Multi-user personal multi/dual flush toilet conversion

If you want to save water, you really need multi-volume flush. Kids are different from adults. Boys are different from girls. Morning is different from night. And each meal is different.

Also I have a huge tank that money can't buy. It looks brand new and will last forever. The bowl do have hairline cracks inside but with my constant automatic bleaching system, you can't notice the cracks. You can see the cracks only if there are dirt or water deposits - not possible with constant bleach and crystal clear water.

They are many incentives and tricks to get you to get a new toilet. All the toilet seats now do not fit the mounting holes of older toilets. But I got a slightly flexible one that will fit!

The adjustable flapper is fairly consistent. It flushes about the same volume of water every time (except for the different level of water in the bowl due to different refill times). So this is the flush number one.

Holding the flush handle for a couple of sec more is pretty easy, and many people already have been doing it. The less water flush #1 uses, the less is the time to hold the handle for flush #2 and #3 etc.

The only thing needed is to visualize the level of water in the tank and let go of the handle at the right moment. This can be done by a vertical, calibrated, tube outside of the tank. But this is inconvenient to look at.

Electronic water level detection is easy and cost almost nothing. So there will be a bank of LED's for indicating the level in the tank, digitally. You can also use different tones or sophisticated displays. But the aim is to compete with those $20 conversion kits. LED cost at most a few dollars per pack.

You need one simplest transistor and a few resistors per level. That's cost about nothing. The circuit is trivial and I will give you one when I come round to it. Water is about a 20k resistor, the presence and absence of which is a reliable switch. Using one AAA battery, the transistor drives one LED when water is absent.

A low current design is required for the battery to last long, say, a couple of months. But it's simpler to enable the circuit only when the flush handle is turned. An AAA battery will probably last for a year or two. And a normally cutoff circuit minimize corrosion due to electrolysis.

Your dual-flush toilet conversion kit may not work

And here's my very cheap multi-flush system.

I think I still have the 13 L (3.4 G) flush toilet, or even larger. It's pretty easy to use inexpensive hardware to save water to 6 L or less (<1 .6="" a="" almost="" and="" br="" can="" don="" dual-flush="" easy="" flush.="" for="" g="" have="" i="" it="" lot="" man="" more="" nothing.="" per="" poor="" pretty="" s="" save="" t="" than="" think="" this="" to="" water="" you="">
If you have the post-1994 6 L low flow toilets, the first generations don't even flush well for the full volume. What can you achieve by halving the volume?

There's another complication during tank refill. The bowl is also refilled via the overflow tube (the tube in the middle of the tank). The water at the level of the bowl will depend on the volume of the last flush, which dictates the refill time and hence the refilled volume. This may not occur if your fill valve is way over refilling the bowl, or you use those kits that come with it's fill valve too.

You can do tests before deciding to convert. The motivation is that you need to empty your tank for installing anything. It can be messy depending on what is deposited and accumulated in your tank.

Before you test, you have to understand that there are at least 3 levels of flush. The least volume required is flush for pure liquid. The next I will call it paper flush, for paper plus liquid. The most volume required is solid flush. You can also add floater flush, 3-day-after flush, you know what I mean.

It happened that all my toilets have an adjustable flapper already in it, the sort with a scaled dial to vary the volume. It cost a tiny bit more than the cheapest flapper. First you adjust the fill valve to increase the volume in the tank to the maximum level, leaving a safe margin (~1 inch?) below the overflow tube. Then you test by adjusting the flapper to get the desired flush. If you do not have an adjustable flapper, you can just keep the flapper open by hand and measure the water levels at the tank.

I found out that for my old toilet, 4 to 6 L is required for all the 3 different flushes. That means you do not gain anything if you have already a low flow toilet. If you have a high efficient low flow, you may still flush a lot of things by reducing the volume.

Let me say it this way, if you add food dye at the bowl, the amount of water you need to flush depends on how much dye you use. So you can't get away with much less than 5L of water all the time. Actually for pure liquid, you don't really need to flush. You can just add water at the bowl via the overflow tube, until the food dye disappears.

If the volume is enough to flush paper, you don't need much more water to flush solids.

So, if dual-flush is pretty useless, do I need a new $500 dual-flush toilet to really save water?

No. It dawned on me people do dual-flush all the time. By holding onto the flush handle, people empty the whole tank of water into the bowl to achieve a mega flush, when the normal flush fails.

