Why aren't people putting bricks in their toilets?

Question

Why isn't there a brick in your toilet tank? If you don't have one, a 16oz. drink container will do. Fill it completely with water, s***w the top on & stand it up in the holding tank away from everything. It will help conserve water. Also how many people can you talk into actually doing this? I live in Florida. The Lake Okeechobee is 5 ft. below the level its ever been for this month. The Biscayne Aquafer is down too. When I was a kid in the 1960's I lived in Texas. There was a very serious drought. Cities competed to see who could save the most water. Boyscouts and the 4H club brought bricks door to door. I took one and put it in the toilet tank. First we were in the top 3 winning cities. Then our city won! We have to step out there and actively get people to do things; otherwise they will just sit there & nod their heads & agree but do nothing.... I emailed Gov. Crist. & asked if we could have a competition & more public service announcements. Lets work together & win.

Answer 1

Back in the 1960's, most toilets were 2.5 gallons per flush. People discovered that putting bricks in the take would reduce the water used per flush. Nowadays, most modern toilets use 1.6 gallons per flush, so they essentially have the "brick" already built into them.

1.6 gallons is about the minimum amount of water required for a proper flush. A brick will reduce the amount of water used even more, down to 1 gallon or less, but this usually isn't enough water to flush out everything in the toilet bowl. This means you might have to flush more than once in order to get everything down, which really defeats the purpose of the brick because you end up using twice amount of water.

So if you have an old 2.5 gallon bowl, then a brick will help conserve water. But if you have a newer 1.6 gallon bowl, then you're already conserving about as much water as you can, and the brick is probably going to cause problems. In fact, you'd have a hard time fitting a brick in a modern toilet tank.

Chances are, if you still have an old 2.5 gallon bowl, then there's probably already a brick in it, unless you took it out for some reason.

Answer 2

Please write a simple question.

Or at least in simpler way. I am not able to understand ehats your real concern.

However I do agree that we do everything possible to conserve water and save nature.

Answer 3

all you have to do is bend the bar that          holds     the ball valve downwards to have the tank   halffilled

here are some more ideas

EFFICIENT WATER USE

IN THE HOUSE

one can connect the sink straight to the toilet sistern and so use the water twice ,first to have a shave and then to flush the toilet

also if you bend the ball valve you can regulate the level of the sistern

and always have your grey water and black water seperate

so that the sink and shower water goes directly into the garden saving on irregation and at the same time ,making the sewage smaller and easier to deal with ,this also goes and iregates the garden but via a sitern of two compartments and a french drain ,on which you plant trees,

ON THE LAND

economic systems of irregation like drip irregation

and design using a lot of stone walls ,that condense water in the night

and planting leafy plants for the same purpose

building wind breaks ,to counter act the drying effects of the wind and farm towards agro forestal ,using as many trees as posible to limit evaporation .using shade nets before we have tree cover

and use MULCH

by cutting down the weeds before they produce seeds and leave them where they fall,they will cover the ground and put even more organic matter on top,you can use saw dust,leaves green or dry,and when you plant make a little space and plant in the mulch.this is the easiest quickest and by far most benificial way(for the quality of you soil)to prepare the land for planting

to prevent weeds from coming all you have to do it turn out the lights,you can even use cardboard or black plastic(this is good for strawberries because they will rot if they touch humid ground,and the bugs can get to them).

mulch is the same principal as compost but it includes the whole garden surface

the top part of the soil where the topsoil is being produced houses a world or microbiotic life.

Mulch is organic material green or dry that covers the ground,the thicker the better the composting process will turn it in to black topsoil

the humidity is preserved underneath and promotes the devellopment of worms(their exists no better compost than their excrements)and a variety of micro biotic life which together with the mulch produce more topsoil.

the mulch also keeps the ground temperature even and guards against the impact of the rain ,which would other wise brings salt to the surfave if on unprotected land

Mulch also prevents the soil from drying out because of the sun and,

WATERHARVESTING

the natural way of nature is to evaporate moisture for clouds and this gets blown to places with less water any way ,what obstruct the clouds from getting to deserts ,tend to be mountains that are in the way,

but generally speaking ,the normal weather patterns spread rain evenly over the planet to balance out the temperatures and humidity.

As far as catching rain is concerned ,we do this all the time ,and have done so already since Babylonian times,and is a part of the more advanced Agriculture,that existed with the Egyptians,Central ,and south American indigenous peoples,and many others ,today we call this water harvesting.

In Permaculture the rule is to harvest water to the point of Zero runoff.

this means that all of the rain that falls on an area is absorbed by the terrain and not a drop leaves it.

by building dams,ponds or swales, with interconecting ditches,

if there are enough of these ;the places ,where before the rain water ran over the ground into the rivers and on to the sea ,(in a matter of hours or days),It now runs into absorbant dams or swales and saturates the ground and eventually reaches subteranean water deposits ,taking many months to do so.

Or it fills up ponds that can be used for Aquaculture.

And so a convex situation that repels water is transformed in a concave ,absorbant one and turning the area in to a sponge.

in Spain and Portugal ,which still display many examples of the conquering Moorish influence,One can find many remnants of Waterharvesting,such as aquaducts and tanks underneath the patios ,which collect the rain water from the roofs ,to be used in dryer times.

in Arabia ,on a large scale ,land has been shaped to catch and lead,rain water into sandy areas or to agricultural lands.sand is almost as good as dams because it absorbs water and holds it.

to find out more about Water harvesting I recomend:

the designers manual by Bil Mollison,which cost about 40 dollars.

and is the best all round book you can get.(tagiari publishing, [e-mail])

some other writers that are on the internet are

david Holmgren

Larry Santoyo

Kirk Hanson

Masanobu Fukuaka has written ,

One-Straw Revolution

The Road Back to Nature

The Natural Way of Farming

http://www.context.org/iclib/ic14/fukuok...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/masanobu_fu...

Simon Henderson

and Bill Molisson.

a representitive of the concept in USA is

Dan Hemenway at [e-mail]

[e-mail]

http://barkingfrogspc.tripod.com/frames....

http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalo... Source(s) I am a permaculture consultant for the department of Ecology for the regional government of Guerrero in Mexico

http://spaces.msn.com/byderule

Answer 4

i do not no maybe becuase they can not aford it

Answer 5

I really wish people would stop the inane suggestions.  Personal water use in the home is not a problem causing water shortages.

Saving 1 gallon a day by such means does nothing-when you waste 100 gallons watering a lawn of grass that has no business being there because its not native to the region and can't survive without someone to babysit it.

Answer 6

Bricks were common in toilets here in California in the 1980's when there was a bad drought and water rationing was mandatory. Around that time laws were passed that mandated low flush toilets here. The old style toilet used about 2 1/2 gallons of water to flush. The newer toilets are not allowed to use any more than 1 1/2 gallons. There are still a lot of older toilets here though and many of them still have their bricks.

A brick would not be a good idea for a new low flush toilet though because they can just barely get the job done now if you know what I mean ;). If you cut down the water even more then you might start having a lot of floods, which I can tell you from experience is not much fun. I don't know if low flush toilets are used much in other parts of the United States.

That's the toilet news from California. ;)