Flush toilet (mains-fed)

Passive

The conventional fixture almost every house already has: a cistern of potable water released to carry waste into a drain. Included as the baseline the other toilets are measured against, because without it "uses less water" and "needs no water at all" are claims with nothing to be compared to. Uses drinking-quality water for the one job that has no need of it, which is the whole argument the rest of this sub-function makes.

One of 4 ways to meet Collection. Build 1/4, Upkeep 2/4, Efficiency not rated. Cost, carbon and footprint below are rated against those 4, not in absolute terms.

Cost

Low

Upkeep

Occasional

Skill to build

Basic

Lifespan

Decades for the pan; the cistern mechanism is the part that fails and it is replaceable

Embodied carbon

Low

Space / material use

Low

Output timing

On-demand/controllable

Skill to repair

Basic

Regulation (FR example)

Connection to a compliant treatment system is required; where no mains sewer is available, an approved autonomous installation must be in place.

Inputs

• Human waste
• Potable Water

Outputs

• Blackwater

Ranking in its sub-function out of 4 alternatives

Every option in this sub-function, with the value on each axis and a note on what drives it (this solution highlighted):

Build skill and upkeep burden are proxies (lower burden = simpler to maintain); the efficiency column is this sub-function’s ranking, 1 = best. “N/A” where an axis isn’t rated here.

Sources

• Project engineering judgement: the conventional baseline fixture

Tutorials

No build tutorial recorded yet.

What this page does not tell you

No sizing or quantities: how much a technique yields, and how much a household needs, both depend on the build and the people, so the catalogue compares options rather than dimensioning them. It carries no bill of materials and no build sequence, and it is written for an oceanic, clay-soil climate (Normandy, France). Regulatory notes are indicative and need confirming locally.