TechStuff Gets Flushed

How do toilets work? What's the secret behind using a Japanese toilet? And can you enter a toilet race? Josh Clark joins the show.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from Hey there,
and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Sickland and joining
me in the studio, a true celebrity man among men.
Josh Clark stuff, you should know. I want to apologize

(00:26):
in advance. I'm not feeling very charming today. It's okay, Josh,
It's all right. I mean because Josh at A three
is like normal human, like an eight point oh go on.
That was nice. I gave Josh, of course, the opportunity
to pick a topic for, you know, something that we
could cover here on tech Stuff, and we were just

(00:47):
kind of bandying about ideas and you actually keep up
with one of the most basic pieces of technology that
we're all familiar with, we've all used, but I have
somehow never covered it in the near seven hundred episodes
of Tech Stuff. I'll bet you've covered them before. Oh yeah,
just not on the show. Uh six episodes. This is

(01:09):
episode I feel very honored to be on this one.
So yeah, congratulations, thank you, thank you. Yeah. So we
are talking a mount toilets today. Yeah, it's gonna be uh,
this episode is going to be flush with puns. Man,
I can't take this alright, and I know it's bad already, right,

(01:30):
so before I really get into that, you know, there
will obviously be some levity in this, but this is
actually a very serious topic. And to kind of illustrate that,
I wanted to mention something else. Now this is this
is half a year away from us, but November nineteen
is World Toilet Day, which at first sounds kind of comedic, right,

(01:50):
I think it's hilarious. It sounds funny. It's it's an
event hosted by the World Toilet Organization. Still sounds at
first when you think about it, because I mean, toilet
humor has become like a real it's a real industry
into itself. But this is not about humor. It's actually
the purpose of the day, and the purpose of the
organization is to help provide support for getting proper sanitation

(02:13):
to the world's population. According to that organization, of the
world's population still practices open defecation. That's a billion people.
I mean, I knew a lot of people, did I
didn't realize it was that high a percentage. Now I
saw a figure back in I think two thousand nine
that was two point five billion people. So clearly we've

(02:36):
made some great strides in in raising sanitation levels, but
there's still so much work to be done. And I
mean this is obviously something that we have to be
concerned with because it can lead to you know, pandemics
or at least a really bad outbreak of disease, not
to mention just unpleasant living condition. Well, you know what's

(02:58):
funny is um. I think part of it also is
not just that people practice open defecation, but that the
a lot of them don't have access to sanitary drinking
water as a result of their of their waste disposal. UM.
But I have there are places, especially in um parts
of rural India, where open defecation is practiced where the

(03:20):
people are like you can put toilets in here all
day long, we're not going to use them because we
find open defecation as part of like wholesome country living
is the way that I've seen it put like it's
just part and parcel with being outside and you know,
watching a squirrel run past you while you're pooping, that
kind of thing, and like really taken in the whole scene.

(03:40):
It's a cultural thing at that point. Yeah, where it
goes beyond, it goes beyond, like it's it's not necessarily
just the lack of facilities. This has become a way
of life. I could understand that. I mean, I know
there was even some reluctance in Japan to go from
the UH the more trough like toilets that they used to. Yeah,

(04:04):
there's there's much smaller percentage of the toilets in Japan
are those, but they still do exist. But there was
a large UH hesitate to use the word, movement trend
to going toward more Western style toilets over the last
couple of years. I know, I'm sorry, it's gonna happen.
Chris Palette is only here in spirit, but he is here.

(04:25):
You're channeling him pretty hard. Yeah, so let's go with
a little history lesson before we get into how toilets
actually work. Now, if you're looking for the earliest evidence
of organized waste management systems, you look at Mesopotamia, which
makes sense because that's where the original civilizations were. Yeah,
it's also a great Bifo song, But this would be

(04:48):
back at the c E around approximately around that era,
when you would see these organized systems for waste management.
One thing I thought was really interesting was I watched
a documentary about a Neolithic village that was on the
Orkney Islands, uh in Scotland. Um, we call it scare Bray.

(05:12):
That's the name we've given it. Because any actual records
of this village haven't existed for more than a couple
of thousand years. This village was forgotten. No one knew
it was even there until there was a major storm
that washed away some of the land that had grown
up built up around on top of the village. Is amazing.

(05:33):
Right when it was discovered, you immediately had a and uh,
there was an expedition, let's say, to uncover the village,
but it was not led by anyone who's ever been
actually identified. In other words, it was treasure hunters. I
didn't probably didn't find anything really of value there. There
was certainly no you know, hordes of gold and diamonds

(05:54):
and jewels there. Uh. And it wouldn't be until the
nineteen thirties that a more or an eye archaeological dig
would take place. And after that there was another storm
and they had to actually shore up the area to
protect it as an archaeological site. And what they found
was that this tiny village, which dates to around three
thousand BC, in Scotland had these homes that were very sophisticated.

