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Dual Flush Toilets are Water Saving Wonders

How well do dual flush toilets work?

Dual flush toilets look just like any other, but have two button on top for two kinds of flushes, the smaller one uses only .8 gallons of water instead of 2.4.

With cities all across the US and the world facing a water crisis the use of dual flush toilets is set to grow by leaps and bounds.

A few years ago many cities made low flush toilets, ones that use 2.5 gallons or less per flush, a requirement for new homes.

Now it looks like some communities may start to do the same thing with dual flush toilets, requiring their use in some instances.

Whether you approve or not of sweeping government regulations one thing is certain and that as our country grows it is running out of water and scarce water will mean ever higher water bills for almost every city in the nation.

One way to protect yourself and your wallet from increasing water rates is to design your home so that it uses less water. Items such as efficient front loading washers, low flow shower heads, sensor activated faucets and dual flush toilets are one way to do that. 

Other means of saving water include xeriscaping your yard which involves using native plants that don't use as much water.

How Well Do New Dual Flush Toilets Work?

The principle behind dual flush toilets is simple. For flushing, lets say "large bowl fulls" of stuff you press one button. For flushing a little bit of "liquid" you press another.

One regular flush is around 1.6 gallons  and the other little flush is around .8  gallons or exactly  half of the more forceful flush. Dual flush toilets flush just as well as any other type of toilet on the full flush setting. If used properly you will not notice a difference between a dual flush toilet and a regular one.

The lowest amount of water flushed by the dual flush toilet is about one third of what a standard low flush toilet uses, and about eight times less that what the old five gallon flush toilets used.

Dual flush toilets are here to stay and it is just a matter of time before you start to see them everywhere here in the US just as you do in water starved countries such as Australia where I first saw them twenty years ago.

One gadget that I have yet to see here in the states that I saw in Oz is a  tiny little sink  on top of the toilet tank that lets you use fresh water that is going to fill up the toilet tank to wash  your hands!    How clever is that? Some Americans might find the idea of using a sink on top of the toilet to be gross, so I don't think the ideal will become mainstream anytime soon, except in severe water rationing areas.

See  How to Convert Almost Any Toilet to Dual Flush

Cheers.

Cheers.