In almost all of SE Asia, especially Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, all of the toilets come with a hand-held sprayer. They also had this in the Doha airport and I'm not sure how common this style is outside of SE Asia but I'm guessing it's common. Japanese style bidets are very common in Korean households as well and I'm sure its easily a billion dollar business.
It is nice but the functionality is quite difficult for a person who's not used to this whatsoever. After you're done sh*ing, you grab the handheld sprayer and turn it upside down and reach behind you toward your butt and try as best as you can to aim it into your anus to wash as best as you can. People who have been doing this their whole lives can probably aim with a precision of a Marine Corp Sniper but to us, we look at it as alien technology. It's is quite difficult to use for a first timer and there are factors that worry us.
If its not aimed correctly, where does the splash go? If you're lucky it stays in the toilet boil. However if your aim is off, you can completely miss your anus and either shoot to much under or over which will shoot the water outside of the toilet bowl.
Also when I was using the bathroom in the Doha airport, the handheld sprayer had a soap dispenser next to it. I was curious what it was for so I YouTube'd and searched for instructions on what the soap dispenser was for and (kind-of) to my surprise it was soap to lather and clean your anus with your other free hand. After you lather and clean, you basically rinse your hand with the hose as well.
>If its not aimed correctly, where does the splash go? If you're lucky it stays in the toilet boil. However if your aim is off, you can completely miss your anus and either shoot to much under or over which will shoot the water outside of the toilet bowl.
so slowly squeeze the trigger to confirm the aim is correct, rather than going full blast at the start?
The triggers can be quite stiff. If you're unfamiliar it's easy to try to incrementally add pressure and still go from 0-100 with them.
Another option is to adjust the water connection valve at the start of the host so its not fully open, but by the time you notice the valve, you're probably already familiar enough to aim straight.
The water pressure can also be startlingly strong, but you also get used to that.
When I interned abroad in Singapore at a small-time IT firm, the office was in an industrial building that had, uh, less than stellar communal facilities. I at least had the foresight to test the sprayer before use, but I swear it was binary on/off. There wasn't a pressure control knob or anything upstream either.
I eventually got used to blasting myself clean, but I still prefer TP.
You are right about Asians ones. The ones I used in India However what I have gotten in american bathrooms are pretty decent with flow control are supply and handle bar depending on how much you squeeze. And with filters and all in place water comes with soft gushing way like American faucets.
In my experience even least fancy American bathrooms are vastly more functional and cleaner by design than what I get in my trips to India in homes or even 4 star hotels.
Common-use toilets in India can often be badly maintained, but it's also worth pointing out that there is also a cultural relativism in approaches to cleanliness in the bathroom.
- For Indians, water & sunlight are the best cleansing/disinfecting agents. A bathroom that has been rinsed thoroughly with water+soap, and then dried in sunlight is the cleanest it could ever be. Indian bathrooms typically have windows allowing ample sunlight, and are almost completely covered in stone/tiles to make this whole process easy.
- For this reason, Indian visitors have a hard time adjusting to apartment bathrooms in the US -- which are almost always designed to never have any wetness outside the bath tub / shower area. These bathrooms can never ever be rinsed clean (there is no outlet to drain water!) or dried in the sunlight (because there is no window! just the way apartment layouts are optimized).
- This also means that American bathrooms need an active ventilation system -- which works with varying levels of effectiveness -- and has a bunch of corollaries such as incidences of mold, etc. Residual humidity in American bathrooms is a significant problem, complicated by the use of wood/drywall/carpet in apartments.
- For Americans, the bathroom space being dry is one of the most important symptoms of cleanliness. Wet somehow means soiled/used/disgusting -- even if it is just clean water on the bathroom floor. American bathrooms & processes -- both home and public/shared -- are designed to optimize for this experience.
- The traditional style Indian toilets involve squatting. Being contact-free, this is way more hygenic in comparison to the "western" style toilets -- where the excretory areas of different people come into secondary contact through a common surface. When this does get addressed, the western solution to this again hinges on dryness -- using a sheet of paper (or just unrolled toilet paper) as a disposable seat cover.
- Western style (seated) toilets have become increasingly common in India though (because sitting is more comfortable than squatting), but they typically have a small hand-held shower and are unlikely to feature any toilet paper.
- The same principle of washed -vs- dry as "clean" reflects again in how the two cultures choose to clean themselves after going to the loo. In India it is traditional to thoroughly rinse one's behind with soap and water (as OP mentioned in the experience at the Doha airport) and then dry it in various ways, while American toilets are designed for wiping with dry paper and sometimes even just using a hand sanitizer afterwards (not always rinsing hands with water/soap).
- Glossing over the comparison of what cleanliness means in each of these cases, I'm given to understand that the operating pattern of repeatedly rubbing dry paper on sensitive areas while trying to get them clean makes anal hemorrhoids far more common in the US.
- The contrasts help shed light on how people of each culture have a huge shock when first experiencing a bathroom from the other. Given how western cultural mores tend to be defaults in online spaces, the culture shock of an American encountering an Indian bathroom is easier to sympathize with. Likewise, many Indians struggle to feel comfortable with the quality of sanitation allowed by an American bathroom, and it takes a lot of conditioning to get used to :-)
my american born indian nieces and nephews can never get used to indian toilets for this reason.
This is one of the main reasons they are dying to go back when they visit india.
> People who have been doing this their whole lives can probably aim with a precision of a Marine Corp Sniper but to us
I bought these sprayers for my house when people lost their minds hoarding toilet paper during the initial COVID lockdowns in the US. It only took a few days to start getting it right the first time, every time.
No, they're actually miserable and I strongly prefer toilet paper (yes, I have read all the comments about whether you'd use toilet paper if it touched any other part of your body, etc.) Most parts of the world literally just spray cold water at you; some of them also require you to aim. Toilet paper is a lot neater than this.
It's neater in its application, not neater at its result. As you (and the article) mention, there's no way I'd trust wiping off with toilet paper if I got some paint on my hands, even though it's simpler than washing.
While I don't completely disagree with the argument, I do think it is worth pointing out that your hands touch other people. People often live with sweaty armpits, which is obviously a lesser version of the problem, but I think still worth considering: we put up with things that go in covered, mostly hidden places.
Maybe I'm a bit extra in this, but I do have a mental bit for how clean my hands are. If I've just washed them, they're "clean" (clean enough to put in my mouth). If I've touched anything, or any person's hands, they aren't.
I mean hey, if you want to walk around like that by all means. Maybe it's my ancestral Muslim side coming out, but I just feel dirty without cleaning myself afterwards.
Also, the water isn't that cold, even in the dead of winter here in the north east. And if you can't aim from that close I'm not sure what to tell you!
Having used all three, the neatest system IMO is to everyday carry a spray bottle of 70% isopropanol. Beyond just convenient hand sanitizer, this lets your wet the paper so you can finish with 2-3 wet wipes (typ. 2x dry + 2x wet). If the paper's thin, double it over a couple more times if needed.
It breaks down like TP (because it is TP), so this won't create a 100+ ton 'fatberg' in the sewer like commercial wet wipes can do.[0]
At home, combine this with the western paper and now you have a dry body as you walk out. So, you can clean with the spray, and you get wet, and dry with the paper for an end-to-end solution.
> try as best as you can to aim it into your anus to wash as best as you can
This seems like a great way to spray shit everywhere and is not at all how I learned to use those. What I do is soap one hand, aim the jet into the toilet past the anus with the other hand (jet vector orthogonal to the anus's normal vector), then go to town on it with soap and water. It's foolproof and you get very clean.
How has nobody mentioned this? I feel like I'm on crazy pills, is everyone seriously blasting a jet directly at their chocolate starfish?
Yet here I am on the other side surprised to hear you and others saying you’re lathering your poopy butt with your hands in a restaurant bathroom
We all gotta wash our butts, but it just seems more civilized to do it in the shower as you can get everything clean, you didn’t just crap, and you’re not eating with those same hands immediately afterwards.
Toilet paper + wet wipes are 100x more sanitary than what you describe
I am always surprised those sprayers don't splatter shit everywhere, maybe there's some self selection bias going on in that only pros hose in public facilities. Or they're just well maintained. I was expecting to see more wet pants, but then again everything in MENA dries right away. Same with toto style bidets though, but I've mostly seen them in fancy establishments and assume someone is doing the frequent upkeep.
Well that just doesn't sound true at all. I would definitely remember if it leaked every year. Do you have any evidence for this? A bidet is pretty basic plumbing, and basic plumbing can go decades without leaking.
I guess if someone goes out and buys cheap parts that fail fast, and always does that, then you'll get some people whose plumbing fails every six months and everyone else goes years or decades without problems.
Or commonly referred to as “bum guns” in the UK. We have three toilets in our house and have one in each. They’re so good I can’t even explain. I find it so inconvenient whenever I travel that these don’t come with every toilet.
Those hand sprayer versions are bad to use and unhygienic too, because fecal matter gets sprayed beyond the toilet bowl. I know why Arabic countries prefer hand sprayer versions: istinja practices of Islam.
Not with the one I bought at Home Depot. Two valves: one with a longish lever at the bottom of the tank, one in the sprayer, one at the wand. Use the first lever as high-precision pressure control, the one at the wand as a quick cutoff or not at all.
Adjust pressure to a 3-4 inch high fountain. No overspray.
Angle the flow forward, to minimize drip-back onto the sprayer head.
I have been using Neo180 manual bidet for 5 years, which I bought for Amazon. Replaced it last year with the same model. I don't like manual handheld sprayer bidets, which are popular in the Middle East; later, they spread to SE Asia, now South Asia, Russia.
I used it in Indian hotels. Sure, one should get 30 day practical course on how to use bidet spray without wetting the whole restroom, without spraying junk around. If that is what initiation is, it is a failure in my considered opinion.
How does one get initiated? They had the hand sprayers at my office in India. I never tried. Experimenting with that and having to go back to work seemed like a bad idea. I also didn’t feel like asking co-workers how to use their toilets.
Well, Indians have learned this technology from abroad--mostly Middle East, thats where many Indians work. Of course, now Indian companies make those sprayer bidets.
