low down two flushers

A four flush is a poker hand that is one card short of being a full flush. Four flushing refers to empty boasting or unsuccessful bluffing, and a four flusher is a person who makes empty boasts or bluffs when holding a four flush. Also a lowly, disreputable cheat or fraudster, especially at cards, especially a dull or unimaginative one.

Four-score years ago toilets in the USofA were designed by engineers and manufacturers who made them to work efficiently, thus creating a reputation for superior products and thriving in the free market of plumbing supplies.

Along came congresscritters of ill repute who happily allowed mega-businessess to suck semi-arid regions dry in order to sell trainloads of water in plastic bottles, but deemed that the little peoples’ toilets must restrict the gallons per flush to an unreliable number… not to mention their mandated little-people shower heads that cannot wet big people unless they spend twice as much time in the shower as they did in the pre-water saver era.

In a home with older toilets, an average flush uses about 3.6 gallons, and the daily use is 18.8 gallons per person per day. In a home with ultra-low-flow toilets, with an average flush volume of 1.6 gallons, the daily use is 9.1 gallons per person per day.

That is the theory. It sells well in either the theoretical, or the unthinking world.

In the real world, you either experience more clogged plumbing and expensive visitations by plumbers, or head that off by double-flushing to run solids all the way down the drain.

Let’s re-do the math with the understanding we have to flush twice. That leaves us comparing 3.6 gallon single flushes to 3.2 gallon double flushes (2 x 1.6 gpf). I have to admit the legislators saved 0.4 gallons per use.

That is certainly worth $175,000 per year times 635 legislators times the cost of 30 peripheral staff members each.

I feel so saved.

Were the free market left to its own devices, water companies would (and do) charge per gallon of water delivered to each home. Homeowners in turn would economize on the water bills. Plumbing supply companies would respond with products that efficiently helped reduce said consumption. … and congress would keep their ignorant, prostituted noses out of the entire business.