(06:19):
You would walk in there'd be a large bed on
the right hand side, a smaller bed on the left,
which mirrors regular practices of the time where the husband
and wife. The husband would have the larger of two beds.
They had a fire pit hearth, but they also had
a essentially a toilet. They had a stone cabinet with

(06:45):
a hole cut so that you could sit down on it,
with channels that lead out to the ocean, and ocean
water with the tides would actually flush this. So these
were flushing toilets. They weren't manual flush title flush, so
you had to wait, hey it's still flushed. Yeah, that's
the important point in this took the waste away, right Yeah. Yeah,

(07:07):
so all the way back to three thousand BC. Uh,
the actual the whole area of scare breaks fascinating, So
definitely look into that a get a chance. I mean,
I've seen him before. I've seen just the settlement pictures
of the settlement. It is pretty advanced. You don't think
of the Orkney Islands and three thousand b C. Is

(07:27):
you know, the seed of civilization technology. But yeah, they
had something going on. It's pretty surprising, yeah, because I mean,
you know, when I think of of society civilization in
the British Islands, I'm thinking closer to the Roman times.
But it's pretty amazing how sophisticated was even back then. Uh.

(07:49):
Ancient Greeks also they used sewage systems to channel waste
away from living quarters. The Romans went even further. They
would have these, especially if you were a very wealthy
or powerful Roman, you might have a pretty styling you know, bathroom,
heated seats, heated marble seats, um. And it maybe private

(08:14):
from what I understood, but for the most part, public
bathrooms really took the public thing to the nth degree,
where it was just like basically a long bench with
different cutouts, you know, space not very far apart frankly, um,
and you'd have maybe eight or ten, maybe fifteen. I

(08:35):
saw there was a public restroom in Syria UM that
I think was contemporaneous to to Greece UM that sat
like eighty and there's no partitions, there's no nothing, And
it seemed to be um kind of a social endeavor
where like you just sit there and chat with somebody
while you're pooping. Yeah, it's kind of funny to think

(08:55):
about how it was this communal social activity, or at
least it wasn't separated from any of the communal and
social activities, whereas today we have all these unspoken rules
of of you know, no talking in the bathroom, you
keep your dirty behavior to yourself. Yeah, I don't know
if you've ever seen it. There's actually if I'm a

(09:16):
Shinama cartoon using them. I think it's the sims where
it's to illustrate the rules in the men's restroom, and
rule number one is if there's a line of urinals,
you take one on either end. It doesn't matter which end,
just it has to be on the end the next
person and has to take the one on the furthest end.

(09:36):
And then as long as there's at least one empty
one separating you and the next person, you can take one.
But if there isn't, you gotta leave. Like like there's
it was this crazy series of but it was a
series of rules where and then the comedy came from
the fact that you're like, this is kind of how
guys behave in the bathroom. For me, it's the cardinal
rule is if there's two two stalls, um and the

(10:00):
doors shut on one then both are occupied by by default.
That must make it difficult here in this office because
the bathrooms go uh floor to ceiling with the doors
and they're shut all the time. So that's that's different
like that these bathrooms are prime real estate in my opinion.
But if you remember in the last place where House

(10:21):
the First was headquartered, it was you know, just a
partition and you can see feet and everything. And it's
that's just to me, like we we really have advanced
to the point where you know, it is a private
act and um, it's not to be shared. It's not public.
We're not in ancient Greece any longer. Um. And so

(10:41):
if somebody's in install, you don't sit down next to him.
I just I really feel strongly about that. I can understand.
And it's interesting because when we get into advanced toilets
like the Japanese toilets, they take that to the next
level to create another another uh level of privacy for that. Yeah,

(11:02):
it's pretty neat. Like you swipe your hand in front
of a sensor and it takes you to the seventh dimension,
completely out of reach of anybody. Here, it's you and
Buckeru Banza and that's it. Yeah, I think he is,
or the tenth. It's one of those. Yeah. So one
of the other things we can talk about before we

(11:22):
move into the earliest flush toilet is that when you're
looking at say Europe in the Middle Ages, all the
way up into the Renaissance. Uh, you're talking about especially like,
you know, think about castles frequently. I do, I really
do frequently think about castles. Um. Their facilities were pretty primitive.

(11:44):
It was essentially a hole cut into the you know,
like a like a stone seat sometimes with a wooden
panel on top of it. Uh. That then had a
channel that that slanted away from the wall, and you're
waste would drop down either into a cesspit, a moat, moat,

(12:04):
sometimes just the ground. On the invading armies, that is
also a possibility. And these were called garter robes. And
they were also closets. They weren't just bathrooms, they were closets.
He would hang your clothing. Why because the ammonia from
your urine would kill fleas. Oh wow, that is very

(12:25):
surprisingly clever. It's not scar a break clever, but it's
up there. So if you're wondering when the first flush
toilet comes along. It's actually a lot earlier than I
had anticipated. It's weird. I don't know how I never
came across this fact before. And it's one that, by
the way, a lot of people in our office. No,

(12:45):
it comes from fift nineties six John Harrington. Yes, he
was a cousin. I think of um Elizabeth the first Yeah,
he was her godson. Okay, that's what it was. And
he designed this flushing toilet or prototype of a flushing
toilet for her. Yeah, and she probably didn't use it
very much. She didn't admit to it. She was a

(13:07):
queen and technically, when you're queen you can pretty much
poop wherever you like. Someone's going to take care of it.
But he called it the ajax. No, here's the thing.
John Harrington was a rake. Yeah, he was like, you know,
kind of like he was known for passing around lewd

(13:27):
poetry to the ladies of the court. He loved too.
He was very clever and he loved being clever and
so lewd poetry. Flushing toilets, well, he called it the
ajax as a pun. It's a pun on the term
Jake's which is a euphemism for toilet. It's like the John.

