In northern Canada, where flush water has to be made by chopping up snowpack, melting it, and keeping it in a tank that doesn’t get below freezing, the yellow/mellow rule applies. Elsewhere, unless you like dealing with red-brown bacterial slime colonies all the time, the only excuse for not flushing is not wanting to wake the other person sleeping in the nearby bedroom.
@werehatrack Up in northern Canada when I worked there you got your water from the lake through an 8 foot hole in the ice, used outhouses in minus 40-60F and you drew straws to see who had to knock over the pyramid that formed in there.
@brennyn As a person who almost always eats more than one bowl of cereal per sitting, I ALWAYS pour the milk in first. This way, you can keep adding cereal until the milk is nearly gone from the bowl. (How long the milk lasts depends on the type of cereal.)
Adding cereal before milk means you can’t put as much milk into the bowl, and so you’ll have to return to the fridge quicker.
I’m a type-2 diabetic and take a drug called canagliflozin (brand name Invokana) which causes my kidneys to pass sugar even with relatively low blood glucose levels. As a result, my pee contains a lot of sugar and dries to a thick syrup. Not flushing when it’s yellow results in strange black stuff growing in the toilet.
@baqui63@ircon96 Fun Fact
The term diabetes mellitus is sometimes attributed to back in the day of chamber pots when sugar naturally ‘spilled’ in urine by diabetics attracted bees… (It also felt sticky, like honey and -yes they did that- tasted sweet)
I don’t use their stupid expensive refills. I usually get a can of bromine tablets meant for spas at Walmart on end of summer clearance but even at normal price way cheaper than the branded refills.
@baqui63@chienfou@ircon96@Kyeh they usually have some pool cleaning chemicals usually for those above ground pools they sell that are like 3-4 feet deep in the seasonal section. For whatever reason bromine is marketed for spas vs chlorine for pools. But the 1 inch ones fit in those kaboom thingies and are way cheaper than “refills”. Our Walmart is well past pool season though
@baqui63@chienfou@ircon96@unksol Be aware though that some of those cleaning/disinfecting tablets can void any warranty on your plumbing parts, because they corrode the rubber and plastic seals. Especially true of those with chlorine in the tablet.
Though the plumbing pipes themselves are unlikely to be damaged by chlorine bleach, certain components of the plumbing system could potentially be damaged. Bleach can potentially damage plastic and rubber, and residential plumbing systems often feature plastic and rubber components.
Q: By switching to Flush ‘n Sparkle from a drop-in bleach tablet, approx. how many years can a customer extend the average life of a flapper or any other toilet part?
A: Most of Fluidmaster’s fill valves, flappers and flush valves have
5-7 year warranty and typically last beyond these years when not
exposed to the harmful effects of drop-in bleach tablets. Drop-in
bleach tablets can degrade these toilet parts so they do not function
properly (e.g., seal leaks) within a year or two. In a worst case
scenario, drop-in bleach tablets can cause a fill valve failure with
the ensuing water leak damage requiring high cost repairs.
Especially bad if you have all your work done by plumbers, every few years, at their rates.
Bromine was not specifically mentioned, and I’m not familiar with its effects.
@baqui63@chienfou@ircon96@phendrick bromine is milder/not as problematic as bleach and doesn’t smell like bleach does. However the whole point of the kaboom thing is that you never put the tablets in the toilet tank itself so they can never impact the rubber/plastic/seals. Only the bowl fill water passes through the separate holder with the tablets and into the bowl, which is what refills it after you flush, so it’s only ever sitting in solution the ceramic bowl where it can’t hurt anything. Technically you could use it with bleach tablets if they fit. And you wanted too.
That’s exactly what the flush and sparkle quote is about/it does the same thing. Just with very expensive bleach cartridges instead of generic tablets.
Dopping those bleach pucks directly in the tank is generally not the best idea especially on anything but a basic toilet as the valves can be expensive to replace. I’d avoid those usually.
Fun fact: Number 1 is about 4% of the volume of wastewater that your city’s water management facility treats. It makes up 80% of the contaminants, though.
It’s really rich in nutrients, and is basically sterile. It’s a really good fertilizer (so concentrated that it kills plants if you use it straight). Save your water treatment plant some work, and save yourself some money: Use it as a fertilizer in your lawn. If you’re a dude, collection is really easy. Then put it in a watering can, dilute 20-40:1 (depending on… yellowness) and apply to enjoy healthier, happier, plants.
