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OK, my turn…
My friend is the plumber in my small town, #1 in the #2 business he says. He is a jokester for sure. He tells a story of installing a new bidet and when he goes to show the homeowner he turned it on and said " Not sure why you wanted a drinking fountain in the bathroom and promptly kneels in front of it and drinks from the bubbling water fountain.
True story, pretty sure.
RR
My uncle is a retired plumber and his motto for any nasty job was “Smells like money.”
We had an old cast iron pipe that compressed under our foundation causing a sudden, spectacular exploding backup from the basement toilet one time when the upstairs toilet was flushed. I’m talking people in hazmat suits cutting out and plastic bagging the drywall in the basement bath up to the level of the toilet tank.
The intrepid plumber of our contracted service company cleaned out that toilet, and showed me the compression with his snake mounted camera. I asked him if he would be working on the waste pipe replacement out to the street, which involved jackhammering the floor and basement wall and digging up the yard and replacing the old pipe. “No,” he replied, “I don’t like to get dirty.”
Oh my gosh this is hilarious. I don’t know why more plumbers don’t use that as their slogan and paint it on their vans and cards.
I just had heated bidet seats installed in both bathrooms in the AirBnB. The AirBnB is currently closed for renovations, and this was one of the renovations.
The cost of the seats were $200-250 (different prices because one was for an elongated toilet and one for a round bowl toilet). I had to have electric GFCI outlets installed near both toilets but now the seat and bidet water are heated, and there is a warm air dryer to dry off your bottom too. The seat only works when a bottom is in contact with it so I’m not worried about water getting sprayed everywhere.
I don’t know how my guests will take to them, but I love them! I had one installed for my parents in their house as a Christmas gift. They love it too. If a couple of folks in their late 80s (one of them with dementia) can manage to figure out how to use the bidet seat, I’m sure my guests will manage quite well also.
I did opt to get bidet seats that came with a remote control. A lot of the bidet seats have the controls attached to the side of the seat but I didn’t like that option because I figured the controls are harder to read for people whose eyes aren’t the best.
Once I reopen the Airbnb for business, I will let you know what the guests think of the bidet seats and how they work out for me in the AirBnB.
My husband, who is rather conservative about these things, used the bidet for the first time last night. He is completely sold on them after one use! He is now determined to install them on every toilet in our home. This is a guy who argued vehemently with me over the expense of installing them in the Airbnb. 
A friend of mine bought unheated bidet seats for her mom over a year ago. The mom in her late 60’s,cares for an older, frail husband and her own mother who is in her early 90’s in her home. She never got the seats installed. Finally my friend came home for the holidays and installed them. They went from “not necessary” to “best thing ever” overnight.
what model did you select that is working so well for you?
Toto Washlets … they are an excellent product
Ok Rolf. I just ordered the one you mentioned on Amazon. Hoping I have some luck with my guests too!
I tried to give you the link but it didn’t work. It’s the SmartBidet. I’ll have to look up the model number. They are manufactured in Korea and I bought it from Amazon.
I bought both the round and elongated models and am very pleased with both. I got the models that came with remotes, which I highly recommend getting. For older people or wider butt people, the controls that are attached to the side of the seat are problematic, IMO.
The model is the SB-1000.
Here’s the link. Note elongated and round models.
https://www.amazon.com/SmartBidet-SB-1000-Electronic-Temperature-Controlled/dp/B0128T2HQK?th=1
Here’s a gifted Washington Post story on how bidets save toilet paper, and by so doing save 1.5 pounds of wood and six gallons of water for each roll of toilet paper.
As usual, @Rolf and many forum members are ahead of the curve.
“By the time it reaches your bathroom, every roll of toilet paper has used up an estimated 1.5 pounds of wood and more than 6 gallons of water.”
??? How has one roll of tp used up six gallons of water and 1.5 pounds of wood? This is pretty shoddy reporting, not to explain that at all. And the articles linked to that don’t explain it either. In fact one article linked to claims it takes 37 gallons of water to produce one roll of toilet paper, which sounds totally outlandish.
The point is that it takes water and wood to make TP. A bidet makes all those costs disappear.
Fighting over ‘how much’ is a straw man argument.
Yes, of course I understand the point of using a bidet as opposed to toilet paper, and I’m not “fighting” about anything. I just don’t like shoddy reporting that makes claims without explanation or source material.
For instance, let’s take this statement- “Bidets, meanwhile, require about one-eighth of a gallon per use, a fraction of the water required to make the amount of toilet paper needed for the same purpose.”
Let’s say I go to the bathroom and use toilet paper 8 times a day (I’m female, obviously men don’t use tp when they pee). That amounts to 1 gallon per day using a bidet. Unlike the article saying the average person uses about 1 roll of toilet paper every 2 days, a roll of toilet paper lasts me a week. So if it takes 6 gallons of water to produce a roll of tp, me using a bidet, @1 gallon per day, would actually use more water than toilet paper.
But if you flush each time you use toilet paper, even at 1.25 gallons per flush, or even if you flush once/day, you’re using more water with toilet paper.
That doesn’t count the electricity and wood needed to make toilet paper.
But the point here is that a bidet saves resources, though how much is a matter of debate.
??? Your post makes zero sense.
What does using toilet paper have to do with flushing? Are you suggesting that if someone uses a bidet, they don’t flush the toilet after use? You don’t think they would flush the toilet at least once per day? How is that using less water than flushing once per day if someone uses toilet paper?
Personally, I never flush the toilet for a pee, and I throw pee paper in the basket. Only flush for #2 as everyone would.
And if there are 2 separate fixtures, a toilet and a bidet, as opposed to a hand-held hose gadget, doesn’t it take more water to clean 2 fixtures rather than one? And doesn’t it require water to clean those hand-held bidet hoses?
I’m not arguing against bidets, I think they’re a good idea, I just don’t buy this argument that there is far less water usage. Blindly believing whatever one reads, with thinking it through, or researching further is how people fall for conspiracy theories.
Yes, I was making the assumption that people typically flush the toilet when using toilet paper.
A little harsh (see above).
Yes.
I guess some of us (me too) have a lot of time on our hands today.
Well, you are trying to back up the “uses less water” assertion with faulty assumptions. That’s pointless and hardly scientific.
If you follow the links – and one leads to another and then to another (some of them broken links) there’s a lot of information.
Here’s a pretty informative one. It turns out that the amount of water used depends in part on the kind of pulp used – for example, whether it’s ‘virgin fiber’ or recycled content or something else; whether chlorine is used, and other factors.
That’s why some toilet paper gets an ‘A’ or even an ‘F’ from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). And perhaps why some rolls of toilet paper might require many fewer gallons of water to produce than another – no wonder there is a wide range of estimates for how much water is required to produce a roll of toilet paper: it’s because there is a wide range of water needed to produce a roll of toilet paper depending on how that roll is manufactured.
Following just one of these links eventually led me to this paper, which looks very informative:
Does anyone really disagree with the idea that a bidet uses substantially less natural resources, including toilet paper – all-in – than toilet paper alone?
I’m not limiting that analysis to whether you flush.
Please see the NRDC article.
Scientific enough?
