The Newest Excitement In My Life: Dual-Flush Toilet!

Last week I got my quarterly municipal water bill: $240!

That's about $1000 a year I'm paying for water which dries out my skin and reeks of chlorine.

This was ample motivation for me to finally get around to installing a dual-flush adapter to our existing toilets.






I picked this thing up at Canadian Tire for around $35 and it was VERY easy to install.  All I needed was a wrench to remove the old handle; the rest just goes in by hand.

Here's what it looks like out of the box:










The blue circles on the left is the water-water saving fill valve I installed a couple weeks back.  The white part on the right is the new dual-flush adapter and the white box on the left is the button which replaces the flush-handle.

Although it was easy to install, it took me almost an hour to adjust if so the "quick flush" option worked properly, but it was well worth it.

This is what the toilet looks like now with the buttons where the handle would be:

Now it takes 6 liters to flush "solids" (same as before) but it only uses about 2 liters to flush "liquids" using the "quick flush" option.

Watching the water level drop using the quick flush it only dropped about 3 inches, about a third of the water in the tank, but that isn't the best part...

The instructions that come with this device gives you tips on how to make your toilet more efficient.  One things it recommends is cleaning out the flush jets under the rim of the bowl with a wire.  When I couldn't get the adjustment right I decided to try this out and it made a big difference.

In fact it works so well, I find that I can flush "solids" with the quick-flush option!

This means that we'll reduce our water use by over 60% and it is estimated that toilets make up 30% of water used in the average home.

Now I have mixed feelings about receiving my next water bill; I'm not looking forward to paying it but I can't wait to see how much we've reduced our water use!