@ircon96 Hopefully it won’t. I guess if you live in an HOA… But how will they tell? For all they know, you’re just watering your plants the old-fashioned way. It won’t even smell as bad as chemical fertilizer because it will be diluted and will penetrate the soil right away.
When they ask your how your yard got so pretty and you tell them your secret, though, it may happen when they think you’re lying.
That approach would kill your plants. Too much of a good thing and all that.
Really only a problem if you constantly piss in the same spot. Otherwise, it’s no big deal. I have an acre to cover so
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And yes… that’s the voice of experience.
@blaineg@chienfou That’s the voice of anecdotal evidence. It all depends on how concentrated your number 1 is, how tolerant of excess nitrogen your plants are, the amount of nitrogen already in the soil, and how well your soil will hold the number 1 there before letting it fall below the roots.
I have a friend who did it the simple way after hearing how good it was for plants, and he left a line of dead plants consistent with his stream. It was a good story for awhile until the plants grew back and we weren’t allowed to speak of it again.
@blaineg@Weboh
As someone who gardens I can well attest the fact that you can over nitrogenate your soil. That’s one of the reasons composting chicken manure is so important. It will burn the crap out of anything you put it on directly.
I grew up i the 1970s in California and there was a drought with little rain for a few years (that was rare then, now it’s almost always that way).
We had pretty strict water rationing and I learned water conservation at an impressionable age.
One slogan was “in the land of drought and Sun, we don’t flush for number 1”
I do try to conserve, but the reasons mentioned of always I generally default to that. However, if my better-half is home, we have a custom of “don’t flush!” if one is walking into our only bathroom and the other plans on using it relatively soon. So I went with sometimes, even though most of the times I am flushing.
Oh, I thought they meant flushing after turd # 1. Which I do. Especially if it’s huge. If I don’t then I could clog the toilet and would have to come back to Meh for a fancy plunger.
Clean water is a valuable commodity aboard the cruise ships, so if I am cruising solo (which is most of the time), I don’t always flush #1’s. I make sure to before the steward comes to clean my cabin, and before a #2 to avoid splashing pee on my butt.
When I was growing up, everybody had septic systems, so we flushed pee a couple/few times a day. Now that I live in the land of public water and sewer, I flush every time. I live in a house with 50-year-old pipes and a low-flow toilet, which means the pipes aren’t filled with water when you flush like they were back in the heady days of multi-gallon flushes. Less water in the pipes means toilet paper and poop don’t get pushed through the pipes as fast.
Since I’m a she, I use toilet paper every time. I’m not sure how wise it is to send several pees’ worth of TP into the pipes at once. So my theory is that flushing every time will keep things moving along a little better. I still get clogs now and then, presumably because of a build-up of solids. That’s never a fun time.
@lisagd I have a friend from the Phillipines. She puts the TP from PP in the wastebasket. It doesnt smell. That’s a valid move.
I was thinking of peeing in a jar and mixing it with the compost. I dont think it would make a difference. I could test that out. Just for #1 oc.
@blaineg@whogots I remember the flush toilets in Java, Indonesia. It took 3 scoops to flush on pee and 5 scoops to flush on solids. Right now, I am wondering how “it knew” the difference.
We live on 30 acres of PNW forest and I spend a lot of time outdoors. So probably about half of my number 1’s involve a tree rather than a toilet (and I’ve yet to see a tree with a flush handle, so no flush). Any use of the toilet is always flushed - it is the dog’s preferred water dish (his choice, not ours ).
TMI perhaps, but there it is.
@macromeh Whenever i hear about dogs having that preference, I’m reminded of the time that testing revealed McDonald’s toilet water was cleaner than the lines in their ice machine.
I thankfully don’t really have to worry about the water use too much since my well is artesian with only being maybe 30 feet deep. Water literal shoots out the top if you open the cap, a flush just goes to septic and the drain field, there’s a spring at the house footer.
But dad still taught us to not leave water running etc so.
However what no one has mentioned is that not flushing raises the liquid level in the bowl. Technically the trap design sets the high level but it still takes time to balance. And while 50% of you will never have to worry about this particular problem, some days things are just a little low and would prefer not being dunked in… That.
@unksol Some might not be aware that if you don’t have water pressure (e.g., public utility failure or you have a private well and the power is out), you can flush a toilet pretty effectively by just quickly dumping a bucket of water (say, from melted snow or dipping in a nearby creek/pond/pool/whatever) into the bowl.
@macromeh Been there, done that. I’ve been known to fill the tub for bucket-filling purposes when we’re expecting severe storms. The power used to go out whenever a mouse farted, but it’s more reliable these days, thankfully, so i don’t have to do it quite so frequently.