So this is my ideal of a multi-flush system for almost nothing:

Firstly, there is the tube at the top of the tank, coming up from the back of the tank. This is just to push the fill valve open with a ring of tube, through the hole at the back of the tank, and refill the bowl via the overflow tube. You stop pushing when all the color of the food dye disappears. This is a bad 3-minute implementation but someone can improve on it.

The indicator is the main component of the multi-flush system, located at the corner of the tank, just below the flush handle. This is just a 1/4 standard fridge water tube, with the other end at the bottom of the tank.

You can see two mark at the tube indicator. The top mark is the level of the full tank. The bottom mark is the level when the flapper closes by itself. Currently this is about 5L, enough to flush paper and solids most of the time.

This is the normal or number 1 flush. Before the flapper closes (before the water level drops below the bottom mark), you hold on to the handle and let the water level drop some more, until you think it's enough. So you have multiple flush levels.

Having an old powerful toilet has its advantages above those poor low flow ones. If the number 1 flush fails, I still have up to 10 L of water in the tank to complete the task immediately, instead of having to wait for the tank to refill.

If this is a guest room toilet I don't recommend it at all. Here I would recommend a single 5 to 7 L flush, and tell all the family only to use this bathroom for solids only, but don't tell the guests.

If you have small kids that don't understand much, you can have a bathroom with 3-4 L for boys only, and a bathroom for girls with 5L for liquid and paper flush. If you really need to save the planet, you have to teach them that pale yellow is OK, and residue white paper in the bowl is OK.

The indicator is just a tube that runs over the back of the tank, below the lid, to the bottom of the tank. At the moment I tape the tube to the tank with packing tape. The L-bend quick connector you see is just to avoid curving the tube too much. At the beginning, you have to siphon out the air in the tube, using your mouth or a baby ear and nose pump.

ps Don't leave the tube for long without securing the end. If the end of the tube drops down, the tank will drain and the refill valve will open forever. This lead to another better idea.

Fluidmaster Flush 'n sparkle improved

The Fluidmaster Flush 'n sparkle fits in the toilet tank. It dispense cleaning chemicals whenever it flushes. You can keep the whole toilet bowl clean without brushing.

It's an improvement over those drop-in-the-tank solid blocks. A typical one is by Clorox, a 3 inch diameter block, which dissolves slowly in the tank, and is suppose to last for a couple of months. If you are single, or a working couple leading an active lifestyle, it would probably last that long.

The only chemical you want is chlorine bleach. The acidity neutralizes the calcium deposits in water that form water stains. The problem is that for the first flush in the morning, you will be overwhelmed with chlorine, like swimming in the pool just after chlorination, and much worse.

More importantly, chlorine attacks soft plastic used for flapper parts. You need to get chemical resistance flappers, now commonly sold.

The flush 'n sparkle is an improvement. The refill block is smaller, designed to last as long as those Clorox blocks, which isn't that long. You still smell chlorine especially in the morning. By dispensing straight into the bowl, chemical attacks are eliminated.

But still the FNS dispenses too much bleach, needs refill too fast and too expensive. Here is the improvement.

The white tubes and parts are the original FNS, going from the valve and into the overflow tube. The parts added are the splitting T, and a 1 GPH dripper. To join the parts, I use standard 1/4 inch (OD) tubes, which are used for the fridge, and drip irrigation.

The tubes used in toilet tanks are 1/4 ID (internal diameter) tubes. I can't find parts for it, but standard 1/4 OD tubes fits inside it nicely, as in the picture.

The splitter ensures that there are enough water going into the toilet bowl, independent on how much water coming out from the dripper. Here I use quick connect, or John Guest, which is under $3. The alternative is to use much cheaper T's used in drip irrigation. But those T's restricts the flow somewhat, reducing the level of water in the toilet.

The dripper ensures that bleach is dispensed in drops. Don't use those flag drippers that can be opened and cleaned. They may leak.

Using rubber bands, I tied the tube from the dripper to the original clip of the FNS. In theory, both refill tubes should be above the overflow tube, so water from the tank is impossible to contaminate via the inlet valve.

Drinking tubes for the fridge would probably work but you really need is a tough 1/4 OD tube to insert into the white tubes with 1/4 ID, and into the splitter. It also need to be elastic enough to hold the dripper well. The quality of drip irrigation tupes vary so you need to pick a good one.