(13:51):
It's Jake's, So a Jax is a pun on Jake's.
And it had a pan into which one would do
one's business and assist turn that you could pump water
up into, and then a handle and when you pulled
the handle, it opened up a valve that allowed the
water from the cistern to come down and wash away
what was in the pan down through a channel that

(14:14):
would go out to assess pool onto an invading army
or onto an invading army, as the case may be.
As far as I know, he only built two. I
think he built one for the queen and one for himself.
Uh So it was an interesting idea, did not catch
on at the time. Uh it really just showed his
inventiveness to to look at the next approach to the

(14:36):
flushing toilet. You have to go ahead by almost two
years Alexander Cummings exactly, and he he invented something that
ended up being very important for the flushing toilet, the
s trap. Yeah, so much so that it's still basically
the design of toilets today. Yeah. Now, this is the

(14:59):
pipes that you see that lead out from your toilet,
and it's called an S trap because it's in that
S shape, right, yeah, or some people consider it an
upside down you or something like that. It all depends
on one how much of it you can see and
to exactly what implementation it is. But yeah, the U
trap is another way of looking at an upside on you.
Uh So the important thing about this was that it

(15:20):
would allow uh it would well trap water once it
had gone down the pipe from coming back up, and
it would also thus trap the smell, yes, which is
very important with sewers, because if you're taking a piece
of technology and connecting it to an open sewer, yeah,
the smell is gonna be something. Yeah, it's gonna be

(15:43):
how to take care of that? And he did with
the S trap, Yeah, And it was really a brilliant ideas,
so much so strickling that like three two years later,
two fifty years later, Um, we're still using this guy's designing.
It is not been improved upon in two d and
fifty years right there. There are a couple of other

(16:07):
variations on it, but it has the basic design is
still what we rely upon because it works, has no
moving parts for just that that pipe, so it can't
break down in that sense I could still get clogged.
Maybe we'll talk a bit about clogs later. Yeah, well,
you know you gotta talk about it. I didn't. I
did not know we were going to talk about clogs. Well,

(16:27):
I apologize. If you want, you can check out for
that part of the ill go to my happy place.
That's good. Yeah, we'll just watch you kind of stare
space um. But it also he also invented a sliding
valve between the bowl and the trap, which allowed some
water to stay in the bowl after you flushed, so
that it could hold on to the waist for the

(16:49):
next time. And so you didn't just have just an
empty bowl of waste and then put water into it.
It was you know, it actually improved the warm It's
quite a bit. And you had a lot of other
inventors who followed, like Samuel Prosser, Joseph Brama, Thomas Twyford.
They all made improvements to the basic design of the toilet,

(17:09):
but not a Mr. Crapper. You know, I was gonna
save that. But yeah, let's talk about Thomas Crapper here
for a second. But before we get into that, let's
take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so
you may have heard the somewhat apocryphal tale that the
toilet was invented by a man named Thomas Crapper. Enough, yeah,

(17:32):
one of those ha ha, Isn't it ironic? Don't you
think Alanis morrisse at moments? You know it might be.
It's like it's like rain on your wedding day. It's
like Thomas Crapper making a toilet, and I'm pretty sure
that's the way it goes. Um. Thomas Crapper, as far
as we can tell, was actually a person. There are

(17:53):
records of a Thomas Crapper Whold who held patents in
the nineteenth century and their plumbing patents, and some of
them fact involved improvements to the water closet or toilet.
But he didn't invent it um, and he may not
have had that big of an impact overall on the
toilet evolution. It's just one of those facts that kind

(18:16):
of got passed around, as you know, or one of
those those tidbits agains passed around. The total truth. Plus
he pronounced his name, it's crepe Um. Yeah, it was.
It's one of those things where I actually looked into
it too, because I was like, well, I've always heard
that as well. And I'm curious where that came out. Well,

(18:36):
yeah it is. It's got it has traction because it's
just so delightful. Yeah yeah. Uh. Going back to mid
eighty eight in the UK, that's when they passed the
Public Health Act, which stated that all new houses in
the UK had to be built with a toilet. Very smart. Yeah,
it's a great way of preserving your your various towns

(18:59):
and ease from becoming overrun with filth. Right. But and
this is still um in play today. There's a certain
psychology around defecation, urination, expelling waste, right, and it can
swing wildly from era to era. But at that time,
in the mid nineteenth century, forcing the public to install

(19:23):
indoor plumbing wasn't like the public was saying, yes, thank
you government, we've been waiting to have to do this.
It was more like, um, wait, you want us to
put a toilet where next to the kitchen? What is
wrong with you? No, that's disgusting. We want to put
this over in the back garden where you know, chimberpot.

