I noticed recently that two of my most popular articles are related to toilets:
Gerber Allerton Toilet Review
And
Gerber Viper Toilet Demonstration Video
I realized that if so many people were interested in how these two toilets work, then there's likely other people interested in how other toilets perform. Therefore, I thought I'd share some of the research I used when choosing toilets for our new house.
Our decision was made on four factors Cost, Looks, Environmental Impact, and Performance.
Cost
There's a wide range of prices available to you out there from the cheapo toilet you can find at any hardware store to the ultra-expensive. As is the case with most products, there is
somewhat of a relationship between cost and other elements such as looks and performance. I say
somewhat because while the middle of the road toilets may perform much better than the bargain basement ones, the top of the line toilets may not perform that much better than the middle of the road toilets. The trick is finding the magic middle point, where you are maximizing your performance and looks while minimizing cost.
That said, some of the brands that tend to be higher priced, are Toto and Kohler. I'm not saying these aren't nice toilets, but I definitely think you can get a nice toilet for cheaper.
Looks
Another factor to consider is looks. I know it sounds silly because after all "it's just a toilet". But when you've spent umpteen hours picking out everything else for a new house to make it exactly the way you want it, you tend to take the same approach with the toilets.
Like price, there's quite a range of what's available. Most toilets will be your standard round or elongated bowl with relatively no frills. If you are totally into function over form, you can get toilets that look like they belong in a public restroom. On the other side of the scale, you can get toilets with such modern styling that you can barely tell what they are. For us, the choice was to pick something along the lines of a standard toilet, but with a little bit of detail to it.
Environmental Impact
Those of you who have read my blog in the past know I'm a bit of a greenie. I was appalled when I learned that toilets used to use 6-7 gallons of water per flush! These days, you can't really buy a toilet that uses that amount of water. The standard now is 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf), but it is not uncommon to see toilets that use even less. Some toilets offer two flushing options: a half flush for light duty, and a full 1.6 gallon flush for larger loads. There are also pressure assisted toilets which use compressed air to help flush with less water. This is similar to what you'd see on an airplane. The downside of these toilets is that they are pretty noisy.
Peformance
Last but not least, performance is a big player in deciding which toilet to buy. After all, what good is a toilet if it can't flush or is constantly needed to be plunged? To find out how certain toilets stacked up against each other, I hit the Internet. I happened to find a VERY informative website listing results from independent performance testing. Go to the
Canadian Water and Wastewater Association website and click on their
Maximum Performance Testing report. It'll tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about toilet testing and how each toilet fared.
Now you have all the information and decision points we used to decide upon the Gerber Allerton toilets. Hopefully this will be helpful to people searching for information on other toilets as well.
