American Standards...for Americans?

Okay...with the size (and assuming excretia of) Americans becoming larger & larger, I have to wonder what the heck American Standard is designing their toilets for. I just bought a new house which came with 2 American Standard toilets, one round, one elongated, and both of these toilets would choke on the deposits left by a chihuahua! I've only used these toilets twice for #2 and BOTH of them have clogged on it, and I'm a rather small person, and it wasn't like I was leaving any record-breaking poo either. The round American Standard toilet has a trapway that's less than 2" in diameter, and that's at the "deepest" part of it. It's narrower/shallower at most of the other parts. It does move pee quite easily, but so does a funnel and a garden hose.

Are there any real performance enhancements that can be done with these toilets, or do they just need to be ripped out & replaced with Totos? I've had Toto Pacificas at my other house for 6 years and never used a plunger on them, then come to this place and have had to use the plunger (and 15+ gallons) in a period of 2 days.

Are the pressure assist/vacuum toilets up to snuff yet? Been a long time since I've researched toilets, but I've heard more than one horrific flushmate failure flooding story. I'm still heavily leaning towards the Toto gravitys though... never had a single ounce of trouble with them, even after the hurricanes with minimal water pressure.

Personally, I'd prefer to avoid the pressure assisted toilets noise and catastrophic failure modes. When they work, they're fine, but the seals have to work for it to flush. A gravity flush toilet has basically only the flapper valve in the way of the flush, and the filler can usually be replaced easily and cheaply from almost any home center or hardware store. A leaky flapper valve usually gives some warning it is failing, but basically continues to work for awhile, giving you time to replace it at your leisure. Try that with a pressure assisted toilet! When it fails, it won't flush.

Kohler's original "Pressure Clean" tanks caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people so they took them off the market and went with Flushmate systems.

Flushmate did have some bonding-seam issues with a limited production run when they first moved away from the mini beer keg style into the all plastic units. Details regarding the specific failure mode and the affected product are posted on the productv advisory page at Flushmate.com.

According to Flushmate's warranty documentation, the ten year warranty is on replacement components; the pressure tank itself has a lifetime warranty which would seem to indicate a high level of confidence in the reliability of the product.

While they're a little more complex than archaic chain & flapper configurations, Flushmate problems are easily identified, parts are free (under warranty), and even in a worst case scenario, any pressure-assist toilet can be "bucket-flushed" just like a gravity toilet.

Yeah, they seem to be a little loud at times but to some, it's the sound of performance. Kinda like a Harley, eh?

We design Kohler wellworth elongated comfort height into all of our commercial buildings where we use tank toilets. I have 5 in my home and am still amazed at what they suck down. I have 4 kids and no plungers...