Politicians seem to believe that if we simply force lower and lower amounts of water in toilets that all will be fine. We feel that they have a lot to learn.
For a number of years now in order to save water as well as desiring to treat and process less sewage, San Francisco has been pushing big time for installation of ultra low flow toilets throughout the City.
The problem is that although initially the city thought that they were saving money it has instead turned into a very expensive plumbing mess as savings on water by providing for very ultra low gallon flushing toilets has resulted in a lot of sludge backing up inside the city’s main sewer pipes.
This has especially been obvious and noticed by many during the drier summer months in San Francisco. Many visiting tourists as well as local residences have noticed and complained about a “rotten-egg” smell.
Over the past five years the City of San Francisco has already had to spend $100 million to upgrade its sewage plants and sewer system and some of the reason that they had to do those very expensive upgrades is to fight the terrible sewage odor problems.
In addition the City has had to purchase millions of dollars worth of bleach in order to lessen the smell and to act as an odor-eater, as well as to disinfect the City’s treated water before it is dumped into the beautiful San Francisco Bay.
Imagine that: millions of pounds of bleach are being poured down San Francisco’s city drains in order to combat the terrible sewage odor.
theplumber.com believes that a better solution would be for the City of San Francisco to not use force or encourage ultra-low flow toilets and instead to encourage the use of standard low flow 1.6 gallons per flush toilets that have two flush settings. One for liquid waste and one for solid waste.
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My dad & I Installed somewhere between 12 to 15 WaterSense Niagra toilets 16 to 17 months ago at 3 different rental properties. One was an office building. The other a small strip of retail businesses. The third was a 7 unit apartment complex. Within 2 to 3 weeks of installing those toilets the sewage back-up problems began. All 3 locations have experienced these issues. They have only recently slowed down because of very expensive sewer line upgrades & a policy of flushing the toilets multiple times for every use, especially when solid waste is involved. We have spent well into the 5 figures combating these issues so far.
Do we have any recourse through litigation, or by any other means, to recover our losses?
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What a fiasco. This with weak flushing toilets is a fiasco all the way around. For SF, consumers, plumbers, janitors, etc. There is ONE situation where low flow toilets DO work: commercial aircraft. Why? They get to cheat – at desired altitude. In that case the septic tank is vented to the atmosphere that’s like the top of Mount Everest. (actually better) On the ground, a suction device is used to create 15,000 feet up equivalent. You can “drop the big one” and that stool will end up in that septic tank.
But the water situation out west has a super-size elephant in the room. In California irrigation of farms uses up 80 percent of the water. Further water conservations efforts in urban homes are a case of diminishing returns. Quit growing water-intensive crops!