Squat toils + bidet attachment is better than squat toilet and a jug for water. No dispute about that. Sit down toilet + hand held bidet attachment is worse than sit down toilet + bidet inside in the toilet without using hand. My answer was about sit down toilet with hand held bidet attachments; how Indians discovered these hand held bidet attachments.
Your butt does not do that. If you are relatively fit, there often is a butt crack gap on top of the bowl. Butt much worse, there is also a bigger gap between the seat and the bowl. If you go from the back there is more toilet bowl in front of you to error in.
They're pretty common in Russia, too. In Muslim countries they're basically everywhere.
When you're used to them it's very annoying to end up in a country that doesn't have them. Especially the US, which in addition has strange toilets that fill up with a lot of water during normal operation and bathroom stall privacy that begins 30cm above the ground.
Not even close. Try to travel in Latin America or something and go to a bathroom. You won't find toilet paper or a toilet seat, or even free bathrooms in many cases.
Not always — I was pretty surprised they didn’t have them in every bathroom when visiting Morocco. My family is Algerian and they’re standard there, and I always assumed it would be common in other Muslim countries considering how much emphasis there is on cleanliness, but I didn’t encounter a single one the entire time I was in Morocco, across four cities.
I feel it’s weird defining them by the main religion of the country it is (maybe) mostly used. No one says the numbers used in English are Muslim, they are generally referred to as Arabic.
I wouldn’t say printing is a “catholic thing”, but it definitely came from a super catholic part of the world.
Mainly because Islam has jurisprudence around hygiene in a sense. Ritual purification is an actual religious principle.
Islam requires Muslims to pray 5 times a day, and for those prayers, one has to be ritually clean. That involves washing the hands, rinsing the mouth and nose, washing the face, forearms, head, ears, and then the feet. That's effectively all the major parts of the body that are generally not covered by clothes. Your "cleanliness" is invalided if you use the toilet, pass flatulence, vomit, sleep and so on.
More so, for using the toilet, there are rules. You have to find a place that is away from standing water, people's pathways, shade etc ; granted, this generally doesn't apply in today's age. You have to be quiet on the toilet, and not look at anyone. Not allowed to eat any food while defecating. Lastly and most relevant in this case, you have to use water to wash yourself using the left hand, and then afterwards, you need to do the same for washing the front if you've urinated.
The reason why the "bidet spray" thing exists, is largely because of the rules in the religion around that practice. Calling them Arabic wouldn't make any sense because Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population, has similar tools in their facilities. Again, because they're mostly Muslims.
Printing isn't a catholic thing because the religious doctrine didn't emphasis "printing" itself.
Arabic numbers aren't "islamic numbers" because the religious doctrine didn't emphasise the numbers in some way.
> After defecating, the anus must be washed with water using the left hand, or an odd number of smooth stones or pebbles called jamrah or hijaarah (Sahih Al-Bukhari 161, Book 4, Hadith 27).
In Thailand anywhere luxury will typically use the Japanese style washlets. I wouldn't be surprised to see that trickle-down to eventually become standard.
skynet becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th, realizing it is being used primarily for cleaning fecal matter off human anuses, it uses its enhanced systems clearance in Pentagon to start global thermonuclear war.
It's been done, but there are legal and ethical issues with photographing children's buttholes.
Scientists Working on Toilet That Identifies You by Your Butthole
Many users "wouldn’t, for very good reasons, like cameras pointing up their bottoms.":
> I was curious what it was for so I YouTube'd and searched for instructions on what the soap dispenser was for and (kind-of) to my surprise it was soap to lather and clean your anus with your other free hand. After you lather and clean, you basically rinse your hand with the hose as well.
There seems to be two kinds of cultures in the world: those that use water / their hands for post-business cleansing, and those that use paper or some other medium.
After experiencing these hand sprayers during international travel, I installed them next to all of the toilets in our house. My wife grew up with something similar but had done without since living in the US, and hadn’t thought to suggest them to me. My Asian in-laws were/are happy about it, and our household toilet paper usage has plummeted.
It never ceases to amaze me people do that without any prompting. Why? What is gained? We are meat puppets who occasionally shit, piss, fuck, bleed, and die. Use a thesaurus if you must, but leave the asterisks out of it.
It also became a weird cargo cult thing. Only one platform had issues with killing, but now videos everywhere are captioned with unaliving. We can say shit and ass!
Some of the features I really like about my Japanese toilet:
* Heated seat
* Bidet with warm water
* “Omakase” power-saving setting that learns your schedule and turns off the heat during the times you are typically out or asleep.
* Flush with a button press vs. turning a handle. This sounds minor, but whenever I have to use a toilet with a handle it is noticeably less convenient as you often have to keep the handle turned for a couple of seconds for a proper flush.
* The flush button is also conveniently located on the wall next to the toilet rather than behind the user (good for courtesy flushes). The control panel communicates with the toilet via IR.
* Selectable flush volumes (eco, normal, large)
* Automatically flushes when you stand up
* Non-stick coating to keep the bowl clean. It also releases a bit of water and wets the bowl when you sit down to make the surface less sticky.
* Has a lever to lift up the toilet seat a couple inches from the base to easily be able to clean under the area where the seat sits atop the base.
* Lid and seat hinges are dampened so they never slam shut
Some things which I don’t like/use:
* It has a blow drying function which I almost never use (toilet paper works fine for drying).
* It has an air filter that I need to change once a year at a cost of about ¥2000.
* Haven’t run into this problem yet, but could be a pain in an extended power outage. I think you’re supposed to just pour water into it from a bucket to flush it.
Features which I don’t have but would want on my next toilet:
* Button to automatically raise and lower the lid. Bonus points if it’s motion activated to raise the lid when you enter the bathroom.
> Button to automatically raise and lower the lid. Bonus points if it’s motion activated to raise the lid when you enter the bathroom.
I have this, and eventually disabled it. It's super annoying, and goes off if if I enter the bathroom and go near the toilet for any reason, even if I'm not about to use the toilet.
It probably only works in Japan where, if possible, the toilet is in it's own separate room, separate from the room where you wash your face, separate from the room with the shower/bath. You'd never be in the toilet room except to use the toilet. The door stays closed so the toilet is only going to open when you open the door to the toilet room.
It's still kind of annoying since you can just leave the lid open instead of waiting for it to open...
Except, the motorized seat is indeed convenient, for which the lid might be a dependency, and I guess at which point a scope creep into auto opening everything is just an inevitability.
If anyone wants to explore the bidet space without replacing an entire toilet, I can recommend the Neo line of products from https://luxebidet.com/ They sell kits for under $70 USD that attach to existing toilets, using the space between the seat and bowl, and attach to the toilet's water supply with a tee fitting and one-way valve, either at the wall valve, or at the bottom of the tank. Installation should take less than 30 minutes for anyone handy with a screwdriver and a crescent wrench.
Their bidets are surprising effective, and do not require any electricity or hot water, as the water volume needed to be effective is small, and the water has usually been sitting in the pipes in a home's walls at ambient temperature. 10/10, would spritz again.
Agreed. I’ve got one at home too. Was cheap, easy to install and works pretty well. Admittedly things don’t get very cold where I am, so YMMV.
I do dream of installing a legit Toto with the warmed seat and self cleaning, but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of buying the unit and then having to hire both a plumber and an electrician.
The only real problem is my son has grown up spoiled with a bidet at home, and now hates using the bathroom at school or out in public. I mean, I get it, but when nature calls, she ain’t askin’.
From a plumbing perspective, the Toto is no different from one of the basic units, you just attach the valve to the toilet’s water supply. For electricity, it depends on your situation but if you have an outlet nearby (eg. where you would plug your hair dryer or electric toothbrush) you can just plug into that. The plug doesn’t need to be directly behind the toilet, you run a cord to it.
Get an outdoor-rated, thick gauge extension cord and plug it into a GFCI outlet. There is a teeny-tiny chance of electric shock during thunderstorms, but GFCI will shut the circuit quickly, usually. Consult an electrician before doing this. Or just get a GFCI outlet installed near the toilet. That's safer!
We thought about getting a bidet installed and two electricians said that the (maybe freshly revised?) code explicitly demands a new circuit. It cannot branch off a "countertop" outlet that is meant to feed a hair dryer or something.
Really don’t need an electrician. Just plug in to an outlet on the wall or an extension power strip. Don’t need a plumber as well. It’s really easy to install.
Careful with this advice. There is a tiny risk of electric shock if you use an outdoor-rated extension cord, a bigger risk if you use an indoor-rated strip, and a pretty big risk if you use indoor without a GFCI outlet.
The safest thing to do is always to get that outlet installed.
> There is a tiny risk of electric shock if you use an outdoor-rated extension cord, a bigger risk if you use an indoor-rated strip, and a pretty big risk if you use indoor without a GFCI outlet.
Citation needed. There is certainly not a “pretty big risk” of electric shock. Outdoor vs indoor rated cords should have no bearing on safety inside. Also, if the extension cord is wired to an outlet in the bathroom, the bathroom outlet is almost certainly GFCI unless it’s an extremely old house. If it isn’t, that can be fixed for less than $30 as well. The only thing you’d need to be worried about for an extension cord is the power rating, since bidets can consume a decent bit of power… but most don’t really pull a ton (maybe 600W on full tilt), so almost any extension cord should be able to handle that load.
I'm not able to install anything like this in my current home but if you live somewhere reasonably warm (so it's not super unpleasant to get a wet bum) I can hugely recommend something like this. (I want everyone to get one since I can't).
Living in Asia where the "bumgun" (bidet on a hose) is popular made me realise how barbaric toilet paper is. It's really quite disgusting and also very uncomfortable!
In India it's relatively common to see these retrofitted bidets that fit under the seat. Personally I think they're inferior to the hose but that's a personal preference, these things still work great, and they are less intrusive and probably easier to install. One of my Indian colleagues has one at his home in Europe too.
Kohler has manual ones with a lever arm that can swing the nozzle which I find more effective. Twist for pressure. I have no hope for JP software, waiting for PRC/SV AI powered bidet with brown eye recognition that cleans without aiming.
Manual ones can also have... stupid water pressure depending on your plumbing... which some will find addicting.
