Reply With QuoteGood choice. But why not a 1.28???Originally Posted by Viking
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I'll be purchasing a Toto UltraMax 1.6.
Good choice. But why not a 1.28???
The drain line has an eight foot run with a 1/8 inch pitch. I would prefer the greater water volumn.
Have you had problems with that drain line clogging?
If not I wouldn't worry about it. Seems to me that the extra 0.32 gallons with a 1.6 gpf toilet won't really move solids that much better- but over the life of a toilet, saving that 0.32 gallon every flush will preserve an increasingly precious commodity, water.
I could beg to differ on that with Toto toilets. Our two Drakes (1.6 GPF G-Max models) with the stock flapper were actually flushing 1.2 GPF as clocked on the water meter. This always led to complaints by me and family members about having to hold the handle down to clear the bowl thoroughly. After I replaced them both with Korky flappers set to the recommended setting for the Drake they were using the 1.6 GPF they were originally intended to! the performance being a THOROUGHLY cleared bowl ALL THE TIME no matter what was in there... I probably wouldn't want the 1.2 GPF Eco Drake based on my own experience..
I was actually referring to moving solids down the drain line, after they clear the bowl - not actual bowl cleaning. My point is that I personally doubt that there is a material difference in performance between 1.28 and 1.6 gpf toilets in "drain line carry" as I think it is called.
hope to avoid some problems with the "one-piece" model
Hi, this is my first post on this forum.
In spite of all the negative reviews, I ordered my Champion 4 one piece model last week and it should be arriving tomorrow.
I am surprised that there are so few comments, both negative and positive, from owners of the one-piece.
I understand that the two piece model opens a Pandora's box of problems due the fragile interface between the lower and upper section.
Apart from that, I imagine I will be getting the same fill valve and flush tower as everyone else and I will be anxious to see if I get stuck with the same problems caused by a leaky tower.
Stay tuned.....
Since negative comments don't deter you, would you like to buy my Yugo?
It no longer has the tower. The was changed some time ago.
Gary, I won't buy your Yugo but thanks for the offer.
One has to wonder why with bad reports first appearing in this forum as early as 2006, so many people have gone ahead just like me and bought the (2 piece) model.
By me buying the 1 piece model, I have cut my risk of problems in two.
And by the way, I have been driving Toyotas since 1993.
Why do people continue to buy not only American Standard and Kohler toilets even though they have problems? It's brand familiarization. Most of us grew up with one or the other in our homes and in those days they were quality. Now with outsourcing and mergers only the names remain. Toto, who does not engage in mass advertising, never-the-less has grown to be the largest manufacture of toilets in the world. BTW, it's well you don't want my Yugo...I don' have one. Good luck with you AS.
After 3 weeks sitting in my hallway, today I installed my new one-piece Champion 4 replacing the 30 year old 2 piece Cadet.
The Champion 4 flushes about a third of the tank and if I hold down the handle, I can increase this to about half the water in the tank, as the base of the flush tower is still a few inches above the floor of the tank.
After reading most of the details of the judgement for the Champion 4 class action suit brought against AS, I came to the conclusion that I have about a 10% of having a problem with my toilet.
As I approach the end of what has turned out to be a 475 hour long bathroom renovation, most of the major items I installed had some small hitch, for example,
1) the drain opening of the bathtub was a few degrees off plumb and the front vertical wall was a few degrees shy of 90.
2) the three-way shower valve came with a rubber o-ring sealing the upper and lower valve castings - I hate the idea of a buried seal in the wall that might some day need servicing.
3) the cast acrylic soap niche had a limited size lip which made centering and gluing to the wall opening a challenge.
4) the stainless steel machine screw to hold the handle to the shower valve was too long and required trimming, and a stainless trim plate was slightly warped.
5) the glass panel of the shower door would have been cracked had I not noticed that the badly aligned aluminum sleeve needed to be offset by a quarter inch.
6) some of the large format porcelain tiles from the same box were a 1/16" longer than others so I had to sort them into matched groups in order to get them to line up vertically on the wall.
So if the flush valve seal of my new Champion 4 should leak and I get a replacement delivered to me under the original owner 20 year warranty, then I don't imagine that will be the end of the world.
Essentially none of the new water saving toilets empty the tank when you flush...they use the additional weight from the water stored in the tank to make it flush better - the height makes it move faster. It's probably working as designed. Now, how good that design is is another question. It appears if you get one without defects, it's decent.
Jim DeBruycker
Important note - I'm not a pro
Retired Defense Industry Engineer; Schluter 2.5-day Workshop Completed 2013
Thanks for the comment.
It's amazing how little pattern there seems to have been to help explain why some customers got a defective Champion 4 toilet and others did not.
Even the person who launched the class action suit against AS had five Champion 4's in his new home, of which some worked well while others did not.
You would think that with nearly a million units sold, AS would have come up with a solution that works 999 times out of 1000.
During my recent bathroom renovation, I drained and set aside my 30 year old AS Cadet. Inside the dried out tank was a week old chlorine cleaning puck.
During six weeks of storage, the puck off gassed and created a toxic cloud within the tank that completely corroded part of the Cadet's classic fill valve. The tank walls were all yellow colored.
This unpleasant experience reminds me of how unpredictable the environment of the toilet tank can be at times.
AS warns against using in-tank cleaners and I can now appreciate why.
Having used the pucks consistently for over ten years in the Cadet without any previous problems I can appreciate the time-saving advantages of in-tank cleaners.
I have no idea if the latest generation of AS fill and flush valves would survive as well as the older generation when exposed to pucks in water.
Perhaps we need tightly machined all metal parts for tank valves and forget about rubber seals once and for all.
Beside the quality control issue, a major problem with AS is the clay they use in Mexico is too wet. This leads to slumping and other casting problems when the toilets are in the kiln to dry. Toto plants are located where the clay has the ideal moisture content and their ridged quality control catches any blemishes that occur. It is widely believed that AS sells their "blems" to discount stores at a very low price which allows the stores to exchange returns. Some of these rejects probably are not returned, so it is profitable for all concerned. This is not to say that all AS toilets are defective. Certainly many are not and perform OK. As far as the chlorine cleaning "pucks", it is a well documented fact that chlorine eat rubber parts and should not be used in any toilet tank regardless of brand. Those of use that use a chlorinated water supply experience part failures more often that those who use non chlorinated water, but not as fast as those using concentrated tablets or "pucks". Perhaps there could be a composite material used for tank parts, but it would undoubtedly increase the cost of toilets.
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