@ircon96@macromeh I honestly assumed everyone knew that, especially since it doesn’t take much to flush most toilets these days. Never mind most people have 50 gallons sitting in their hot water heater that’s not really drinkable it needed.
In Japan, pretty much all toilets have built-in bidets with warm water; some even have heated seats. One at a department store had a panel of buttons and one said “flushing sound.” My aunt explained that “some ladies are so modest they don’t want anyone to hear them using the toilet, so they flush beforehand to cover the sound, but that uses a lot of water, so this gives them the sound without flushing.”
Yes because Riker pays me to do it.
@yakkoTDI It’s a crappy job, but someone has to do it.
@blaineg I am just glad nobody poo poos my employment choice.
We have cats. Yes we flush everytime.
In the drought impacted west, the motto is…
“If it’s brown, flush it down, if it’s yellow, let it mellow…”
If it is yellow let it mellow if it is brown flush it down!
@sicc574
Flush?
@tweezak What? You have an outhouse?
@Kidsandliz @tweezak He thought they were talking about poker.
In northern Canada, where flush water has to be made by chopping up snowpack, melting it, and keeping it in a tank that doesn’t get below freezing, the yellow/mellow rule applies. Elsewhere, unless you like dealing with red-brown bacterial slime colonies all the time, the only excuse for not flushing is not wanting to wake the other person sleeping in the nearby bedroom.
@werehatrack Up in northern Canada when I worked there you got your water from the lake through an 8 foot hole in the ice, used outhouses in minus 40-60F and you drew straws to see who had to knock over the pyramid that formed in there.
Just be grateful you live in a place where the toilet paper can go in the toilet and not have to go in a trash can by the side of the commode!
It’s piss. How is this even a question?
@brennyn This is like putting milk in the bowl before the cereal, or shitting in in the dishwasher and writing it off as “wafflestomping”.
@brennyn As a person who almost always eats more than one bowl of cereal per sitting, I ALWAYS pour the milk in first. This way, you can keep adding cereal until the milk is nearly gone from the bowl. (How long the milk lasts depends on the type of cereal.)
Adding cereal before milk means you can’t put as much milk into the bowl, and so you’ll have to return to the fridge quicker.
@brennyn I had always heard the term “waffle stomping” in terms of pooping in the shower.
Who in the world poops in a dishwasher?!
Is it OK, if it’s grey?
Will it stink, if it’s pink?
@phendrick Um… maybe you need to see a doctor…
@phendrick @shahnm Or he let it slip that he’s an alien.
I flush the toilet before I take a dump, to save time.
Piss after a night of heavy drinking left to ferment in the toilet all day is not a pleasant smell.
@edguyver14
Piss is not a pleasant smell.
FIFY
Flush, because other people are around in the household.
@f00l So considerate, unlike @brennyn up there!
I’m a type-2 diabetic and take a drug called canagliflozin (brand name Invokana) which causes my kidneys to pass sugar even with relatively low blood glucose levels. As a result, my pee contains a lot of sugar and dries to a thick syrup. Not flushing when it’s yellow results in strange black stuff growing in the toilet.
@baqui63 Yep. I’m on a similar med & it turns into quite the science experiment if i forget!
@baqui63 @ircon96
Fun Fact
The term diabetes mellitus is sometimes attributed to back in the day of chamber pots when sugar naturally ‘spilled’ in urine by diabetics attracted bees… (It also felt sticky, like honey and -yes they did that- tasted sweet)
@baqui63 @chienfou @ircon96 I wonder if one of these would help? I mean still flush but. They seem to help in general.
https://www.amazon.com/Kaboom-Scrub-Toilet-Cleaning-System/dp/B00LPEO64G
I don’t use their stupid expensive refills. I usually get a can of bromine tablets meant for spas at Walmart on end of summer clearance but even at normal price way cheaper than the branded refills.
@baqui63 @chienfou @ircon96 @unksol
That looks useful!
When I first read your comment though I thought, “They have spas at Walmart? Really?”
@baqui63 @chienfou @ircon96 @Kyeh they usually have some pool cleaning chemicals usually for those above ground pools they sell that are like 3-4 feet deep in the seasonal section. For whatever reason bromine is marketed for spas vs chlorine for pools. But the 1 inch ones fit in those kaboom thingies and are way cheaper than “refills”. Our Walmart is well past pool season though
https://www.amazon.com/bromine-tablets/s?k=bromine+tablets
@baqui63 @chienfou @ircon96 @unksol Be aware though that some of those cleaning/disinfecting tablets can void any warranty on your plumbing parts, because they corrode the rubber and plastic seals. Especially true of those with chlorine in the tablet.
from https://www.hunker.com/13409532/chlorine-damage-to-plumbing
and from the fluidmaster.com site:
Especially bad if you have all your work done by plumbers, every few years, at their rates.
