Choosing toilets for septic systems

[Mike Lassiter]

Fifteen years ago when the septic system was installed the house was equipped with American Standard 5 gal. Flush toilets. I finally had the tank pumped and there was a 4in. "crust" on the top. The septic system has been trouble free in all this time. Am I better off switching to modern low flow toilets or staying with the old high volume ones?

I have a well and septic tank. Moved in here March 97 with 1000 gal septic tank and 300 feet of field lines in front yard. We don't flush the toilet every time it's used (pee'd in) although in the master bathroom I installed a new toilet that is advertised to suck 23 golf balls down when flushed. Original ones both were 1.9 gpf I think. The new toilet used a little less than that per flush and it actually flushes extremely well - compared to the original one that sometimes required flushing 2-3 times or plunging too in order to actually flush completely. After many years of that, I finally got tired of the poor flush it had and researched online to find the newer lower gpf toilets actually do work as intended. The earlier ones to my understanding mostly failed to actually provide the reduced water consumption intended due to multiple flushes often required.

I also have a front load GE washer and dryer that uses less water than the old top load models we replaced. Washer uses less water, spins faster which extracts more water from the clothes so the drying time is less. All in all using less energy and water. The skipped flushes don't sit for very long and both my wife and I just feel it is wasteful to flush a few ounces of pee down the drain with over a gallon of water every time one of us uses it. Kids gone for years, just the two of us here - when not working. During the summer when most people in "the country" can see where the field lines are in their yard by the lush green grass from the water it gets while the rest of the yard is not as green or tall after a few days since cutting it - our yard shows exactly the opposite. Our grass is often brown and even almost looks dead compared to the rest of the front yard. I attribute that to the gravel beds allowing the ground to dry out along with the little water usage we use. Our water filter shows our average daily usage for 2 people to be 35 gpd. It has been in place for over a decade now and I guess this is a lifetime average of our daily water usage.

The impact of the reduced water usage really applies to those on "city sewer" more than like myself. My wife works at local water dept and one year at the company Christmas party dinner the General Manager stated to everyone the water for the city water supply comes from a large lake. I forget the exact amount but something like 5-10 million gpd of water treated at the water treatment plant. Most of that water then goes back to the sewer treatment plant to be treated and discharged into a local river. He said the water leaving the sewer treatment plant was actually cleaner than the water in the lake that was used for the city water source due to EPA regulations. By reducing the waste water used city's reduce the treatment cost.

He and I discussed the thought that perhaps we should be recycling that water from the sewer plants back into the potable water system. He agreed with the ideology but said most people had a problem drinking "pee water". Yet if/when this starts happening the water treatment cost will go down on the filter plant side and the depleting of the ground water in larger cities should stop or at least be greatly reduced.

I find the idea of drinking "pee water" somewhat odd, as the local lake was built decades ago and water runoff from hundreds of acres around it ends up in the lake. The lake is a huge fishing attraction locally and also people swim in it in the summer. So no doubt it is already "pee water" to some extend now. I would guess that the same water ends up being used and reused countless times. The only real difference is that when you don't KNOW where it originated it doesn't become a issue.

If your toilets work good especially after 15 years of no problems I would see no reason to change them as far as reducing the load on the septic system. I would think they are contributing little to the total volume of water that is going into it percentage wise. But some savings could be had by reducing your water usage, either for city water you pay for, or by using less that you have to pump from your well if you have one. My well has the same pump installed in it in early 1997, I have had to replace the bladder tank buried in the ground twice though.

[Ole Anderson]

I am on my original septic system for 40 years now. Been pumped 3 times, never use an enzyme, moderate use of a garbage disposal, standard 2.5 gal flush toilets, am gone 3 months of the year. But we haven't had kids in the house for about 20 years now, that helps. Inspection and pumping is on my agenda this summer. I know my field is living on borrowed time, its not reasonable to expect more than 40 years of use. People who grew up on a city sewer system freak out thinking about having to use a septic system. Frankly, with proper soils, it is better for the environment than city sewers and as long as you don't dump unreasonable amounts of bad stuff down the drain, you will be fine.

[Art Mann]

When I built my house, there was no such thing as water conservation toilets and the disposal system was designed for 5 gallon flushes. When I needed to replace a toilet at the far end of the house, the only kind I could find was a water conservation toilet. It worked great for a day or two and then refused to work properly. As it turned out, there wasn't enough fall in the line to remove all the solids with such a small amount of water. I have found that if I flush twice instead of once, it works fine. Somebody should have thought about older houses before they forced everyone to use water conservation toilets.