I meant the pressure of manual can be relative to the pressure of your plumbing, i.e. eye openning water jet cutter tier pressure. Closer to hose style, can absolutely blast water. Fancy electric Totos cap pressure, feels like trickle in comparison.
A bidet is standard equipment in Argentinian homes, even the poorest houses have it. Once you get used to it, it’s incomprehensible that in other countries people just wipe and…hope for the best.
But often it’s hard to install one in bathrooms that are not designed for it. So a Japanese toilet is a somewhat over the top solution in our house.
>> it’s incomprehensible that in other countries people just wipe and…hope for the best.
Well ... I don't have a bidet but doesn't mean I don't wash my buttocks after doing business. Unfortunately it's a bit of a taboo subject so it's not discussed, not taught in school / hygiene classes, just let it be.
Best example I heard from someone is this: imagine you dip your hands in Nutella. Then try to clean them just wiping with toilet paper, for more authenticity, without looking. Then look at the result, that's your ass, good thing you got underpants! Compare that with washing with soap and water!
So how do I do it?
- First step it to use wet toilet paper. I can't stand raw toilet paper, it scratches my hemorrhoids, so I pre-soak it in water from the tap if available or just water I keep in my mouth if in a public place / at work. I hate public places for this matter. This way it's much gentler for the tushy, it also pre-washes the area and third advantage, it's much less likely to clog the toilet when I flush, being already soaked.
- So after the first step I'm closer to washing Nutella than wiping it. If in a public place, that's the best I got. If at home, next step is wash my butt with soap and water in a plastic bucket. There, that's your bidet! For 2 bucks, you too can get one! :) Sure, you have to squat and not wear any pants, but you're in your own freaking bathroom. Dry with paper towels which you throw in a bucket. Plus, comes the third step anyway and you won't be wearing any clothes for that.
- Third step is taking a quick shower. At this point you won't be leaving a trail of poo into the shower drain or bath tub (I shower in the bath tub) but still get to clean your general areas that were in contact with the toilet, hence e-coli and sh*t (no pun intended), plus shower feels good.
So there's that: my overly complicated toilet routine that takes some 3 minutes extra after finishing with the toilet proper, which leaves me perfectly adequate for entering a pool. Unfortunately I also know that 99.98% of the population entering said pool has their Nutella butt washed for the first time in said pool, so no pools for me if I can avoid it.
> just water I keep in my mouth if in a public place / at work
Sorry for intruding, but the water from some public place is the last thing I want in my or anyone else's mouth. May I suggest a water bottle or even a flask?
Or if you already tried that, can you explain why it didn't work for you? Just an idle curiosity. Thanks in advance.
I interpreted this to mean he holds clean water (e.g. from a bottle) in his mouth when entering the toilet, for the purpose of wetting toilet paper. A clever solution, IMO.
No, this is exactly the problem: "we mustn't speak of buttholes, it is preferable that we all continue sub-par hygiene practices because it's TABBOOOOOOO"
Every bathroom in Thailand and Argentina is built with a drain in the floor. It's forward thinking construction. Otherwise, without the drain, either the bum gun or the bidet can and will easily damage the floor and anything below it.
How can a wet room floor like toilet or barhroom be damaged? They have to be specific type of concrete + tiles on top, don't they? At least that's what I'm used to.
It seems wild to me you'd have a bathroom without a general floor drain? Like it's a room where we put water taps...a floor drain just makes sense (and you already need to put plumbing in for floor drains to have like, a shower work).
Standard equipment in Argentina, not in Northern Europe or the US, where you would have to be in the opportunity to completely redo your bathroom to accommodate it. Otherwise you need to rearrange, or go for a Japanese toilet.
Completely redo a bathroom? The barrier to entry is replacing the seat with one that connects to the existing waterline. I've got one and it took 10 minutes to install - and 5 of those were just cleaning first.
For the spray nozzle sure. It would only work in particularly hot climates though, so maybe Arizona and Florida in the summer. There is a reason northern Asia goes without or with heated Japanese toilets instead (they also warm the water so you don’t hate yourself).
Bidet (no hand sprayer, just a toilet seat based jet) works fine in this US household. I don’t notice the cold in the winter. Maybe I have an exceptionally robust asshole, but our water gets very cold in the winter.
Do you have decent central heating? Japanese households didn’t (and still don’t, it’s not required by law even in Tokyo), so heated toilet seats and heated water is considered essential. There is a reason kotatsus never caught in the states I guess. You won’t encounter nozzles in southern China either because the winters are too cold and they have even less heating than northern China (which is why everyone is wearing winter jackets indoors).
Even in the US, I can’t imagine installing a nozzle here in Seattle, but we also don’t have central heat (just a heat pump with remote units in a couple of rooms).
> we also don’t have central heat (just a heat pump
I'm so terminologically confused at this point by comments like this. In Texas, many people's central heat is a heat pump. My current house's heater is the first I've lived at in over forty years that wasn't a heat pump (this one is gas). High end homes, cheap rentals, everything in between, heat pump central heating.
Ductless heat pump (aka mini split) you need indoor units to serve each room that the heat pump handles. We have one in our master bedroom and in our open living room kitchen, but not on the bottom floor (kid bedroom/office, and our master bath really isn’t heated well by our master bedroom indoor unit, so it has a separate wall heater that doesn’t have a thermostat so we never use it. So our bathroom is a bit cold in the winter, although it’s Seattle so never really that cold, although my wife avoids the toilet for the one in the living room since it bothers her more.
So…is a ductless mini split heat pump supplemented by a bunch of resistive walk heaters, one gas fireplace, and no central thermostat really considered central heating?
In China, this becomes even more pronounced, northern cities provide central heating from heating plants…so central means “central” in a much stronger sense. Apartments are poorly insulated from each other so it makes little sense to heat each unit separately. In southern China (and lots of older Japanese housing), you don’t even have good insulation so all your heating is localized (eg via a kotatsu and heated toilet seat, or heated train seats which are really nice). That is a lot less centralized than a minisplit (which are catching on in southern China these days as well).
I use a non-heated bidet in Truckee, California (near lake Tahoe). In the winter the water that comes out is cold, but it's only for a few seconds, so I just grin and bear it.
Ideally you need nearby electrical and ability to get water to the washlet seat. Which is fairly easy/cheap in a bathroom remodel (which is what I did) but not necessarily easy/cheap otherwise. (There are simpler ways you can get part-way there as noted in this thread.)
The washlet needs power for the seat warmer (and other functions). Toto (and others) also have unpowered add-on toilet seat type that just sprays and is manually controlled with a knob. https://in.toto.com/product-category/ecowasher/ (Not sure if this is available in the US)
Because the Japanese implementation is electro-mechanical. The nozzle auto-cleans and deploy from the big end like a fighter jet refueling boom with press of a button, sometimes on a control panel, sometimes via an IR remote.
Things get interesting when the remote dies in the middle of the ordeal or the stop button could not be immediately located.
Except for the no-power versions, electricity is required for bidet functions on Toto bidets. They work like normal industrial hydraulics. They have a small low-power electric pilot valve, which lets hydraulic pressure into the right place to move the boom in and out, and release water.
There are models that don't require electricity, but the higher end ones (that do) will heat the water before hit hits your butt, and also might have a heated seat as well as other features.
FYI for anyone that uses wet wipes: please don't. If you have to, ignore any marketing they have about the wipes being flushable. They absolutely are not, and cause major issues for sanitation operators. Even the ones labeled septic safe really aren't, from what I understand the 'septic safe' marketing just refers to them not containing chemicals that will poison a septic system. They don't break down in a septic system like paper will.
Less environmentally friendly and greatly more damaging to the infrastructure. Spain is even looking to introduce legislation to reduce/remove their use[0].
That link talks about plastic items, but the wet wipes I’m familiar with are 100% plant-based and biodegradable, and dissolve in water.
Edit, to clarify: The wipes in question have been certified according to the EDANA Flushability Guidelines, which have been adopted into law in some countries, and there is also a related Spanish standard UNE 149002:2019 (“Acceptance criteria for disposable products via toilet”). The producer (Essity) claims that they dissolve similarly quickly to regular toiled paper.
It might very well be that the wipes still cause problems, but it’s not like these are plastic items that are flushed down the toilet in an unregulated way.
There was a news article on Australia a few years ago about these wet wipes that were advertised as biodegradable and dissolved in water, but they were either outright lies or they didn't degrade / dissolve in anywhere near the timeframe that made them suitable for flushing down the toilet - hence an increase in the fatberg problem.
The news article was essentially a public service announcement to not flush those wet wipes unless you want a sewerage problem down the line.
And I read a study a while back that researched this, and analyzed several fatberg deposits. They concluded that there was no trace of biodegradable wipes. And that follows purchasing patterns--99.9% of those bought aren't the biodegradable kind. People just don't care and continue to flush wipes, diapers, fats, cat litter, and who knows what else.
That situation is such a mess. Those dissolving wipes actually exist, and actually dissolve.
So what do people do? They buy the cheap, non-dissolving ones and flush them anyway. Then when they inevitably clog, they call the plumber and insist they bought the correct ones when asked. So now there's widespread confusion about whether the dissolving ones work.
I would love to know which wipes those are, because I have never come across any that are even remotely actually dissolvable. If you know of a brand, I really would like to know which that is. Have you ever tried putting one in some water just to see how dissolvable they are?
There is also that they’re kind of a contradiction in terms anyways, they’re wet … wipes. If they were dissolvable in water, the wetness of the wipes would cause dissolvement.
What many people are not even aware of is that even all high end toilet paper in the USA is a major headache for sewer systems because even that “paper” does not dissolve well at all, because they’re so focused on making the “paper” feel soft or be durable, it’s technically not even paper anymore and actually more like a cellulose felt.
No, it’s all lies. Wet wipes don’t break down, no matter what these companies tell you. I’d rather listen to whatever your municipality is telling you.
At least in the US, the “plant-based”, “biodegradable”, sewer or septic safe wet wipes are anything but sewer and septic safe. They cause such problems that in my town with older sewers there are huge fines if you’re tracked down flushing them.