Bromine was not specifically mentioned, and I’m not familiar with its effects.
@baqui63 @chienfou @ircon96 @phendrick bromine is milder/not as problematic as bleach and doesn’t smell like bleach does. However the whole point of the kaboom thing is that you never put the tablets in the toilet tank itself so they can never impact the rubber/plastic/seals. Only the bowl fill water passes through the separate holder with the tablets and into the bowl, which is what refills it after you flush, so it’s only ever sitting in solution the ceramic bowl where it can’t hurt anything. Technically you could use it with bleach tablets if they fit. And you wanted too.
That’s exactly what the flush and sparkle quote is about/it does the same thing. Just with very expensive bleach cartridges instead of generic tablets.
Dopping those bleach pucks directly in the tank is generally not the best idea especially on anything but a basic toilet as the valves can be expensive to replace. I’d avoid those usually.
Fun fact: Number 1 is about 4% of the volume of wastewater that your city’s water management facility treats. It makes up 80% of the contaminants, though.
It’s really rich in nutrients, and is basically sterile. It’s a really good fertilizer (so concentrated that it kills plants if you use it straight). Save your water treatment plant some work, and save yourself some money: Use it as a fertilizer in your lawn. If you’re a dude, collection is really easy. Then put it in a watering can, dilute 20-40:1 (depending on… yellowness) and apply to enjoy healthier, happier, plants.
@Weboh Plus, it’s a great way to piss off your neighbors… Bonus!
@ircon96 Hopefully it won’t. I guess if you live in an HOA… But how will they tell? For all they know, you’re just watering your plants the old-fashioned way. It won’t even smell as bad as chemical fertilizer because it will be diluted and will penetrate the soil right away.
When they ask your how your yard got so pretty and you tell them your secret, though, it may happen when they think you’re lying.
@Weboh I can’t help but thinking there’s a simpler, less civilized approach.
@blaineg That approach would kill your plants. Too much of a good thing and all that.
@ircon96 Don’t you mean piss on your neighbors?
@blaineg @Weboh
Really only a problem if you constantly piss in the same spot. Otherwise, it’s no big deal. I have an acre to cover so
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And yes… that’s the voice of experience.
@blaineg @chienfou That’s the voice of anecdotal evidence. It all depends on how concentrated your number 1 is, how tolerant of excess nitrogen your plants are, the amount of nitrogen already in the soil, and how well your soil will hold the number 1 there before letting it fall below the roots.
I have a friend who did it the simple way after hearing how good it was for plants, and he left a line of dead plants consistent with his stream. It was a good story for awhile until the plants grew back and we weren’t allowed to speak of it again.
@blaineg @Weboh
As someone who gardens I can well attest the fact that you can over nitrogenate your soil. That’s one of the reasons composting chicken manure is so important. It will burn the crap out of anything you put it on directly.
@chienfou @Weboh
I like the term: anecdata.
@xobzoo Yes, i should have rephrased!
I grew up i the 1970s in California and there was a drought with little rain for a few years (that was rare then, now it’s almost always that way).
We had pretty strict water rationing and I learned water conservation at an impressionable age.
One slogan was “in the land of drought and Sun, we don’t flush for number 1”
I do try to conserve, but the reasons mentioned of always I generally default to that. However, if my better-half is home, we have a custom of “don’t flush!” if one is walking into our only bathroom and the other plans on using it relatively soon. So I went with sometimes, even though most of the times I am flushing.
I picked “sometimes” as the closest thing to the real answer, which is “usually,” since I’m intermittently senile & can forget occasionally.
@ircon96
That’s going in the file along with “momentary lapse of hair color”.
@blaineg @ircon96 “momentary lapse of hair color”
You’re gonna have to explain this one; I missed it when it happened.
@ircon96 @lisagd Temporarily Blonde.
@blaineg
Oh, I thought they meant flushing after turd # 1. Which I do. Especially if it’s huge. If I don’t then I could clog the toilet and would have to come back to Meh for a fancy plunger.
@jhbrut Don’t you mean a “barely adequate” plunger?
If it’s brown flush it down if it’s yellow let it mellow
We have cats, but the lid is always down when not in use.
We’ve been in a drought situation for a long time now and the water rates are sky high here, so we flush after three pees. Solids? Right after.
