toilet seat uses one or two wands. Our Brondell uses a two-wand system like those most popular in Japan, I gather. Not having ever even seen a one-wand system, like Toto's, I cannot personally compare. But it sounds to me fundamentally different, for women at least.
With two wands women need to sit waiting for each wand in succession to emerge and spray their intended targets, first one then the other (anus and vagina). I find this a bit annoying to wait twice and have to fiddle with the remote twice. It's not a deal-breaker, and having never seen nor tried the other variety I cannot know whether it takes as long to have a single wand turn on twice at its two different angles; that could be as annoying. But as this stands, one irritation with this Brondell is that there is no "memory" to the special features you set. If you want the wand to emerge further than its lowest setting, that takes three clicks of the rocker switch, and if you want it to "feather" back and forth, that's another button-push. And all this has to happen twice for each wand; there's no default setting. All this button-pushing has to happen each and every time either wand is used by any person.
IMO it would be a significant advantage if the seat could be programmed for different individuals' usual, default preference. That would include features such as wand-advance, feathering (where the wand moves back and forth a little bit to enhance cleaning power), water temperature, spray angle, seat temperature. Although that latter setting isn't wand-dependent; the other three are.
The biggest problem, though, is that the settings of these wands just don't really fit where my anatomy wishes them to reach to. I cannot tell whether that's a me-thing, this Brondell-thing or whether it's inherent to any advanced toilet seat. That is there's a requirement for the wand to retract, and be able to do so efficiently and effectively; it could be that the short distance these wands extend cannot be altered and are not among different manufacturers. For me, though, these wands even when I'm sitting all the way back on the full seat, only barely at best reach where they're supposed to reach. And I really can't control the variables electronically adequately. Therefore I find myself literally squirming around back and forth, leaning forward and back every time I use the wands.