(19:45):
It's mobile that we can put wherever and get rid
of immediately, Like this is gross, Like you want us
to hook it up to the sewer. What's wrong with you?
So there was like a certain um amount of resistance
to adopting this, whereas now, um, you know, it's yeah,
you want that, you want indoor plumbing, and it's based
on the cultural attitudes towards expelling waste that that vary

(20:09):
from time to time. Yeah, it's it's it's hard. I mean,
it's very easy for us to start looking at everything
from our current perspective, right, It's very difficult to take
ourselves out of that. But you do have to do
that when you start talking about subjects like this, because
it was a different world. I mean, people thought differently
and for for reasons that you can kind of understand
when you think about it. And you know, if you think, well,

(20:32):
now I've got a thing that dumps waste into a sewer,
but I don't want any of that smell or nastiness
or anything to get into my home. When before I
had a portable thing, I could actually take it outside
and dump it in a cess pool or whatever. It
wasn't there wasn't a big change. Plus plus, it's like
that's my poop. Yeah it's poop, but it's I know

(20:55):
where that poop came from. Whereas with the sewer, everybody
else's poop has the opportunity come into your house. Yeah,
which you don't know, you didn't want. Another interesting point
is I've been talking exclusively about people inventors and engineers
in the UK. Now, when settlers came over to America,

(21:16):
they did not come over with plans for toilets, and
so the toilet actually had a parallel evolution in the
UK and in the United States in isolation basically a
little bit, yes, with with a little bit. I mean,
they obviously had some common history there, but it was
largely engineers in the US who created very similar style toilets.

(21:38):
In some cases, they were toilets that were lagging behind
the technology by about twenty years compared to the UK.
But you had folks like James T. Henry and William
Campbell who were awarded a U S patent for a
water closet toilet um. And that's where we really see
it moving forward from that point on and to the
point where the essentially merged like the the You know

(22:01):
that we saw the United States adopt things like the
s trap, making the toilets more useful. Do you know
when toilet paper was invented. Toilet paper was invented in
ninety eight. I predate ninety and I distinctly remember toilet paper.

(22:23):
You were off by almost a hundred years when toilet
paper was invented, didn't They used to use a series
robot catalog corn Cob. There's actually some poetry that I've
read where there's a discussion a giant. I forget what
poem it is, but there's a giant talking about all

(22:45):
the different things he has used to clean himself after
after evacuation, including I think he determined that the most
comfortable was the neck of a goose. Yeah, I can
tell you not not for the goose, but yeah, uh so. Yeah.
The toilet paper was in but not marketed heavily until

(23:07):
nineteen two, so for more than a decade. Yeah, it
just kind of I was like, well, I mean, why
we got the series robot catalog Cobs? How do you
look around your house and say, oh, yeah, corn Cobs,
that's that's a good idea idea. Yeah, sure it's got traction,
but pay a price for that track. Yeah, I I

(23:28):
hesitate to hazard a guess. To be honest, I go idea,
I'll try to have some geese at home. All right, okay, well,
i'd like to apologize on behalf of Josh's I'd like
to send to you my apologies for giving him the idea.
Let's talk about how a toilet actually works. Okay, alright,

(23:50):
So you got your basic parts of the toilet. You've
got the tank, You've got the bowl in which you
do your business, and then you have the lifen the
s trap area that where the waist goes once you flush,
which is technically part of the bowl. Yeah. Yeah, it's
just it's easier to talk about it as separate parts.
But yes, you aren't correct. So inside the tank you

(24:14):
have the flush valve. This is the valve that allows
water to flow out of the tank and into the bowl. Yes.
So when you press down the handle, yeah, there's that
handle is connected by chain to that flush valve. That's
the thing that lifts up and lets the water from
the tank into the bowl. Yeah. And once the water
is flowing down, like for most toilets, you no longer

(24:34):
have to hold the handle down because just the water itself.
Once the valve is an open position, it will remain
open until the water level is low enough for it
to close. Again. Yeah, they make it so it's light
enough to float. Yeah, right, because it's overcome suction things
to the handle um and it's floating there, and then
as the water drains out, its ability to float stop,

(24:54):
so it falls back into place ideally ideally. Yeah. There
are times obviously, if you have issues where maybe there's
a hinge that's a little too tight, or there's something
off with the seila of on the the valve, that
you may have to have that replaced, because otherwise water
just continuously flows into the bowl and it never accumulates

(25:15):
in the tank. I found that most of the time
it's because there's a little bit of extra chain that's
keeping the flush valve from sitting in suction from from uh.
You you also have a second valve inside the tank,
the filler valve. The filler valve is what allows water
to go into the tank as well as into the

(25:36):
bowl after a flush, so uh, it needs to it
refills the tank after you flushed it. So you flushed
the tank, the water from the filler valve will start
to pour into the tank to refill it. Once that
that flush valve has shut uh, some of that water
also will go into the bowl. To bring the level
back up to the proper height, and then you've got

(26:00):
a filler float. This is a pretty us. Yeah, this
is a brilliant idea. The idea is that the filler
float will rise to a certain level within the tank,
and once it's at the proper level, it will activate
a switch then turns off the filler valve. So so
that way you no longer have water running in your tank.
If you ever hear water continuously running in your tank,

(26:21):
it means that float is not activating the switch properly,
and you may need to take the lid off and
see what's going on with that float. Maybe it's stuck
on something, or it's you know, it's it's the switch
might be burnt out, in which case you would need
to have that switch replaced. But that's what's causing that
or this Again, the flush valve could be not seated

(26:42):
popular in waters just rushing out. So that's true. Filler
valve balloon isn't getting to that level where it's supposed
to where it can trip the filler valve from turning
off again, right exactly. Yeah, that could be another another
cause for it. But you don't have to fear because
even if the water is running, You're toilet will very
likely not overflow because it's been designed so that as

(27:03):
the tank fills, even if it keeps filling and filling
and filling, it's going to the overflow um tube, I guess,
is going to direct that into the bowl. Right, So
any water that comes above the height of the overflow
tube will just flow down the tube. The tube leads
to the bowl, and water will flow into the bowl.