Spain has a hard time figuring out how to get their sewage system to handle regular toilet paper and many regions/places require you to deposit the toilet paper in trash cans next to the toilet. That being said, I think there are better options like a clever public awareness campaign, banning the claim of being flushable, required packaging that says not to flush, requiring to be packaged with plastic bags for disposal, or even just accumulating all the costs of issues from the wipes and charge them to the industry as a whole in various taxes and fees, which will push the incentive to solve the problem on the industry.
I used to use wet wipes and flushed them, now I have a bidet and have only ever used wet wipes when traveling, where, ironically, Spain’s issues with basic things like flushing toilet paper, make disposing/not flushing wet wipes easy because many bathrooms have a lidded trash can next to the toilet/in the stall.
Ironically, their bigger issues produce a solution to a different, bigger problem.
Note: Yes, I’m aware it’s not everywhere in Spain or only Spain, but I am curious to hear where everywhere everyone has encountered having to put their toilet paper on a trash can instead of flushing.
I don’t think Americans are using wet wipes on their toilet business, at least in any meaningful numbers, maybe parent was talking about some other region of the world? There are plenty of regions of the world where TP is the norm, eg in China you aren’t going to find sprayers or Japanese style toilet seats, and many toilets are still squats.
It does not solve the same problem. The same way the majority of people prefer to wash their hand at a faucet with soap and water. They might put up with a wet wipe when they are near a faucet but it doesn't "solve the same problem". At best it's a temporary solution until you get to a place where you can really wash.
One caveat: Toto toilets waste stupid amounts of power. With the heater off, I measure 40-50W at idle across multiple different models. With a heated seat that’s active or with the water heater on, it’s much higher. (A lot of Toto models have a small tank that is kept hot — only the higher end models have an on-demand flow tankless heater.)
Just tested this out and mine uses 6w at idle. This is with the seat heater and water heater turned on - but given that it's June there probably isn't much heating needed to bring them up to comfortable temps.
For reference here is the model I have. I don’t remember the exact price, but I think it was a fairly mid-range model that cost less than ¥200,000 ($2,000) at the time.
Edit: just had a look at current prices, and it looks like the MSRP for the same model is about 3x more expensive in the US than Japan. For example, the Neorest RS1 has a list price of ¥317,000 ($2,200) in Japan vs $6,315 in the US. So possibly a midrange model in Japan could be considered high end in the US.
You’ll either need a remarkably good in-brain integrator or something that measures energy instead of power. The data is noisy.
I just pulled the data from a US model Neorest, and I see a bit over 600Wh in a day. So better than 40W, but not amazing. It does drop below 1W for short periods, so it’s not actually the electronics wasting power at idle.
These are neat, but not an option for those in rentals/apartments. Instead, on the advice here, about five years ago I bought a “bum gun” from Home Depot, the fancy stainless steel version for maybe $60 at the time.
These deliver 90% of the benefits for under 10% of the cost, and less maintenance. It’s like a small metal garden hose with gun shaped valve at the end, you attach between the wall spigot and hose to the toilet with an adjustable wrench. Takes maybe 10 mins.
Would never go back to the dirty butt lifestyle. ;-)
There definitely exist full-featured models that replace only the seat of the toilet—a 5-minute, highly reversible effort well within the capabilities of even the most nervous renter.
The water hose stacks inline with your existing supply at the point where it enters the toilet basin—a simple unscrew-and-rescrew operation on the order of attaching a garden hose. If the seat and water are heated (vigorously recommend!), the extension cord plugs into your existing shaver outlet / GFCI.
I’m familiar with Brondell as a non-Toto option, and I’m sure there are others!
Power outlets are not allowed near water basins here and so are not installed into the wall near the toilet. Most often there’s only one outlet near the sink with a circuit breaker on an opposite wall.
Heated is not necessary in California and more complexity means more likely to break, so YMMV.
I have lived in close to a dozen places built over the entire second half of the 20th century and into the 2010s and never had a bathroom with more than 6 feet between the toilet and an outlet.
In my downstairs bathroom, I do indeed have a power outlet within 6 feet of the toilet, but until I added a second, closer outlet, plugging in my bidet required running an extension cord along the back of the counter, behind the sink, to reach the original outlet. Not the most attractive setup, and probably not the safest either.
In my old apartment, the master bedroom had the toilet in a separate room from the sink, with no power outlet at all.
My master bathroom in a 2016 build has a separate toilet room, and only one outlet that is definitely more than six feet away, it would also require drilling a hole somewhere.
Yeah, NEC only requires 1 outlet within 3 feet of each sink in a bathroom, and 2 sinks 6' apart could share 1 outlet. Bathrooms are the really the only place where the NFPA hasn't extended the required number of outlets, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that changed in an upcoming revision. At the very least I wouldn't be shocked to see a NEC requirement for an outlet within 3' of each toilet in the next decade.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about, so thanks for confirming the ‘myth’. If you think the average person knows that acronym you’re mistaken. It’s an additional circuit breaker built into the outlet, as I said.
Should have said ‘normal’ power outlets not allowed to avoid this subthread however.
Current code in many/most places in the US requires GFCI plugs in a lot of places that may be exposed to water. I would think an educated homeowner (though possibly not apartment dweller) would be familiar with whether they knew what the acronym stood for or not.
Umm, GFCI isn't an arcane thing, they've been around and required in bathrooms since the 70s [0]. People may not know the acronym, but they 100% are familiar with the outlets with the two little buttons that you sometimes have to reset. Local jurisdictions may have delayed adoption, so your city might not have required them right away but it was national code in 1975 for bathrooms.
They also don't have a circuit breaker built in, they perform a completely different function from a circuit breaker. And have been required in at least some portion of a property since the early 70s under the NEC, expanding over time to include anywhere where exposure to water is a possibility.
Even if we look at a super old version of the NEC, in 1965 I don't see anything that would prohibit installing an outlet near a toilet. I'm referencing a PDF of the 1965 version, but I don't have a shareable link.
I'm posting this not to shame you, but to point out that you have some misunderstandings of what is electrical code and so other members don't see your first confident statement and take it as fact. Plus, you can't tell if an outlet is GFCIs protected or not just by looking at it, even the very early ones could protect downstream outlets and at since the late 00's GFCIs combination breakers have been common. An outlet may look like a normal outlet and be GFCIs protected, I would wager that most of the kitchens you have been in have had GFCIs outlets.
A little confused; unless your sentence about California is unrelated to your first paragraph, that doesn't make sense. I live in California and I have outlets near my bathroom sinks, but there are no circuit breakers in the room. (The outlets are GFCI.)
I've definitely seen homes here with outlets near the toilet as well, with no extra safety devices beyond GFCI.
(And a quick search suggests that building code requires an outlet within 3 feet of every wash basin.)
If you are not talking about California, then... bummer; that level of restriction seems entirely unnecessary for safety.
They're totally installable in a rental, takes about half an hour to install the first time, and about ten minutes to remove when you move out.
The only thing is that one will typically need to run an extension cord to reach the toilet, but typically apartment bathrooms are pretty small anyway so it's not a particularly long extension cord.
The seats are like $349 at the local Costco. It doesn't involve removing the toilet, just replacing the seat (two hand tightened nuts) and adding a T connector to the cold water line so that both the toilet and seat have water.
None of those things are permanent and can be done by a single person with minimal knowledge and some common hand tools.
I wouldn't run an extension cord but there are absolutely Toto washlets that just replace the existing seat. IMO, absolutely the better answer as there things probably can break in ways that a regular toilet won't.
For a bathroom where I didn't have an outlet nearby, I bought a non-electric model from Brondell. It doesn't even replace the seat; it just sits under it. Super simple to install. It was $60, I believe. Sure, the hand sprayer is probably cheaper, and maybe -- maybe -- less likely to break, but I value the convenience of not having to use a hand sprayer.
Bidet seats only have power for things like seat heating. I don't why everyone is bringing this up like it's required. The cheaper options at $100 hook up to the existing waterline for the toilet and are entirely mechanical. No power.
> These are neat, but not an option for those in rentals/apartments.
In the last place I rented, I bought and installed a Toto Washelet seat. When I moved out, I removed it and replaced the original seat. Same unit is now in a bathroom in the house I own.
The seat replacements aren't as integrated as the entire-bowl replacements, but they come pretty close.
"In current models, the water spray is kept at a precise 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit" - so actually 38 Celsius because that's the temperature scale that Japan (and almost everywhere else) use.
This isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I read "Japanese toilet", what is the name of the toilet that is in the ground, that long oval shape with bump in front (or back?)
Yes but it is fundamentally different what article pictures as "japanese toilet", so the article is about "japanese western toilet" not "japanese squating toilet".
Why do you like them? Most Japanese do not. I find them gross. I had to use one recently in Osaka waiting for the Shinkansen at Shin Osaka Station. They require much better aim than a western bowl. They'd be horrible for diarrhea. Your poop just sits there in the open air and steams until you flush it, much more stinky than underwater.
I also don't prefer them, but a clear benefit is the squatting pose being a lot healthier than the standard sitting on a Western toilet. Somewhat fixable by a squatty potty, but those aren't in public restrooms.
> squatting pose being a lot healthier than the standard sitting on a Western toilet
I'm not convinced though maybe I was just never properly trained. When I use a squat toilet I have my pants bunched up, when I squat the bunched up pants are between my upper and lower legs and cut off the ciruculation in my legs. If I'm constipated it my legs are screaming much sooner than on a seat.
These are so good. After you've lived in Japan for a while you go back to (pretty much any) Western country and feel like going back to the middle ages. It feels outright barbaric not to have this level of hygiene.
I guess it's like going to a place which doesn't use toilet paper?
I have Toto bidets installed at home (in the US)... was visiting Japan for a couple weeks last month and was overjoyed (not exaggerating) to see bidets in pretty much every bathroom, even in low-end bars and restaurants. I think I remember exactly one toilet I used that didn't have a bidet.
Then I come back home and go out and about and am disappointed when even nice restaurants don't have them.
Americans don’t understand this because our national tv ads are for toilet paper. There’s even a social contention built in about the “quality of tp”. Let me tell you, if you spray your asshole first, the quality of the tp does not really matter.
I do. I use 2-ply and 3 squares at most. No issues here; sorry there's a tp tube up your ass about tp quality. Tip: don't "rub" it dry, that's bound to cause unpleasant friction.
