Pressure-Flushing Toilets
Pressure-flushing toilet are especially common in cities in the U.S.
The ceramic tank is not used as a water tank, but it holds a plastic pressure vessel of maybe one-third to one-half the ceramic tank's volume. That pressure tank contains a sealed air bladder.
When the tank is filled from the water supply line, the tank fills with water until the air bladder compresses to the point that the tank pressure nearly equals the water supply line pressure.
The result is a flush using half the water but under pressure. Unlike the weak "low-flow" toilets now required for new installations in the U.S., this system has a chance of effectively flushing the bowl.
You you can see the pressure tank inside a pressure-flushing toilet in the Hawthorn Suites hotel, 467 Herndon Parkway, Herndon, Virginia, USA.
I was staying in the hotel while on a business trip, and removed the lid on the toilet in my room.
This pressure-flushing toilet is in the 51st Street Tavern, at 2512 L Street NW in Washington, D.C.
No, I didn't take the lid off, I found it this way.
Also see my high-tech toilet page.
Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box."
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.
The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.
Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.
Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.
Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.
| A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used. |
How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around? I'm not exactly sure, although they started in the mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001, although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous Toilet of the World page until January 17, 2002. Some time soon after that I split it into categories, and the collection has grown ever since.
In December, 2010 I registered the toilet-guru.com domain and moved the pages to a dedicated server.
If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):