(27:23):
And then you think, wait, wait, wait that cause it
the flush. Yes, surely somewhere this thing's got to flood.
What's the deal? Why doesn't it all right? That's when
we get into the siphon where my head pops. Yeah,
this is the siphon gets a little for those who
those of us who are many years away from basic physics,
the scipen gets confusing. So the siphon is designed so

(27:46):
this is that that sort of upside down you or
the s shaped pipe the top of that upside down
you the peak there that's at the same level as
what the toilet bowl, the level watering your toilet bowl
will be. Now, if you were to pour more water
into the toilet bowl, because there's there's just this open
area between the siphon and the bowl. You know, putting

(28:09):
more water in makes the water level rise on both sides, right,
But if you're only putting in a little bit of water,
that water will just rise up above the level of
the bend and flow down the other side of the bend. Yeah.
And and I should I want to point out that, um,
this is your explanation is spot on, but would be

(28:30):
exponentially easier if somebody were looking at a cross section
of a toilet flushing s valve right exactly. Yeah, yeah,
it would really drive at home, Yeah, because it's it's
this is me trying to paint a picture of a
toilet flush in words, yea, with physics. Yeah, so you've
got you've got this this level here, and as long
as the water is just flowing gently so for in

(28:51):
other words, like a steady stream from the overflow too,
then it's just going to gradually rise up til it
hits above that you bend, and then flow down the
other side. And that's all that happens, because it's not
it's not creating the siphon effect yet. Yes, So the
water is in that in that s trap and in
your toilet bowl and on the other side of the

(29:14):
siphon in the tube that leads down to the sewer,
that that air is imbalanced with the air that's in
the toilet bowl. Right, So you basically have air pressure
balancing your water and keeping it in place. Yep, yep.
And it's only if you were to fill that siphon
that s trap with water completely that that then things

(29:35):
get out of balance. And here's where the siphon affect
comes into play. So how does a siphon work? Alright?
First of all, siphons a bent tube used to move
a liquid from a high evolution elevation rather over an
obstruction and to a lower elevation. Done and done right.
You could do this very easily by taking two cups,

(29:57):
filling one cup with water, putting a couple of books
down on a table. So you put the cupful of
water on top of one of the set of books.
Get a tube, like a flexible tube of some sort,
submerge it in the water so that the tube fills
with water. Put your thumb over one end of it,
move it over to the other cup, which is on
the surface of the table. Yeah, make sure that the

(30:20):
make sure that the end of the tube that you're
holding ends up being lower than the level of water
in the cup. Let go. Water will start to flow
from the cup that's above to the cup that's blow
even though the tube will arc so the water is
technically flowing uphill. Yeah, which is pretty neat. Yeah. As
long as the lower end of the tube going into

(30:41):
the lower elevation glass um, as long as that is
exposed to air, and as long as the end of
the tube that's in the higher glass is under water,
the air pressure in the tube is overcome and the
suction effect takes place right well kind of except the
other the tube in the lower elevation does not have

(31:02):
to be above water can be. It can actually be
completely submerged as well. As long what will happen is
if the two water levels reach the same height, uh
and I mean same height relative to the table, then
pressure is equalized and everything will everything is an equilibrium
and water will stop to float. It's but as long

(31:23):
as the elevated cup has a higher water level, water
will continue to flow through that siphon. And the reason
there are two reasons really. One is that water inside
a chamber like that acts like a chain. It pulls
itself along The other reason is that you have I

(31:43):
think of the tube as an arc. Well, the tube
that leads down to the lower elevation is longer. That
side is longer than the side that's in the higher elevation,
So the water that's in that part is heavier, and
that weight is what's pulling water are along inside the
tube and it's until until you hit equilibrium. So for

(32:04):
a toilet to get it back to to the toilet example,
and why it's important when you flush that water from
the tank rushes into the bowl and it does so
fast enough to completely fill the pipe that s trap.
This activates the siphon effect, and the water pulls the
waist and also all the rest of the water along

(32:26):
with it through that s trap until it gets to
a point where it has exhausted the amount of water
that the tank has put into the bowl. And then
air is introduced. And once air is introduced, the siphon
effect stops right. So with a siphon, not only is
the water flowing out of the bowl because there's so
much water, what about two or so gallons introduced to

(32:48):
your toilet bowl in about three seconds that that siphon
effect is produced in the s trap. Right, Not only
is that water flowing, it produces a type of suction,
so the water in the bowl is sucked out and
down the siphon. And then, yes, like you said, once
the air is introduced, because the water and everything sucked
out of the toilet bowl, the suction effect is cut

(33:10):
off and everything goes back to the way it was
before you flush the top. Right, That's when the filler
valve can start to refill the bowl because now that
there's no longer any more suction going on, the bowl
water level can return back to what it was as well.
And keep in mind that part of the s trap
that you know you can't see because it's a solid pipe,

