Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Thoughts from the best seat in the house:

So I'm a little embarrassed about this post. but the theme of this Sketch Portfolio is to not be scared of dumb (or uncouth) ideas. Besides we all do some of our best thinking in the bathroom.

So how many of you hate opening a new roll of toilet paper? I think it's stupid that we have to pick at the glue-stuck sheets to get it started. Watch this video.

Sorry, now you'll probably be even more annoyed every time you pick apart a new roll of TP.

Other Bathroom ideas:
Tankless Grey water urinal:
One innovation of the Green Building movement is using Grey Water to flush toilets. The conventional method is expensive however: Water flows to a central tank that treats the water and then redistributes it to the toilets. You basically have to run double plumbing throughout the building.

But I always thought you could do it this way: Just run the water straight from the sink down to a urinal tank. The tank would fill up and flush when ever it was full. This should give the urinal plenty of daily flushing. And who cares if the sink water goes untreated to wash a urinal? If anything I'd think the soapy water would just help clean the urinal.

Every time I've mentioned this idea to architects they immediately decided it wouldn't work. But then someone told me that they saw it done like this in Japan. Here's to the Green Movement.

One more thing while I'm on toilets. A couple years ago I saw this idea of dual-level flushing - I thought it was a good idea, too bad it didn't seem to catch on.
Along that line, I've always thought there could be a female urinal - seriously, it would save a lot of water. I have two ideas that would work just fine, but I think I've gone far enough with this posting. I'll leave it to your imagination. Happy thinking -

2 comments:

NormalAndrew said...

Regarding your two-flush option (lower for 1, higher for 2), I think the idea is taking off more. Certainly the product is out there already (I spent the past few months in Europe, and saw it in a lot of places). I think the real issue is letting people know about it, and making it a part of new building codes!

I've got pics if you'd like...they're decent ;)

ashley said...

Actually, there are urinals for women. and they have cool names like the Urinette and the eezeewee. Sheinals were almost widespread - particularly in Japan when women didn't wear underwear under their kimonos - but then pantyhose became popular, and pants... and things got tricky... and American women generally find them scary. (some have hoses attached - and... they are scary)

They don't need to be scared though. I've peed in urinals before, and they were made for men.

Waterless urinals are also gaining popularity.

Happy peeing!

Ashley