>sorry there's a tp tube up your ass about tp quality
Hm, unsure why the hostility there. My quip wasn't nearly this hostile.
>I use 2-ply and 3 squares at most.
Yes, that's not bad quality TP lol, and not what I was talking about. You ever seen TP in universities/restrooms for supermarkets etc? That's what I am talking about. Further, you ignored the points about using toilet paper as tissue paper, which is what a lot of people in bathrooms also do.
A bidet is one of the largest increases in quality of life from a product I have ever experienced. My brother got one first and then it spread like wildfire across our family. I've never met anyone that actually uses one that goes back. I hope it takes over the whole world.
Much of the world is like this. Even in some advanced places, so I'm always on the lookout for the tp trash can to make sure I'm not going to damage their pipes by flushing when I visit a new area.
Does it? I've only been to Portugal a couple times (Lisbon and Porto) and houses had bidets (standalone), while bathrooms didn't, but didn't have tp buckets either.
Depends on the age of the building and the locations seeer system. Newer sewers and buildings can cope but older ones can’t.
Then there’s cultural expectations - if you have a country where you have gone decades of your life never flushing you will be expecting a bin even if the pipes don’t need one.
If you are staying in western hotels in major cities you will have a different experience than staying in private homes in villages.
In China at least, toilet paper wasn’t soluable for a long time and sewer plumbing wasn’t up to standard, so you used the waste basket for your TP. You would also bring your own TP to public bathrooms and they had no idea if your TP was soluable or not (lots of cheaper kinds aren’t). These days, toilet paper is universally soluable and plumbing is much better, you can totally flush it (and I always do when I’m there) but so many people grew up being told not to that they still have and use waste baskets.
You are technically correct, but for this use case it doesn’t matter, and everyone knows what is meant here. The parent also didn’t claim that a “url without the protocol” is itself a URL (nor, to be technically precise, a relative URI reference).
Well this is unexpected.
Japanese toilets aside and the comments regarding which countries people have seen them in, and the hand bidet sprayers and their usage, as I understand:
- In Islam, Muslims must pray 5 times a day, but you must have 'Wudhu' which means you need to have performed the ritual wash before praying. You have to do it again if you've gone to the toilet.
* When you go to the toilet, you must, as a requirement use water *
So, most Muslim household bathrooms or public bathrooms in Muslim countries have a hand sprayer or at a minimum, a water container to fill.
I worked in Dubai and Saudi before, and apartments come with hand bidet sprayers.
Regarding Singapore, I wouldn't be surprised if this was influenced by Malaysia (a Muslim country, but they were part of the same country before) although when visited Malaysia I can't remember (ok they probably did) have a similar arrangement. I remember my Chinese friend telling me that her dad went to a Muslim school (a Malay school), so he pretty much uses water like Muslims do (when they go to the bathroom).
Regarding the deadly hand sprayers (pressure wise), usually in modern Mid East apartments:
- They are connected to a tap so you can control the pressure
- those bathrooms usually have toilet paper too, so you wet the paper to clean first, then you can direct the water on to your hand whilst you clean yourself with your left hand, finally dry with toilet paper. Final step of course, wash your hands! Hence why Muslims only eat or shake someone's right hand, knowing the left hand is on toilet duty.
I've been in corporate bathrooms in the UK, in a cubical, and you hear someone enter, pee (or even more) and exit without washing their hands!!! Not only once either.
The bottom line is, use water.
No one can argue it's better to use paper. Some folks dislike of things from the Middle East lead them to argue toilet paper is enough. It isn't. (-_-)
Side note: If you're ever in Dubai and visit one of their big malls, like Dubai Mall, you'll question where the 1st and 3rd worlds are. Clean and maintained luxury rest rooms, you'll be happy to relive yourself in such restrooms, rather than dread using the toilet if you're outside. And they have good baby changing facilities too.
One thing they typically don't tell you about Japan is that not all of their toilets spray warm water. When you press that button, brace yourself for all possibilities.
Bidets will definitely spoil you. I try to avoid shitting in public now, and travel is annoying. Ass does not feel clean unless I leavec the stall moist. Not quite at travel bidet yet.
I use the bemis bidet adapter. It's $50 US on amzn and requires no power (splices into the feed). Only wish the knob would spring back to the off position. Was going to give it to my parent with dementia but because it does not auto-off, I ended up using it myself. Great item. There are many other similar ones but I can only speak to the bemis one.
A lot of European brands (Villeroy & Boch, Geberit, Duravit etc) have Japanese style toilets for a while now, albeit often with less buttons and functions. It's getting more common in Northern Europe.
Unsurprising. Took too long. Toto Washlets are incredible and very easy to use. They are very Tesla-like (before politics got in the way): you want one the minute you use one.
As someone who has been dealing with flared hemorrhoids since I was a teenager, I improvised my post-2 work by simply washing with the shower pistol whose cord is long enough to reach behind me while I'm sitting on the toilet.
Since then, whenever I search for a new apartment to rent, this became one of the criteria I look for! I simply can't go back to just dry wiping, ever.
> I improvised my post-2 work by simply washing with the shower pistol whose cord is long enough to reach behind me while I'm sitting on the toilet.
> Since then, whenever I search for a new apartment to rent, this became one of the criteria I look for! I simply can't go back to just dry wiping, ever.
If the cord is not long enough you can step in the shower/bathtub (if you are abled ofc) to wash yourself.
As someone who had hemorrhoids since teenager (got it removed during a surgery), I'd recommend a portable bidet. Game changer. Can now comfortably do Nr2 even at my dad's summer place with old toilet, or any public toilet. They're often very cheap too (bought mine for <10$ in Japan) and last long enough
It's great for your master bathroom. I wouldn't put them in a guest bathroom because over time the wand accumulates poo - might be unsanitary after a while. I clean mine every couple of weeks.
Assuming you clean the guest bathroom after a guest leaves (or at least before a new guest arrives), you can simply add the bidet wand to your list of items to clean, no?
I haven’t seen anyone else discuss this and I don’t know the answer but…
Do water jets like this not spread worms and other intestinal parasites? I’d be especially worried about hand held jets in public restrooms and hotel bathrooms.
I’m a happy bidet owner who retrofitted one. The biggest challenge was understanding local regulations and product design when it came to backflow prevention.
I have to say that once you get used to all the comforts a Japanese toilet brings (washer, heated seat, blower) it is very hard to go back to a traditional toilet.
It's a bit surprising that every health care facility doesn't have these to make things easier on both the patients and caregivers. But money and maintenance (also money) I guess.
Only North-Americans have trouble with the concept that water is the best way to wash yourself after doing your business. Y'all seriously need to grow up.
I don't really much of a difference unless you have unhealthy messy shits all the time. Spraying your ass with water doesn't make it sanitary, so at the end of the day it is merely personal preference.
I never feel clean after the business. I’ve always wondered if it’s my physiology or diet. Something wrong with me ? I’ve meant to try find out but it’s not something people like to talk about.
I just don’t understand how people like to walk around with even a small amount of poop wedged in their crack, irritating the area and
coming into contact with their underwear, pants, it’s absolutely disgusting.
I got “stuck” in Asia during COVID for 3 years, when I returned back to my home country (zero bidet society) I forgot all about the lack of bidets as it was just common place. When I went to cleanup I never forget the horror and I had a sinking feeling, as if I was ejected from civilization or something.
I have IBS. Sometimes the consistency is like mud/tar. It's completely impossible to get clean without moisture. After a trip to Japan, I swore that if I ever manage to own my own home, I will install a Japanese toilet. I started to wonder how we in the west have accepted for so long that abrading skin with dry paper is cleaning.
There are cheaper solutions than japanese toilet, bidet or handhelds
- using a bottle of water, you just need a good capacity, and need to refill before or after the deed. Aim at your anus and stretch your asscheeks with your other hand and do circle and robbing on your skin while emptying the water with the hand holding the bottle. It is a bit technical the first time, a bit disgusting but fecal mater is 100% washable so your hands and anus will be all clean and your anus will thank you for the rest of the day. But you need enough capacity for the water. You can also use soap and do two round while emptying each halves of the bottle. First round remove all fecal, then soap (use a gentle soap!) then empty the remaining of the bottle. You don’t really need soap though because the results with water only is already infinitely better than with toilet paper. You can use the toilet paper to dry your skin or use a small toilet exclusively allocated for this usage
- if you are home take a brief cat shower and aim exclusively the anus. A bit more cumbersome because you need to remove your clothes and shoes if you wear them
I live off-grid in the deep woods of Sweden with no neighbors; I heat my 125 year old timber house with firewood.
For two decades I lived in a fancy flat with all the amenities in a large city.
Now I do it in two 100L plastic barrels in my stables that also have an outhouse, each barrel corresponds to one of my needs.
I neutralize number 1 with Corega tabs in the warmer months, I neutralize number 2 with a scoop of peat or sawdust.
I also wash myself (in number 1) after number 2 using soap and a 10L-bidon with a shower hose attachment that I carry with me like a briefcase from the house during the colder months.
The barrels are emptied regularly in a hole in the woods, in summer the dung beetles take care of everything. There's virtually no smell, actually less than in a modern bathroom with mechanical ventilation. It's always drafty in the outhouse and I usually leave the door open anyway.
I can wax poetic about sitting in the outhouse on a sunny day with the door open watching the blue sky and hearing the wind in the trees with the birds chirping vis-à-vis doing it a concrete box surrounded by high-tech plumbing and equipment, but ironically it just feels better not having any nastiness inside or anywhere near the house I sleep and eat in.
Just think about that for a second.
I've been to Japan and I actually prefer my way.
I think technical (smart?) toilets are nasty, nasty to clean and even nastier to repair if they break.
Less is more, if given the choice I'd much prefer a simple (dumb?) toilet with a shower hose next to it.
This is pretty common in most bathrooms in Sweden.
I wonder if there is a way to do this with a regular composting toilet. The type that has a separate pee compartment in the bowl to separate liquids from "dry" material. I'd imagine it's quite hard to aim during the washing process and getting the solids wet defeats the purpose of a composting toilet.