(33:30):
but that also ends up filling to that same height
as the water that's in the bowl. And then you're
ready to go again once the tank its bowl anyway,
once you eat some kimchi. We talked about that before
the podcast started. Um, but yeah, one other thing to
keep in mind. You might say, well, why do we
need a tank at all? Why not just have a
water pipe going directly into the toilet and then when

(33:53):
you flush, it just opens up a valve for a
certain amount of time and it closes. And the reason
is because unless you have insane water pressure in your house,
you're not putting enough water in fast enough to fill
that s trap completely to to activate the siphon effect.
It's just going to trickle out like if your tank
was overflowing exactly. So there's some buildings that I mean

(34:16):
a lot of buildings that don't have UH tanks on
their on their toilets. But that's because again, they are
directly connected to a very powerful water system, and thus
you don't need a tank because the water pressure that's
coming in is great enough to start that effect all
by itself. Yeah, or sometimes it's even more terrifying noise

(34:37):
than that. So that's your basic toilet, how your basic
toilet works. But so glad we're past the siphon effect. Yeah,
that's I feel like we just made it through the
woods together. Now now we're going to go into the bright,
gorgeous future of weird toilets. This is great. So let's
talk Japanese toilets for a second. And I'm not talking

(34:58):
about the ones, the tra off ones, which we established.
There are still some in Japan, and trough is one
way to put it. More like UH olyptical hole in
the ground is another way you could describe it as well.
On the floor. Yeah yeah, so yeah, you straddle and
then squat and then evacuate and then and then evacuate,

(35:24):
evacuate the area. Like I would just be like, I
don't know if I did it right, and run went
down the street. Um, like I can't read your language
and I'm so sorry. Just just yeah, that's kind of
how I normally react. I mean, I am I'm being
honest here, but no, the Japanese toilets, the the more
western style ones, have features. Many of them have features

(35:48):
on them that put our western toilets to shame, like
just phenomenal. So let's talk about some of the features.
That's fine toilets. Sorry, do you want? Do you have
a favorite out of all of them? The air dry
air dry, that's pretty amazing. I I'm big on the
sound masking. Yeah, they they they offer. Most Japanese toilets

(36:11):
that have all the bells and whistles offer a sound
masking feature. That's a flushing toilet. Yeah. Some of them
now have also classical music, but which makes some white noise.
I actually did a brain Stuff episode about what white
noises and how it works. So you should check for superiods.
But yeah, it's the that those are so two of

(36:34):
the very simple ones. But it also tends to have
a couple of different options for washing your nether regions
once you are finished. Yes, and depending on your gender, Um,
you should, I should say, depending on your sex, you
should be very careful what option you choose when you're
in Japan. Yeah, but they would be aimed for you know, ladies,

(36:58):
for the men folks. And then you have ear washing,
which is for you know, everyone, depending upon what activities
you got up to on that bathroom. Um, and uh, yeah,
so there's usually there's a picture of like a icon
that looks kind of like a butt with some sort
of stream of something directed at it. That would be
for washing your rear. The day usually has a icon

(37:21):
of a lady somewhere on it involved, yeah, something like
that to indicate what that was for. And uh, if
you're wondering, like, well, wait a minute, I'm this sounds
like this could be really unhygienic. The Japanese are very
concerned with cleanling, and so these are nozzles that are

(37:43):
usually hidden away from the inside of the toilet bowlts
only when you press the button that they get. There's
like essentially a door that opens in the novel can
come out, and they have nozzle sterilization technology to clean
them between uses. And so uh yeah, they usually have
buttons where you also have to like a stop button,
so if you press one of these, it essentially goes

(38:04):
until you tell it to stop. Yeah. And the person
who wrote this um this how to use a Japanese
toilet post points out that before you choose either of
these options, you want to press the stream power down
as as low as it will go to start, and
then you can adjust it upwards. Um. Here she says

(38:25):
that at the normal setting is equivalent to about a
water pick, which on your on your on your junk.
That's not good, that's really, that's terrible. It might come
as a big surprise for that to to hit certain
sins of variation. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's setting it
low and does some of them also have controls for

(38:46):
the temperature of the water, not to mention the temperature
of the seat. Uh. Some also, like you mentioned, have
the air drying so that after you have had your
rear washed, air dry it, which I mean like yes,
that's cool. There's like the days and rear washing all
that stuff, but you're not gonna stand up right afterwards
and just be wet. You have to have the air dryer.

(39:07):
That's why. I mean, that's the best part. I agree,
I agree. I mean, if if you're going to have
these other features, you really knew do need the air
dryer or else you're just like, well, I guess I'll
be sitting here for a couple more minutes before I
dare move. Another interesting thing to me about the Japanese culture. Um,
and it makes perfect sense, I totally understand it. But
you know, in Japan, shoes are really considered to be

(39:30):
quite dirty. That's one of the dirtiest pieces of clothing
that people have. So it's customary, of course to take
your shoes off and slip into house slippers before moving
going into a house. Absolutely, bathrooms have their own sets
of slippers, and it is quite a faux pod to
mix the two together. Oh yeah, if you were to
step out of the bathroom wearing bathroom slippers, you would

(39:51):
shock people, especially if you did like a little dance
like I'm American. Oh yeah, I don't do that. Come on,
and you can You can usually tell the bathroom slip
first um from they they have almost like a bit
of a waterproof look to them. Usually they're a little
shinier they're made of they're not like um cloth. Usually
there you could tell just using your your noodle. Compared

