The Flusher King: Testing Toilets

When low-water flush toilets became the law, they were not very popular; people were even smuggling high-volume toilets across the border from Canada, because the things just didn't work, often requiring two or three flushes to get everything down. Engineer Bill Gauley of Veritec Consulting developed a test that has become the standard- The Maximum Performance (MaP) test. Starting with mashed potatoes and bananas to simulate you-know-what, Gauley's team searched for a "test specimen", and finally settled on soybean paste (miso) imported from Japan. This is expensive, since they keep flushing until the toilet doesn't work any more, so they started encasing the miso in a "thin latex membrane"- a condom. The testing is now almost universal, lessons have been learned, and six-litre toilets work better than the 13 litre ones they replace. The winner: the TOTO Drake, capable of handling 900 grams. (average male's maximum dump: 250 Grams). Now you have no excuse not to upgrade! ::The Star read ::test results here (big PDF)