"ransley" wrote in message
...
On Jul 12, 2:45 pm, Dan Musicant ) wrote:
A city affiliated agency is doing some work for me for free based on my
low income. The guy came over and toured my 100 year old house the other
day. He's going to try to fix an upstairs bathroom sink that won't drain
properly, will put in a door bell, give me some more smoke detectors,
maybe some other stuff.

He mentioned that he can put in a low flow toilet instead of the old one
I have. I asked if it would flush OK. He said "yes." Now, I wonder
because my brother (La Mesa, near San Diego) has a low flow toilet (I
think they are mandatory there) and often times it doesn't flush
completely and you have to flush it again, sometimes several times.
That's annoying if not disgusting. The toilet I use 95% of the time
(downstairs), usually works on one flush. Occasionally it doesn't and
sometimes I actually have to break things up to get it flushed! I'm
afraid that getting a low flow in there would make matters worse. My
water usage is pretty minimal already and I use less than the 100
gallons a day that the county considers under the radar when water
rationing is in effect here (Alameda County, CA, currently no rationing
in effect.

Should I defer on the low flow? Are some better than others? I'm hoping
to sell my house in a few years. What's the scoop.

My house was built in the early 1800s. When we remodeled the half bath two
years ago we put in a Toto Ultimate one piece low flow toilet, and we love
it. It has NEVER, not even once, required a double flush or backed up or
displayed any of the nonsense we experienced with the old water waster. It
was about $550 delivered. It was shipped overnight, for free, from some
place in NJ (IIRC). There was one semi-local store which sold the same
thing, but it was more money and we would have had to drive 75 miles round
trip to get it. When we built our new addition we'll be using Toto.