(40:15):
to house slippers, you'd be like, these are probably the
bathroom slipper toilet slippers. Or they might be brightly colored
and you think no one would ever wear these anywhere else.
Or maybe they have a poop emosey on them. It
could be those are popular. Another feature you might find
on the toilets as a deodo riser button. Yeah, also

(40:35):
kind of interesting. So I found a toilet if I
may give a plug, even though I should say I
have no financial interest whatsoever in the Cohler company, but
I have become a fan of their new me Uh toilet.
I can't even begin to describe it. It's just so
neat as far as the design goes. UM. Just go
to just look for the new me toilet and U

(40:58):
M I UM. But one of the things they have
is a deodorizer. It's like, um, basically a little vent
where the the the odor is sucked in and run
through the charcoal filter nice. Yeah, yeah, I mean I
when I read about the Japanese toilets, obviously there's some
some humor that comes in that just from the cultural

(41:20):
differences things like that, which can seem very funny. But
at the same time, I am incredibly envious. I would
love to have a lot of these features built into
American toilets. Uh. There there are some moves to improve
toilet technology in various ways. Some of it is a
conservation trying to find low flush toilets that'll still activate

(41:40):
the siphoning uh technique, but not use as much water,
and a go very important. Did you see the no
mixed toilet I did. Yeah, the the one that has
meant it has kind of like a ledge and and
filter for urine and then behind that would be where Yeah,

(42:02):
it's it's meant so that when you when you just
have to urinate, you don't have to flush the toilet. Yeah,
it doesn't flush at all, and as a matter of fact,
it collects the urine um. And one of the reasons
why the company that originally started making no mixed toilet
stop making them is because well, number one, they didn't
catch on very well. There's a lot of hesitancy UM.

(42:24):
But the another reason is they they didn't quite have
the infrastructure to collect the urine separately and send it off.
Although environmentally speaking, it makes a lot of sense to
separate urine from feces, especially UH and not flush urine,
because when you flush urine, you're introducing a lot of

(42:45):
other stuff besides just the urine. Like if you are
on UM pharmaceuticals, those a lot of that stuff is
expelled and metabolized and expelled in your urine and it
gets introduced into wetland areas and things like that, and
all of a sudden you have frogs they're like have
roid rage or something you know, or that like a

(43:07):
rubbing themselves against walls because you took too much ecstasy
the night before. That's fair, yeah, I mean, well, yeah,
anything you're taking into yours, anything you're gonna excrete spen
filtered through your kidneys, you're going to have some some
other elements in there too consumed. But so the the
no mixed toilet collects this urine and sends it off

(43:27):
for separate recycling. And then if you're really hardcore, you
know granola or your city is, then maybe it gets
recycled into water, and you drink that and pee it
out again and again. It becomes a closed loop. Yeah,
and we've talked about that on Forward Thinking. We talked
about that with systems aboard UM the International Space Station

(43:48):
ways of water reclamation. So that I mean, obviously, if
you are in an area where you get very little
water or it's very difficult to ship water to you,
you have to make the best use of all the
resources you have. Uh, there's some other things we can
talk about as far as toilet advances, smart toilets. So
sensor technology has gotten to the point now where it's

(44:10):
it's very inexpensive, it's it's versatile, waterproof. It's entirely possible
to design sensors that could uh measure your waste and
and come up with actual information that could be relevant
to your health. So I saw some interesting examples like

(44:32):
the idea of a sensor that could be an early
pregnancy detection by detecting changing hormone levels. UM, it might
analyze your waste detective bacterial infection, so it might tell you.
It might even send you an indication saying you know,
you need to take it easy for a little while,
or maybe even you need to go see a doctor.
With the right kind of software, you and this is

(44:55):
not hard to do at all. You could even have
one that could send a notification to your doctor, or
even go further, have one that's linked to your doctor's
calendar and your calendar and even create an appointment for you.
So your toilet does all that for you. It's it's possible.
It's not something that we're necessarily seeing everywhere, but it's possible.

(45:16):
I could see some problems with this though. Well yeah,
I mean, like, first of all, there's a real hesitancy
by people too, especially put their medical records out there,
their health data. UM. I feel like those as as
the advantages or the benefits of allowing the Internet of

(45:37):
things or that that level of tech into our lives,
especially with health um, become obvious to more people. The
more just relaxed everybody's going to become. I mean think
about it, five ten years ago, say five, putting your
credit card into a website to order something was still
like really sketch you to a lot of people, and

(46:00):
out enough people have done it that it's just it's
just whatever, that's the norm. Yeah, right, And I think health,
our health information is going to go that same way.
I can see that. The only thing I see as
uh possible, well not the only thing, but one of
the things I see is an impediment to this is

(46:21):
how do you identify the person who is using the
toilet at any given situations. So, for example, Josh, let's
say I have you over and you need to use
my restroom, and unbeknownst to me, you are carrying around
a really awful bacterial infection that's poised to wreak havoc
in your system. And so as you use my restroom

(46:42):
and you flushed the toilet, it analyzes it and suddenly
thinks that Jonathan has gotten really sick. Next thing I know,
my doctor is calling me. Now I know about your
health condition. Yeah, that's that's a very good point. Um.
I would guess then, if if toilets are analyzing us
our health personally, then a toilet itself will become a

