Professor Toilet has become aware of a toilet now on the market with a remarkable “new” invention—it has overflow holes in the bowl so that the bowl won’t overflow if the toilet clogs.  

This is a great innovation, except it is years too late. Years ago when toilets used 3.5 gallons or more of water per flush, if there was a clog the bowl would overflow and make a mess. We old folks like the Professor remember many horror stories about this.

Now that toilets use only 1.6 gallons and even less of water per flush, there is not enough water in a single flush to overflow the bowl. One would have to flush twice or even three times in order to overflow the bowl. If your bowl is clogged you are not going to flush the toilet again if you see the bowl filled up with water and not going down. This is common sense.

Furthermore, with all the advances in toilet flushing technologies, new toilets featuring oversized trapways are engineered to eliminate clogging. In fact, toilets such as the American Standard Champion®4 toilet, with the industry’s largest siphonic trapway at 2-3/8”, is engineered not to clog and will remove a 67% larger mass than a toilet with a standard 2” trapway. 

So with new toilets that feature trapways in excess of 2”, clogging is essentially a non-issue. And, even if the rare clog occurs, the bowl won’t overflow unless it is flushed repeatedly.

Now, a couple more thoughts about this “new” invention:

• The extra trap seal required for the overflow uses and wastes about 30 ml. of extra water on every flush. This is not going in the right direction for saving water.

• The extra seal for the overflow contains only about 30 ml. of water—it can evaporate quickly if the toilet is not used frequently enough. This will result in sewer gases leaking into the room and a rather nasty smell.

• Also, the invention only works on clogs in front of the trapway (the same kind you usually won’t get with a Champion4 or Cadet3). If the clog is in the drain pipe and not in the toilet, the bowl will still fill up with water. While the bowl won’t overflow because of today’s water usages, the new invention nonetheless isn’t failsafe for all kinds of clogs.

The Professor is continually on the lookout for new toilet innovations to determine their real merits and communicate the facts to his audience so that they can make educated decisions.

Tags: american standard toilet, Champion 4, clogged toilet, toilet clog, toilet overflow, toilets
Posted in Clogged Toilets, How a Toilet Works, Professor Toilet Tells All, Toilet News, Toilets | 2 Comments »