Clean water is a valuable commodity aboard the cruise ships, so if I am cruising solo (which is most of the time), I don’t always flush #1’s. I make sure to before the steward comes to clean my cabin, and before a #2 to avoid splashing pee on my butt.
When I was growing up, everybody had septic systems, so we flushed pee a couple/few times a day. Now that I live in the land of public water and sewer, I flush every time. I live in a house with 50-year-old pipes and a low-flow toilet, which means the pipes aren’t filled with water when you flush like they were back in the heady days of multi-gallon flushes. Less water in the pipes means toilet paper and poop don’t get pushed through the pipes as fast.
Since I’m a she, I use toilet paper every time. I’m not sure how wise it is to send several pees’ worth of TP into the pipes at once. So my theory is that flushing every time will keep things moving along a little better. I still get clogs now and then, presumably because of a build-up of solids. That’s never a fun time.
@lisagd I have a friend from the Phillipines. She puts the TP from PP in the wastebasket. It doesnt smell. That’s a valid move.
I was thinking of peeing in a jar and mixing it with the compost. I dont think it would make a difference. I could test that out. Just for #1 oc.
@bee1doll
Always!
It’s common in England to have dual button flushers for #1 and #2.
@blaineg I was an early adopter of dual flush in the US – actually imported an Australian toilet for my apartment.
That thing was so powerful, especially compared to the 1960s 6-gallon it replaced, that I never had to use the #2 button.
@blaineg @whogots
Cool - does the water swirl the opposite way when you flush?
@macromeh @whogots
/8ball does the water swirl the opposite way when you flush?
Cannot predict now
@macromeh @whogots I’ll bet it comes with Huntsman spiders.
Someone please do bidet seats and Huntsman spiders on the AI.
@blaineg @whogots I remember the flush toilets in Java, Indonesia. It took 3 scoops to flush on pee and 5 scoops to flush on solids. Right now, I am wondering how “it knew” the difference.
We live on 30 acres of PNW forest and I spend a lot of time outdoors. So probably about half of my number 1’s involve a tree rather than a toilet (and I’ve yet to see a tree with a flush handle, so no flush). Any use of the toilet is always flushed - it is the dog’s preferred water dish (his choice, not ours ).
TMI perhaps, but there it is.
@macromeh Whenever i hear about dogs having that preference, I’m reminded of the time that testing revealed McDonald’s toilet water was cleaner than the lines in their ice machine.
@ircon96 There are advantages to his preference for the toilet: it is a dish that contains splashes and he can’t tip it over. So I guess win-win!
@macromeh This song seems apppropriate for your adjustments to your environment:
/youtube the who I’m free
@macromeh So true! That’s what Alton Brown would call a multi-tasker.
I thankfully don’t really have to worry about the water use too much since my well is artesian with only being maybe 30 feet deep. Water literal shoots out the top if you open the cap, a flush just goes to septic and the drain field, there’s a spring at the house footer.
But dad still taught us to not leave water running etc so.
However what no one has mentioned is that not flushing raises the liquid level in the bowl. Technically the trap design sets the high level but it still takes time to balance. And while 50% of you will never have to worry about this particular problem, some days things are just a little low and would prefer not being dunked in… That.
@unksol Some might not be aware that if you don’t have water pressure (e.g., public utility failure or you have a private well and the power is out), you can flush a toilet pretty effectively by just quickly dumping a bucket of water (say, from melted snow or dipping in a nearby creek/pond/pool/whatever) into the bowl.
@macromeh Been there, done that. I’ve been known to fill the tub for bucket-filling purposes when we’re expecting severe storms. The power used to go out whenever a mouse farted, but it’s more reliable these days, thankfully, so i don’t have to do it quite so frequently.
@ircon96 @macromeh I honestly assumed everyone knew that, especially since it doesn’t take much to flush most toilets these days. Never mind most people have 50 gallons sitting in their hot water heater that’s not really drinkable it needed.
In Japan, pretty much all toilets have built-in bidets with warm water; some even have heated seats. One at a department store had a panel of buttons and one said “flushing sound.” My aunt explained that “some ladies are so modest they don’t want anyone to hear them using the toilet, so they flush beforehand to cover the sound, but that uses a lot of water, so this gives them the sound without flushing.”
All this begs the question of peeing in the shower…
@chienfou Is that a True/False question or some kind of multiple choice?
@phendrick
yes.
@chienfou My toilet is adjacent to the shower - why would I pick the shower?
Oh - you probably mean peeing while taking a shower!