(47:03):
much more personal thing. So maybe I have a dumb
toilet as my guest toilet, and then my smart toilet
is the only one that's in my master bathroom. Or
here's another thing, Stop me if I sound crazy, stop
You've got a biometric authentication system for your toilet where

(47:26):
you have to scan like a thumb print or a
retinal scan to identify you before using it. Thus you
can't possibly confuse too people and you cannot flush until
you have identified yourself. That's a good one, then, know
that's a I mean, it makes sense. My my wife
and I have um an aria uh scale Oh yeah right,

(47:50):
it's like fitbit um and it can easily tell us apart.
But because I mean it just determines like wait and
all that stuff. Um, so it can it can easily
tell us are But you know, maybe the seat does
detect by weight or there is some other detail about
you that just by sitting on the toilet, uh, it
says this is Jonathan or this is not This is

(48:11):
someone who's broken into Jonathan's house to use this toilet.
Were using your bathroom? Should I lock the door? Yes?
And turn on bathroom webcam? Right? Yeah, there you go.
And also the you know deoduriz, let's just go ahead
and be safe. So there are other potential dangers, and

(48:32):
one of those is hacking. So there's already a story
about a smart toilet hacking uh situation, which happened back
in two thousand thirteen, Ours Technica reported that, according to
security firm trust Wave, the Enacts Status automatic toilet had
a Bluetooth security vulnerability, and it was a doozy so
to speak. So the you know, when you pair to

(48:55):
bluetooth capable technologies together, you generally have some sort of
code that you have to put in in order to
pair them. Not always, but a lot of them do.
And the problem was they had hardwired the same master
code in all of these toilets, and it was just
zero zero zero zero. So any app for this toilet

(49:19):
compare with any toilet just from being in the same area. Right,
So if you are within bluetooth distance, which is pretty decent,
I mean, you don't it's not that far, but it's
not you know, it's it's not like you could do
it from two fifty feet away necessarily, But if you're
close enough, like within the building or on the on

(49:39):
the side of it or whatever, you can totally pair
your phone with a toilet inside and essentially hijack someone's toilet,
which you know, you might think, well, why could you do? Well,
this thing had the ability to open and close via
a command on your phone, so that way you didn't
have to touch the toilet seat. It also allows you
to control things like the bidet or the rear washing

(50:00):
uh nozzles, so you could you could turn it on,
like you could turn on one of those nozzles when
no one's on the toilet and start flooding their bathroom.
Or you could do it when you realize someone's just
got into the bathroom and they haven't even really started yet.
You could do it then and just laugh at the
hilarious or close the toilet seat while they're mid you

(50:22):
know activity. You know, you know it's ironic about using
an app on your phone to open and close the
toilet seat. Would it be that the phone surfaces the
dirtiest surface to come in contact with toilet? Yeah, I
thought that might be where you were going with that. Yeah, guys,
if you didn't know, if you have smartphones, got touchscreen,

(50:43):
hits filthy, it's about the dirtiest thing you probably come
into contact within any day, including a toilet. Yeah. Yeah.
The one thing that might be uh you know, a
good competitor with that would be a keyboard. If you
use a keyboard on a daily basis, that's probably pretty
gross too. Uh Yeah. So what's in the future for

(51:03):
toilet's Probably we will see some more of these, uh,
these things that are common now in Japanese toilets kind
of filter their way through to other ones. I imagine
we'll stay see more moves to conserve water. It may
even mean that we end up moving away from the
siphon model and find a different model to deal with
waste so that it does it's not reliant upon creating

(51:26):
enough water to create this section. We'll have to wait
and see. Um, but we have to thank the brilliant
men and women who came before us forging the path
to make incredibly useful piece of technology, and also hope
that we can continue to strive to get it to

(51:48):
more people so that we can improve the quality of
life for folks who who otherwise are in pretty rough
you know, circumstances when the obviously when cultures are going
to adopt it. So, Josh, thank you so much for
joining me on the man, Thank you for having me.
This was a joy. It was fun. It was fun.

(52:10):
I'm glad we were able to talk about this in
a mature way, with only a few terrible jokes on
my end, relatively mature. We did pretty juvenile at times,
but mostly maure uh. Of course listeners. You can find
Josh at the Stuff You Should Know podcast, which is
the granddaddy of all the stuff podcasts. Fantastic. I mean

(52:34):
it's it's the oldest podcast that's still running from How
Stuff Works and is uh fantastic. It's great. And you
can also find Josh and lots and lots of video series.
One of my favorites that Don't Be Dumb series remains
way up there. I mean, it's like consistently informative and
incredibly entertaining to me that it takes a lot of

(52:56):
work to look that uncomfortable on camera. Well, it said
it is. It doesn't take much of it. I'm just myself.
I think that's just that's when I just stopped trying.
Everything else is difficult. They're nice. Well, and guys, if
you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
whether it is a type of technology, a personality, a company,

(53:16):
Maybe you have a suggestion for someone you want to
hear interviewed or be a guest host, let me know.
Send me a message that email edgrest is tech Stuff
at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a
line on Twitter. Or Facebook or Tumbler. The handle it
all three of those is tech stuff. Hs w M.
I'll talk to you against release for more on this

(53:39):
and batons of other topics. Because it has to works.
Dot com