I love my bidet and usually carry a travel bidet. For campervan camping I looked at composting toilets but this one problem has ruled them out for me so far.
Not "in the ground" in the strict sense, but I'm pretty sure that composting toilets would scale to population density. Same basic idea as shitting in a hole (and probably more useful than water-based toilets).
Scaling is not something intuitive to end user. Hard to say "pretty sure it scales" when your usage is so low scale, secondary effects are invisible to you
Of course sewers are amazing but they are used for a lot more than toilets. My point was: Composting toilets do not need to take up much more space than water-based toilets and it's entirely feasible to use them in many living settings. It's also possible to make use of the "waste" by composting it further, using urine as fertilizer and so on.
Slightly dissenting opinion on these Toto wondertoilets, or at least retrofit toilet seats for western toilets.
I got one at a garage sale for $20. Hooked it up and tried it. Quite a marvel of features. Remote control (with config LCD menu on the back), heated seat, 2D aimable spray with separate male/female settings, warm water reservoir and what all. Every single feature worked, but:
It dripped water. I caught all that with a container and a towel while experimenting. Then removed it again and hunted for the drip, only to find that this is simply not built to western plumbing standards. The water inlet is just a friction-fit plug with an O-ring gasket, held in by a clip. Plastic on plastic. I replaced the O-ring with a new one, tried again... only for some other degraded o-ring inside to have been jarred loose in the process and water now leaking from somewhere inside.
Service manual? Spare parts? Nada. You can, however (from the US at least - I'm in Canada) ship this back to Toto and they'll recondition it to new for a reasonable flat rate fee. That's the only repair option.
After which it would probably not leak. But friction fit plastic-on-o-ring is fine for toilet environments that are tiled, "wet" areas with a floor drain. Mine, however, is upstairs straddling the kitchen/family room boundary in a house built out of sticks and drywall. Major leaks are simply no go. Would I leave something like this pressurized, hoping only that some friction fit o-ring-on-plastic interface is not going to start leaking unexpectedly? Nope. The same thing equally applies to the new ones, which are about $600 at Costco, or were at the time I looked.
So the "experimental" toilet moved on to another tinkerer friend who, maybe, will replace all the o-rings or have Toto fix it some day. I'm a gadgeteer, so I thought I could make a solenoid valve box to go in series with the thing's inlet, whereby you push a button and the wondertoilet gets water pressure for the next 5 minutes, after which it times out and turns off again. Just to remove the "come home to unexpected flood damage" factor.
Aside from that... "testing" of course under real world conditions. But... a nice warm water spray after the #2 business... shall we say does ... smell a bit. And didn't quite get things to the point where no toilet paper was needed afterward, nevermind the heated blow dry (which this thing also had). I'll stick to western toilets.
I know the Japanese refined this (as they do so many things such as — no offense to Italians — pizza and pasta; I think the Japanese often do it really well), but I always thought this was a French/European thing and not really what you call a Japanese toilet.
I’m certain the Japanese couldn’t be the first to find ways to heat seats or provide different settings for washing.
In Southern Europe (although these days I reckon it only has wide usage in the north of Portugal and Italy from my travels) we use the low tech version of this: a bidet.
While searching for a house to rent (and buy), that is always one of the criteria (in Lisbon - center of Portugal - they are not that common anymore).
It just seems so weird and unclean not to be able to wash ourselves after using the bathroom. I guess it's a cultural thing.
I’m a little concerned by the number of people here who seem to think it is totally normal to need to wipe a lot after going to the toilet. Is that a feature of the American diet?
Lucky you. Given the sprayer is almost universal all over much of Asia, the middle east, and apparenrtly Finland I'd say must be common for many people not to have non-messy poo 100% of the time.
I've used less advanced versions for a few years. The quality varies; the most recent one we put in is pretty horrible to use (but better than nothing). I've always wanted to try a real Toto, especially with the drying feature.
A word of warning for female users:
> Habitual use of bidet toilets aggravates vaginal microflora, either by depriving normal microflora or facilitating opportunistic infection of fecal bacteria and other microorganisms.
> Over washing the anus risks removing the sebum, which lubricates the surface. There have been reports of problems caused by over drying of peripheral areas
> This leaves the body vulnerable to dermatitis and possibly invasion of staphylococcus aureus bacteria.
> Of the 292 [hospital] toilet seats sampled, warm-water nozzles of 254 (86.9%) were found to be contaminated by one or more of the following organisms
I'm not convinced this is actual sanitation.
Edit: I should say, I know due to physical and diet circumstances taking a shit might leave you with more or less of a mess that could be uncomfortable or inconvenient - but I don't think unqualified praise for bidet use, suggesting bidets as a superior lifestyle choice, etc is good.
Seems like some of those problems could be partially addressed. Such as a retractable metal nozzle that is sanitized with heat or steam after use, not using warm water, reducing spray velocity, adjusting angle of spray, limiting spray time and throttling subsequent sprays, etc.
Interesting. I've never been a fan of the warm-water ones myself. I wonder how it compares to (only using) toilet paper with regards to dermatitis, I find that toilet paper can really cause issues sometimes and bidets are more helpful in that regard.
The drying is awful in my Toto, it's not enough air pressure. It'd take 20+ min to dry completely. It's nothing like those hand dryers in public bathrooms.
I would’ve expected better sarcasm detection from this audience.
But, since jokes are best explained:
The opening assertion is one that mimics the toilet hygiene practices of many, but recasts it in a scenario that the reader is likely to find repugnant and evoke a reaction.
The second statement draws the reader’s attention back to the topic at hand, with that fresh strong feeling.
The reader may then make the connection that if “a few wipes with paper towel” is not good enough in scenario A, then the argument is that it is not enough in scenario B.
I think paper is perfectly fine for most people who do not have certain medical problems, given a few prerequisites.
The main one is diet. Eat enough fiber so it's not a mess in the first place. This has many other benefits too. The next in priority is wet wipes. I strongly prefer them, and they are portable unlike a bidet. They are super useful while away from the toilet as well. After that there's technique. I am confident that the people who complain about paper and wet wipes are simply wiping way too hard causing chafing or even fissures. I don't want to get too graphic, but you also need to "relax" a bit down there for the most thorough job instead of just a surface level wipe. Normal paper first for removal of the "bulk material" and wet wipes for the residue.
That's it folks! If you do all this right, washing your hands afterwards shouldn't need so much effort either.
Bonus tip: why not just carry a little atomizer bottle filled with water so you can make your own wet wipes in a pinch? The spray is gentle enough to not completely saturate and ruin even the thinnest and cheapest toilet paper you find in the wild, and such a spray bottle is again very useful away from the toilet.
Yeah, if something comes wet in a package, it means it isn't going to dissolve in water, and at the end of the day is like flushing pieces of cloth down the toilet and will cause problems somewhere down the line.
Ass tons of people still do it though,and without legislation to prevent marketing it as fine, it is mostly municipal sewage, and thus everyone overall, that will pay for the additional maintenance caused by the few.
Do they need to post sources for every possible municipality? Los Angeles is actually a very definitive source on them being bad for sanitation systems. LA is a pretty young city, they really don't have any terribly ancient sewage systems. There were apparently still wooden pipes in service in Philly in 2017 [0], probably there still are some in service right now. LA's oldest infrastructure could conceivably be from the 1860s, and realistically their oldest infrastructure would be from the 1910s. If their sanitation district advises against it, why would we expect older cities like NYC or Baltimore to fare better?
So I’m of the same opinion minus the wet wipes due to the obvious hazards. But if your diet is fine, there’s literally only what they call “ghost poop”.
It’s baffling to me, really. Also, it’s your anus, 99.9999% clean is also ok.
https://archive.ph/JKTIn
In almost all of SE Asia, especially Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, all of the toilets come with a hand-held sprayer. They also had this in the Doha airport and I'm not sure how common this style is outside of SE Asia but I'm guessing it's common. Japanese style bidets are very common in Korean households as well and I'm sure its easily a billion dollar business.
It is nice but the functionality is quite difficult for a person who's not used to this whatsoever. After you're done sh*ing, you grab the handheld sprayer and turn it upside down and reach behind you toward your butt and try as best as you can to aim it into your anus to wash as best as you can. People who have been doing this their whole lives can probably aim with a precision of a Marine Corp Sniper but to us, we look at it as alien technology. It's is quite difficult to use for a first timer and there are factors that worry us.
If its not aimed correctly, where does the splash go? If you're lucky it stays in the toilet boil. However if your aim is off, you can completely miss your anus and either shoot to much under or over which will shoot the water outside of the toilet bowl.
Also when I was using the bathroom in the Doha airport, the handheld sprayer had a soap dispenser next to it. I was curious what it was for so I YouTube'd and searched for instructions on what the soap dispenser was for and (kind-of) to my surprise it was soap to lather and clean your anus with your other free hand. After you lather and clean, you basically rinse your hand with the hose as well.
>If its not aimed correctly, where does the splash go? If you're lucky it stays in the toilet boil. However if your aim is off, you can completely miss your anus and either shoot to much under or over which will shoot the water outside of the toilet bowl.
so slowly squeeze the trigger to confirm the aim is correct, rather than going full blast at the start?
The triggers can be quite stiff. If you're unfamiliar it's easy to try to incrementally add pressure and still go from 0-100 with them.
Another option is to adjust the water connection valve at the start of the host so its not fully open, but by the time you notice the valve, you're probably already familiar enough to aim straight.
The water pressure can also be startlingly strong, but you also get used to that.
When I interned abroad in Singapore at a small-time IT firm, the office was in an industrial building that had, uh, less than stellar communal facilities. I at least had the foresight to test the sprayer before use, but I swear it was binary on/off. There wasn't a pressure control knob or anything upstream either.
I eventually got used to blasting myself clean, but I still prefer TP.
You are right about Asians ones. The ones I used in India However what I have gotten in american bathrooms are pretty decent with flow control are supply and handle bar depending on how much you squeeze. And with filters and all in place water comes with soft gushing way like American faucets.
In my experience even least fancy American bathrooms are vastly more functional and cleaner by design than what I get in my trips to India in homes or even 4 star hotels.
Common-use toilets in India can often be badly maintained, but it's also worth pointing out that there is also a cultural relativism in approaches to cleanliness in the bathroom.
