Low-Flow Toilets

Canadians harbour a deep-seated prejudice that even extends to government policy. Like all prejudice, this one’s not based in fact, yet it’s accepted as truth without question. It costs our country millions of unnecessary dollars each year while also degrading the environment. And the object of the scorn is the low-flow toilet.

Canada is the only major country in the world where you can still buy water-hogging 13 liter toilets. Canadian law and public opinion have yet to catch up with the reality that low-flow toilets really do work. The trick is understanding how to choose a good model, and when it comes to this important job, Canada is actually in the lead.

Off to a Bad Start
It’s easy to understand why low-flow toilets have such a tarnished reputation. When water conservation became a big enough issue to affect toilet design back in the mid-1980s, most manufacturers simply put smaller tanks on their 13-liter bowls and hoped for the best. And as you’d expect, this approach didn’t do anyone any good. In fact, many of the early low-flow toilets were pathetically inadequate. And if that wasn’t bad enough, some models actually used substantially more than 6 litres per flush, despite advertising claims to the contrary.

We know all this now because of a guy named Bill Gauley. When faced with the terrible performance of the first generation of low-flow toilets, he decided to take a methodical look at the situation. Gauley’s initial testing has led to the formation of Veritec, a firm entirely devoted to the testing and publication of toilet performance stats.

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