HydroRight Dual Flush Toilet Conversion

Written by: gasstingy

I’ve been wanting to convert to dual flush toilets for a couple of years now, but when I tried to find a replacement toilet or conversion kit for my existing toilets I had no luck. Lately, I got to looking again, and found the HydroRight Drop-in Dual Flush Converter in the Grainger catalog. I bought it (w/tax and S&H, $32) and put it in my master bathroom toilet. It didn’t take too long to install (15 minutes +/-) and it works great. Of course, I took no pictures and made no keen observations to try and compare the water usage before and after the conversion. I was so pleased that I immediately bought another of the same brand, but this time I did an internet search. For about the same money, I went to Amazon.com and bought another one. So I’d get free shipping, I bought a 1.5 gpm shower head at the same time.

A few details about the toilets. Both are American Standard, kind of an old fashioned look with the flush handle on the side, not in front. But, the box said it fits ANY toilet so I figured I could justify getting my money back if it didn’t fit mine. You’ll note in the pictures, the flush isn’t by a lever operated handle, but a cable operated push button. This toilet had an old style refill valve with the long arm and big float ball to stop the water. That had to be replaced in order to do the conversion as the arm and ball won’t clear the biggest part of the kit. I didn’t bother showing pictures of how that’s done. The big parts are shown, and the biggest part uncouples into two pieces for easier installation. All told, I couldn’t even do the second one in ten minutes like the instructions say it should take. Probably not their fault, everything takes me a bit longer. Of course, I could blame it on stopping to take notes and pictures, and time the operation and swap the refill valve, etc. All told, I did all of that and finished in just under a half hour.

As for the keen observations to try and show how much water I’m going to save, I tried the old and new refill valves before converting to the dual flush and it took 55 seconds for the toilet to refill from the time I pushed the flush lever. Then I swapped to the new dual flush mechanism and tried again with the biggest flush. It took the same 55 seconds. Then, I decided to relocate that little tube that goes into the stand pipe to refill the toilet bowl. Instead of shooting into the pipe, I turned the clip around and it shoots down the outside of the pipe. The toilet bowl doesn’t get quite as much water, but it still gets plenty. New refill time, 40 seconds for the long flush. Refill time for the short flush is 18 seconds. I only timed the short flush with the toilet bowl refill tube on the outside of the stand pipe though. So there it is. The water ran 73% as long on the long flush, so about a 27% water savings on the big flush from relocating the bowl refill tube to fill the tank faster instead of wasting it in the bowl. For a short flush, it ran 33% as long, so we’ll save about 67% of the water compared to before when we choose the short flush.

The side benefit is that I’ve tried nearly every flapper in town to get both toilets to quit seeping water out, to no avail. This stopped the seepage, so all of that wasted water is halted as well.

Check out more info on gasstingy’s conversion in his forum thread.