US Toilets and clogging

toilet

So I am from the UK and will be moving to the US soon.
Now, everytime I am in the US I seem to be, embarrassingly, clogging up the toilet. I honestly have no idea how.

I tried different techniques to try and make sure it doesn't clog such as the following:

1) flush after every wipe or every… "event" (if you get my drift)
2) flush right before I am about to make an "event" so with the pressure of the flush doing the sucking, it will suck away what will drop.

At some stage, I still seem to clog it but back home in the UK – no such problem.

Not only is it embarrassing especially when you are staying at a hotel but makes me wonder if the system here is different than the UK and what can be done (from my view) to improve it and avoid this embarrassment every time.

When I eventually get a house where I will be staying, what modifications can I make to ensure that this is not an often problem?

I know the question sounds stupid but… I am totally genuine on this matter.

Best Answer

The Environmental Protection Agency has standards in place for a program that is meant to help conserve water. The current standards for "performance" of new toilets in this program (pdf) are as follows:

4.0 Flush Performance Criteria 

4.1 Toilet model performance is identified as either a Pass or Fail depending upon 
whether it can successfully and completely clear all test media from the fixture in 
a single flush in at least four of five attempts. Only toilet models that Pass qualify 
for EPA’s WaterSense label. Flush performance testing shall be conducted in 
accordance with the test protocol provided in Appendix A. 

4.2 Test media consists of seven test specimens, 50 ± 4 grams each, consisting of 
soybean paste forming a ‘sausage’ approximately 4 ± 0.5 inch (100 ± 13 mm) in 
length and 1 ± 0.25 inch (25 ± 6 mm) in diameter and four loosely crumbled balls 
of toilet paper as defined in Appendix A. 

4.3 The flush performance criteria apply to single flush toilets, and to the full flush 
option of dual flush toilets. No solid waste removal requirement applies to the 
reduced flush option on dual flush toilets.

If your "media" is smaller than what's specified in 4.2, you should be fine.

When the US first started restricting the amount of water permissible per flush, the toilet manufacturers did not get the engineering right. So, if you've been using one of these first generation water conserving toilets, it could be the toilet that's the problem. The newer toilets have been engineered with larger diameter traps and coatings and what have you that make flushing "media" less of an issue.

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