Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Man in Motion. Part One.

We left Mackinaw City and took the road less traveled, driving along the shore of L Huron instead of the interstate.  We stayed in the Bay City, MI Recreation Area campground one night - pleasant but unremarkable.  However, there was one thing there that I will remark on: motion sensor flush toilets.
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Does the concept have merit?  Maybe.  But, I’m hard pressed to come up with any.  I haven’t a clue about the cost of buying, installing, maintaining and replacing these devices, but I suspect it’s higher than traditional flushing methods.  Whoever made the decision to install them must have thought that they’d be more economical in the long term than a manual type.  Was that decision based on projected savings of water usage, perhaps?
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If so, they screwed the pooch.  They place the sensors about shoulder height on a person sitting on the throne.  When the person moves a little, the toilet flushes.  Doesn’t make any difference whether you’re scratching your back, examining your shoe, reaching for TP, wiping, whatever: the freakin’ toilet flushes.  Has any reader been able to do a good ‘ol #2 and exit the stall that contains this ingenious device with only one flush?  I think it’s doable, would take a good deal of practice and constant focus.  I don’t recall ever having gotten by with less than three flushes - try as I might to minimize the flush count.
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They need to go back to the drawing board cuz these fine modern devices suck.  They’re wasting tons of water, and, I suspect, the buyers/owners are paying a premium price for the very devices that are robbing them blind. 

1 comment:

  1. The thing that I hate are the motion detected toilet seat covers, like in the Chicago airport. When you get into the stall there is already a tubular plastic wrap around the seat, but you can't REALLY be sure that it hasn't been sat upon. So you have to do a jig in front of the detector beam to send a new wrapper around anyway. And wait for it, which isn't always practicable.

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