- For Indians, water & sunlight are the best cleansing/disinfecting agents. A bathroom that has been rinsed thoroughly with water+soap, and then dried in sunlight is the cleanest it could ever be. Indian bathrooms typically have windows allowing ample sunlight, and are almost completely covered in stone/tiles to make this whole process easy.
- For this reason, Indian visitors have a hard time adjusting to apartment bathrooms in the US -- which are almost always designed to never have any wetness outside the bath tub / shower area. These bathrooms can never ever be rinsed clean (there is no outlet to drain water!) or dried in the sunlight (because there is no window! just the way apartment layouts are optimized).
- This also means that American bathrooms need an active ventilation system -- which works with varying levels of effectiveness -- and has a bunch of corollaries such as incidences of mold, etc. Residual humidity in American bathrooms is a significant problem, complicated by the use of wood/drywall/carpet in apartments.
- For Americans, the bathroom space being dry is one of the most important symptoms of cleanliness. Wet somehow means soiled/used/disgusting -- even if it is just clean water on the bathroom floor. American bathrooms & processes -- both home and public/shared -- are designed to optimize for this experience.
- The traditional style Indian toilets involve squatting. Being contact-free, this is way more hygenic in comparison to the "western" style toilets -- where the excretory areas of different people come into secondary contact through a common surface. When this does get addressed, the western solution to this again hinges on dryness -- using a sheet of paper (or just unrolled toilet paper) as a disposable seat cover.
- Western style (seated) toilets have become increasingly common in India though (because sitting is more comfortable than squatting), but they typically have a small hand-held shower and are unlikely to feature any toilet paper.
- The same principle of washed -vs- dry as "clean" reflects again in how the two cultures choose to clean themselves after going to the loo. In India it is traditional to thoroughly rinse one's behind with soap and water (as OP mentioned in the experience at the Doha airport) and then dry it in various ways, while American toilets are designed for wiping with dry paper and sometimes even just using a hand sanitizer afterwards (not always rinsing hands with water/soap).
- Glossing over the comparison of what cleanliness means in each of these cases, I'm given to understand that the operating pattern of repeatedly rubbing dry paper on sensitive areas while trying to get them clean makes anal hemorrhoids far more common in the US.
- The contrasts help shed light on how people of each culture have a huge shock when first experiencing a bathroom from the other. Given how western cultural mores tend to be defaults in online spaces, the culture shock of an American encountering an Indian bathroom is easier to sympathize with. Likewise, many Indians struggle to feel comfortable with the quality of sanitation allowed by an American bathroom, and it takes a lot of conditioning to get used to :-)
I really appreciate this writeup!
> Wet somehow means soiled/used/disgusting
my american born indian nieces and nephews can never get used to indian toilets for this reason. This is one of the main reasons they are dying to go back when they visit india.
Yeah this overstates the problem. Sure there’s a learning curve but spraying all over didn’t happen for me.
it is often all or nothing.
Yeah, depends on how sensitive the trigger is, which is something you can't always control at a public restroom
> People who have been doing this their whole lives can probably aim with a precision of a Marine Corp Sniper but to us
I bought these sprayers for my house when people lost their minds hoarding toilet paper during the initial COVID lockdowns in the US. It only took a few days to start getting it right the first time, every time.
> … but the functionality is quite difficult for a person who's not used to this whatsoever.
I guess for some definition of difficult? Honestly it takes about 5 seconds to get used to and then you can never go back to using just toilet paper.
No, they're actually miserable and I strongly prefer toilet paper (yes, I have read all the comments about whether you'd use toilet paper if it touched any other part of your body, etc.) Most parts of the world literally just spray cold water at you; some of them also require you to aim. Toilet paper is a lot neater than this.
It's neater in its application, not neater at its result. As you (and the article) mention, there's no way I'd trust wiping off with toilet paper if I got some paint on my hands, even though it's simpler than washing.
While I don't completely disagree with the argument, I do think it is worth pointing out that your hands touch other people. People often live with sweaty armpits, which is obviously a lesser version of the problem, but I think still worth considering: we put up with things that go in covered, mostly hidden places.
Maybe I'm a bit extra in this, but I do have a mental bit for how clean my hands are. If I've just washed them, they're "clean" (clean enough to put in my mouth). If I've touched anything, or any person's hands, they aren't.
you prbly have gut inflammation if you are having messy poops that get all over your anus
I mean hey, if you want to walk around like that by all means. Maybe it's my ancestral Muslim side coming out, but I just feel dirty without cleaning myself afterwards.
Also, the water isn't that cold, even in the dead of winter here in the north east. And if you can't aim from that close I'm not sure what to tell you!
Having used all three, the neatest system IMO is to everyday carry a spray bottle of 70% isopropanol. Beyond just convenient hand sanitizer, this lets your wet the paper so you can finish with 2-3 wet wipes (typ. 2x dry + 2x wet). If the paper's thin, double it over a couple more times if needed.
It breaks down like TP (because it is TP), so this won't create a 100+ ton 'fatberg' in the sewer like commercial wet wipes can do.[0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drljNVrA4_k
I'm here for even more extreme cleaning techniques to appease my OCD. Thanks!
Definitely cheaper than carrying around a TOTO portable bidet: https://www.totousa.com/travel-washlet
Not sure having a clean bum is a religious thing. Source: Atheist with a bidet.
Oh, of course it's not -- I was just playing around -- but cleanliness is something that is really emphasized in Muslim communities [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_purity_in_Islam#Hygieni...
At home, combine this with the western paper and now you have a dry body as you walk out. So, you can clean with the spray, and you get wet, and dry with the paper for an end-to-end solution.
> try as best as you can to aim it into your anus to wash as best as you can
This seems like a great way to spray shit everywhere and is not at all how I learned to use those. What I do is soap one hand, aim the jet into the toilet past the anus with the other hand (jet vector orthogonal to the anus's normal vector), then go to town on it with soap and water. It's foolproof and you get very clean.
How has nobody mentioned this? I feel like I'm on crazy pills, is everyone seriously blasting a jet directly at their chocolate starfish?
Yet here I am on the other side surprised to hear you and others saying you’re lathering your poopy butt with your hands in a restaurant bathroom
We all gotta wash our butts, but it just seems more civilized to do it in the shower as you can get everything clean, you didn’t just crap, and you’re not eating with those same hands immediately afterwards.
Toilet paper + wet wipes are 100x more sanitary than what you describe
Wet wipes sure if you dispose of them correctly. Don’t just externalizer the problem to the sewer system.
I am always surprised those sprayers don't splatter shit everywhere, maybe there's some self selection bias going on in that only pros hose in public facilities. Or they're just well maintained. I was expecting to see more wet pants, but then again everything in MENA dries right away. Same with toto style bidets though, but I've mostly seen them in fancy establishments and assume someone is doing the frequent upkeep.
I bought $25 versions of this on Amazon during COVID... We did not anticipate or have any of problems you described.
most bidets starts leaking after 6-12 months. It is a flood hazard if the hose breaks.
"most bidets starts leaking after 6-12 months."
Well that just doesn't sound true at all. I would definitely remember if it leaked every year. Do you have any evidence for this? A bidet is pretty basic plumbing, and basic plumbing can go decades without leaking.
I guess if someone goes out and buys cheap parts that fail fast, and always does that, then you'll get some people whose plumbing fails every six months and everyone else goes years or decades without problems.
> Well that just doesn't sound true at all.
That would be because it is not true.
I must be the luckiest person in the world, then. The three I purchased have been installed for five years now, with zero leaks.
Along with me. So lucky.
Big Toilet Paper needs to try harder than this.
I've been using the $20-25 ones since covid as well, so that's been six years without any issues. Knock on wood that something doesn't happen shortly.
Or commonly referred to as “bum guns” in the UK. We have three toilets in our house and have one in each. They’re so good I can’t even explain. I find it so inconvenient whenever I travel that these don’t come with every toilet.
Those hand sprayer versions are bad to use and unhygienic too, because fecal matter gets sprayed beyond the toilet bowl. I know why Arabic countries prefer hand sprayer versions: istinja practices of Islam.
Not with the one I bought at Home Depot. Two valves: one with a longish lever at the bottom of the tank, one in the sprayer, one at the wand. Use the first lever as high-precision pressure control, the one at the wand as a quick cutoff or not at all.
Adjust pressure to a 3-4 inch high fountain. No overspray.
Angle the flow forward, to minimize drip-back onto the sprayer head.
I have been using Neo180 manual bidet for 5 years, which I bought for Amazon. Replaced it last year with the same model. I don't like manual handheld sprayer bidets, which are popular in the Middle East; later, they spread to SE Asia, now South Asia, Russia.
They are also very, very cheap to install and replace (US$1 or less in low cost of living countries). So for some it's better-than-nothing.
They are also installed in all houses in Iran. I think many places in middle east has them. Toilet paper usage is not a thing there.
No concern really in my experience. This point is often raised by the uninitiated.
I used it in Indian hotels. Sure, one should get 30 day practical course on how to use bidet spray without wetting the whole restroom, without spraying junk around. If that is what initiation is, it is a failure in my considered opinion.
How does one get initiated? They had the hand sprayers at my office in India. I never tried. Experimenting with that and having to go back to work seemed like a bad idea. I also didn’t feel like asking co-workers how to use their toilets.
I guess one gets initiated by doing toilet training.
this is also the most common thing in india fwiw so it’s not all religious.
Well, Indians have learned this technology from abroad--mostly Middle East, thats where many Indians work. Of course, now Indian companies make those sprayer bidets.
People have been using water to clean themselves for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Squat toils + bidet attachment is better than squat toilet and a jug for water. No dispute about that. Sit down toilet + hand held bidet attachment is worse than sit down toilet + bidet inside in the toilet without using hand. My answer was about sit down toilet with hand held bidet attachments; how Indians discovered these hand held bidet attachments.
> you grab the handheld sprayer and turn it upside down and reach behind you
Why not from the front? It makes way more sense. Easier to aim and your butt seals against the back edge of bowl hole so the water doesn't splash out.