The whole thing can be installed in a minute.

Also, the setup was designed to use much cheaper 1 inch diameter chlorine blocks for swimming pools. I will be saving money if each small block last for a few days. And I would like to add blocks say every week or longer.

Here is the improved Flush drip 'n sparkle in action:

Better than Flowbee

To understand why Flowbee and the older Robocut works, we have to understand haircut theory 101. If every hair in your head is equal in length, you look OK. Of course you adapt the theory to shorter sides, etc. Most haircut, say, business cut, will involve a lot of this basic cut.

So basically both the Flowbee and Robocut hold your hair straight up via vacuum, and cut into equal lengths. That's why they work to some extend. I believe some reviews that the Flowbee cuts more like a scissor with no pulling effect.

I actually build a cheap Robocut in 15 minutes and tried it out using PVC pipes. The main thing is a 3/4" water pipe with a slit cut in it - for the scissor to come in and cut. The other is the attachment to a powerful vacuum.

It works decently to cut a kid's hair (poor kid). The problem is that cutting is slow because you have to put the scissor in restricted place. And that even after blocking some of the air passage with a plastic plate and tape, some hair in each batch are missed. Also because of the difficult in cutting, the cuts are not clean and the hairs are not exactly equal in length. But at the end it looked decent.

After I realized the first principle in hair cutting, I developed the touch cut technique with the touch cut hair clips. Each clip is made of two plastic cards, hinged together by tape. You pull a small strand of (wet) hair straight between the clips, and cut the excess length of hair outside the clip. This is exactly what hair stylists do, but without the precision measurement.

For a man's business cut, you use shorter clips at the sides and gradually shorter at the neck. The Flowbee is fast but the different length blends better by hand.

The "invention" is really suitable for cutting your own hair - hence named touch cut. You do not need to see what you are doing! Because you cannot go wrong. You cannot cut any hair shorter than your clip dictates. If you repeat on the same area long enough, all hair will be of equal length. In practice it's pretty fast, almost as fast as your hair stylists. My experience is that you can cut any hair around your head easily with an ordinary hair scissor, by twisting your head if necessary. If you cut your kid's hair, it's real easy.

A big challenge is a man's business cut for straight hair. The challenge is around the ears and at the neck line. You may need very short length hair. In that case you can use your fingers as clip, meaning hair length the thickness of one finger. You can have two finger width if you stack your left hand fingers and right hand fingers to clip the hair. The Flowbee cannot blend in different hair lengths so easily.

For a business cut you do need to need to trim off the hairs that are out of place to get the neat look. I am not aware of anybody who do this. I attach an old camcorder to a TV, so I can watch the back of my head comfortably, and I can zoom in to watch each hair. It can be done but not too simple because you have to move the cam around your neck to be sure that no hair is out of place.

For precision trimming it's really difficult using scissors looking at the TV like a mirror. I suggest an electric hair trimmer.

The good old clipper is a totally different kind of fish that stylists don't use. Firstly, it cannot cut equal lengths using the hair guards, because you are not pulling the hair straight, and only cutting those.

Guard against Hotspot Shield disconnection

sofYour connection via Hotspot Shield can be dropped any time without notification. This will occur if their servers are busy, and your connection is idle for some time. This false sense of security is even worse than public unencrypted Wi-Fi connections that HHS is designed to protect.

You may think that your browsing content and IP are secure over the wireless connection. But HHS can stop working anytime and your content and IP will be revealed without warning.

The only way I know to stop the browser when HHS stops working is via .pac files for automatic proxy setting.

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
if (!isInNet(myIpAddress(), "10.10.1.0", "255.0.0.0"))
 return "PROXY 127.0.0.1:12768; "; /*deny if not VPN*/
return "DIRECT";
}

This will work for typical home and Wifi connections. When HHS is function, you have a typical LAN IP such as 10.xxx.xxx.xxx. When this is not the case, a non-functional proxy url is returned so the browser will stop working immediately.

If you are directly connected to a cable/DSL modem at home, you have a typical public, external IP address. If you have a wireless router, your IP is typically 192.xxx.xxx.xxx.

The above instructions will not work directly if you are on a company LAN for example. You have to detect your fixed LAN IP. If your LAN IP is dynamic, you have to find a way to differentiate it with the dynamic HHS IP, using a suitable subnet mask.