HydroRight Dual Flush Toilet Conversion

[NeilBlanchard]

This is a great find, Tim! I will convert our 1.6 gallon flush American Standards, without having to replace them!

This article will be shared around my friends and family!

[Patrick]

Will this unit fit an American Standard Champion 4" flush valve?

[Daox]

I'll stay it depends Patrick. The rubber seal on the kit is 3 1/8" max. If the flapper valve opening is larger than this you'd have to make some other way for it to seal. At that point you may be restricting water flow which could make the toilet not flush as well.

[benpope]

Originally Posted by Daox

The rubber seal on the kit is 3 1/8" max. If the flapper valve opening is larger than this you'd have to make some other way for it to seal.

Humm, I ordered one without knowing that. I have a 50+ year old toilet that I am pretty sure has the 4" valve. I'll let everyone know how it goes.

[Daox]

I was just at my uncle's last night and I mentioned I had the extra kit. We looked and his toilet has a 4" valve on it. I'm very sure it won't fit unless you add some silicon or and extra gasket around the sides. Of course then you have to deal with the possibly restricted flow which may or may not be a problem.

[Higgy]

Ok, I'm the next victim of this dual flush operation. I installed my HydroRight last night on my 6 Litre American Standards toilet. Seems to be working well so far. One of the toughest things I had an issue with was taking off the old handle. I didn't realize that you had to take off the locknut or whatever in a clockwise fashion...and here I was tightening the damn thing. I eventually ripped the damn handle off cause I had tightened it so hard it wasn't loosening. Needless to say the toilet survived the encounter, although I was eyeing my hammer so it did have a brush with death. In any case, once I got it out it was a fairly simple job. Once I got the first piece on the overflow pipe it was just a little hard to get my fingers into the bowl and find room to tighten the tie. Then once it was tightened and everything was firmly in place the other part I found a bit difficult was getting the top part of the hydroright locked into place on the bottom part with the wire either hitting the overflow pipe or the edge of the tank. I finally was able to move it around it and get it into place. After that it was just adjusting the water tank level and playing with the pee and poop flow regulators. My pee one is all the way to the bottom, so it's using the most water needed to flush pee. If I put it any higher it doesn't fully flush the toilet. It just fills it up with more water. For the poop regulator, I have it all the way to the top, so it's using the least amount of water for that.

I only put it on one of our toilets so far just to see how it works. I've read good and bad reviews so I want to make sure this thing works well first. But so far it's doing well.

[Daox]

Good to know Hig.

The cable was a tight on the toilet I couldn't install the kit on. I think it rubbing on the side of the tank is no problem though.

[benpope]

I made the plunge a couple of weeks ago and everything went swimmingly. I have an old 3.5 gallon toilet from the 1960s and am in no mood to replace it, so the dual flush system made sense.

My toilet already had the modern style float and fill valve, but the flap and handle were worn out. Like Higgy, I had some trouble getting the handle off, but with a little torque it snapped into two pieces as it was so heavily corroded. The rest of the install went very easily. I ended up having the 3 1/4 inch opening, so no problems there.

Getting the flush setting right took me about a day of trial and error. The instruction manual was of little help in dealing with such a water hog, but I ended up setting the small flush near the bottom. I estimate my water savings at around 1/3 for the small flush vs the big flush. On both settings when I flush there ends up being very little water left in the bowl, so everything is working as it should.

The device and my fiddling with the fill valve fixed the flush problem that has been vexing me for the past couple of years. The tank was under-filling, causing there to not be enough water pressure to create the auto-siphon effect that makes everything go down the drain. Now on the big flush setting, I am using more water than I was before per flush, but I only have to flush once to get everything to go down. My overall toilet water use is going to go down.

Municipal water is cheap and plentiful where I live, so I don't expect to see much savings. I have been looking for other ways to reduce the amount of water I use with my toilet and have seen several recommendations to put something in the tank to displace water. This keeps the water pressure of the flush the same, but reduces the amount of water. I can't decide if this will be effective. As I understand it, the siphon effect depends on the water pressure in the bowl, so reducing the amount of water below a certain threshold isn't going to make it flush. I guess there is only one way to find out...

[Higgy]

Anyone got an idea on how to better tighten the flusher to the tank? Mine just came undone a bit yesterday and that's only a week or so of use. I tried tightening it with my fingers but it's so thin it's hard to grab and twist.

[gasstingy]

You might try using one of those rubber "lid grippers" for a bit more grip on the locknut. {The kind of thin rubber textured pieces made to loosen overtight kitchen jar lids}. If it will fit in there, you might try an adjustable wrench. But don't get carried away on the torque you use if you try the adjustable wrench. I suspect it would be very easy to overtighten.

On a slightly different note, I just got my water bill a few days ago, and it was down by about $3.00 for the month. Where it was $15 and change before the conversions and low flow shower head, it came down to $12 and change. It will take about 20 months to pay back at that rate {two dual flush kits / 1 low flow shower head / s&h ~ $60.00}.