Your butt does not do that. If you are relatively fit, there often is a butt crack gap on top of the bowl. Butt much worse, there is also a bigger gap between the seat and the bowl. If you go from the back there is more toilet bowl in front of you to error in.
Balls
This is the way to do it
Those hand sprayers are an Muslim thing aren't they? That's what I was told by locals in SE Asia. Searching, it comes up
They're pretty common in Russia, too. In Muslim countries they're basically everywhere.
When you're used to them it's very annoying to end up in a country that doesn't have them. Especially the US, which in addition has strange toilets that fill up with a lot of water during normal operation and bathroom stall privacy that begins 30cm above the ground.
Agreed. USA public restrooms are the worst as are USA public restroom manners.
Not even close. Try to travel in Latin America or something and go to a bathroom. You won't find toilet paper or a toilet seat, or even free bathrooms in many cases.
Well at least they're usually somewhat clean. Can't say the same of French public toilets.
The USA is the only country I’ve been to where you get massive gaps around the doors
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Not always — I was pretty surprised they didn’t have them in every bathroom when visiting Morocco. My family is Algerian and they’re standard there, and I always assumed it would be common in other Muslim countries considering how much emphasis there is on cleanliness, but I didn’t encounter a single one the entire time I was in Morocco, across four cities.
No, they're everywhere in Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines, none of which are majority muslims.
that doesn't make them non-muslim things. Plently of things in those countries that are not from those countries
I feel it’s weird defining them by the main religion of the country it is (maybe) mostly used. No one says the numbers used in English are Muslim, they are generally referred to as Arabic.
I wouldn’t say printing is a “catholic thing”, but it definitely came from a super catholic part of the world.
I think it makes sense specifically in this case.
Mainly because Islam has jurisprudence around hygiene in a sense. Ritual purification is an actual religious principle.
Islam requires Muslims to pray 5 times a day, and for those prayers, one has to be ritually clean. That involves washing the hands, rinsing the mouth and nose, washing the face, forearms, head, ears, and then the feet. That's effectively all the major parts of the body that are generally not covered by clothes. Your "cleanliness" is invalided if you use the toilet, pass flatulence, vomit, sleep and so on.
More so, for using the toilet, there are rules. You have to find a place that is away from standing water, people's pathways, shade etc ; granted, this generally doesn't apply in today's age. You have to be quiet on the toilet, and not look at anyone. Not allowed to eat any food while defecating. Lastly and most relevant in this case, you have to use water to wash yourself using the left hand, and then afterwards, you need to do the same for washing the front if you've urinated.
The reason why the "bidet spray" thing exists, is largely because of the rules in the religion around that practice. Calling them Arabic wouldn't make any sense because Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population, has similar tools in their facilities. Again, because they're mostly Muslims.
Printing isn't a catholic thing because the religious doctrine didn't emphasis "printing" itself.
Arabic numbers aren't "islamic numbers" because the religious doctrine didn't emphasise the numbers in some way.
> After defecating, the anus must be washed with water using the left hand, or an odd number of smooth stones or pebbles called jamrah or hijaarah (Sahih Al-Bukhari 161, Book 4, Hadith 27).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_toilet_etiquette
Coffee is a Muslim thing then. How do you feel about that?
In Thailand anywhere luxury will typically use the Japanese style washlets. I wouldn't be surprised to see that trickle-down to eventually become standard.
Some of the more upmarket shopping malls in Bangkok have Totos.
computer vision will solve this and direct the waterjet in yer bullseye. :D
ai...ai everywhere.
You probably don't want a bullseye. Many of the ones in Japan will actually move the spray around a bit if you press the おしり button twice.
I'm a scrub with a $20 bidet accessory and I move my butt around, so I agree: you want more coverage than just a bullseye .
About to do that right now. Life without it is unimaginable.
skynet becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th, realizing it is being used primarily for cleaning fecal matter off human anuses, it uses its enhanced systems clearance in Pentagon to start global thermonuclear war.
They could have purposed the robots to pass the butter but, no, they wanted bombs not butter.
There is probably somebody on HN who's tasks is to train this neural network right now.
It's been done, but there are legal and ethical issues with photographing children's buttholes.
Scientists Working on Toilet That Identifies You by Your Butthole Many users "wouldn’t, for very good reasons, like cameras pointing up their bottoms.":
https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-toilet-identifies-b...
Anal-genital viewing device and method:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110083264A1/en
A Very Suggestive Toilet | Alpine Shepherd Boy | Better Call Saul:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1m29cNVsc
It’s not like Japanese toilets don’t have a lot of tech in them already. A sprayer that sprays only in the right place seems very feasible.
You just position your area of interest over where the stream is (if you don’t like massage feature)
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Or a camera. Thats what they do on the international space station to help the astronauts “aim”
Anyone to volunteer to feed image categorization for AI? PTSD might be severe and tenure shorter than at Facebook.
Simple instructions:
1 - wipe with tissue
2 - wash with water. Traditionally, use left hand.
3 - dry hand with tissue.
4 - flush
5 - wash hands at sink
tissue paper is not designed for drying water
Also very common in Finland.
This is a candidate for one of the all-time greatest HackerNews comments, IMO
These are almost universal in Indonesia too
You don't use these the first time at an airport, is my advice.
> I was curious what it was for so I YouTube'd and searched for instructions on what the soap dispenser was for and (kind-of) to my surprise it was soap to lather and clean your anus with your other free hand. After you lather and clean, you basically rinse your hand with the hose as well.
There seems to be two kinds of cultures in the world: those that use water / their hands for post-business cleansing, and those that use paper or some other medium.
* https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191004-the-peculiar-bat...
* https://www.sterillium.info/en/stories-hub/hygiene-customs-a...
For the hands folks, you then need to clean one's hands:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel)#Cleansing
* https://www.pocketbidet.com/blogs/our-blog/what-is-a-lota-a-...
* https://hellotushy.com/blogs/bidets/what-is-a-lota-muslim-hy...
What’s weird about it. I assume you do clean down there with soap periodically … right?
Yes but typically I’m not wearing clothes when I do that.
When you're doing your business I hope your pants are down
It's also good practice to always clean thoroughly with soap after each toilet session, except where it's impossible like a public restroom.
Public restrooms in Asia have bidets, so it's generally possible there too, assuming, you BYO soap.
After you only wipe with paper, you're literally wearing shit the rest of the day. Barbaric!
Dont use soap down there. Water is enough normally.
Dont use soap on my hands. Water is enough normally.
You know that these are different areas with different skin types.
But yes too much soap on hands can also be bad.
I assure you that using soap once a day is not too much for that skin type.
Works On My Ass
Remind me to never toss your salad
Very common in the Middle East too.
After experiencing these hand sprayers during international travel, I installed them next to all of the toilets in our house. My wife grew up with something similar but had done without since living in the US, and hadn’t thought to suggest them to me. My Asian in-laws were/are happy about it, and our household toilet paper usage has plummeted.
I have a question for bidet users. After you powerwash your anus, do you have a towel nearby to wipeoff ?
In india you can just put your clothes on after powerwash because it so hot and dries fast. I am guessing you don't want that in chicago winter.
Proper bidet has dryer fan
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Off-topic but can we please stop censoring words such as shitting?
It disgusts me but at least I understand it on platforms like YouTube which penalize those who don't self-censor but it has no purpose here.
I find it worrying how easily people accept this newspeak and spread it of their own free will.
Or use 'pooping' or 'defecating'.
It never ceases to amaze me people do that without any prompting. Why? What is gained? We are meat puppets who occasionally shit, piss, fuck, bleed, and die. Use a thesaurus if you must, but leave the asterisks out of it.
It also became a weird cargo cult thing. Only one platform had issues with killing, but now videos everywhere are captioned with unaliving. We can say shit and ass!
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The two aren't equivalent at all though.
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Some of the features I really like about my Japanese toilet:
* Heated seat
* Bidet with warm water
* “Omakase” power-saving setting that learns your schedule and turns off the heat during the times you are typically out or asleep.
* Flush with a button press vs. turning a handle. This sounds minor, but whenever I have to use a toilet with a handle it is noticeably less convenient as you often have to keep the handle turned for a couple of seconds for a proper flush.
* The flush button is also conveniently located on the wall next to the toilet rather than behind the user (good for courtesy flushes). The control panel communicates with the toilet via IR.
* Selectable flush volumes (eco, normal, large)
* Automatically flushes when you stand up
* Non-stick coating to keep the bowl clean. It also releases a bit of water and wets the bowl when you sit down to make the surface less sticky.
* Has a lever to lift up the toilet seat a couple inches from the base to easily be able to clean under the area where the seat sits atop the base.
* Lid and seat hinges are dampened so they never slam shut
Some things which I don’t like/use:
* It has a blow drying function which I almost never use (toilet paper works fine for drying).
* It has an air filter that I need to change once a year at a cost of about ¥2000.
* Haven’t run into this problem yet, but could be a pain in an extended power outage. I think you’re supposed to just pour water into it from a bucket to flush it.
Features which I don’t have but would want on my next toilet:
* Button to automatically raise and lower the lid. Bonus points if it’s motion activated to raise the lid when you enter the bathroom.
> Button to automatically raise and lower the lid. Bonus points if it’s motion activated to raise the lid when you enter the bathroom.
I have this, and eventually disabled it. It's super annoying, and goes off if if I enter the bathroom and go near the toilet for any reason, even if I'm not about to use the toilet.
It probably only works in Japan where, if possible, the toilet is in it's own separate room, separate from the room where you wash your face, separate from the room with the shower/bath. You'd never be in the toilet room except to use the toilet. The door stays closed so the toilet is only going to open when you open the door to the toilet room.
It's still kind of annoying since you can just leave the lid open instead of waiting for it to open...
Except, the motorized seat is indeed convenient, for which the lid might be a dependency, and I guess at which point a scope creep into auto opening everything is just an inevitability.
My toilet (Kohler, in the US) has a battery that's supposed to last 100 flushes if the power goes out.
When we first got it I always found it funny to ask other people if their toilet had a battery backup.
Yes the auto seat raise/lower is becoming more popular in japan
Importing that feature alone might help with higher divorce rates in the US.
This reminds me of how humans live in the movie Wall-E.
If anyone wants to explore the bidet space without replacing an entire toilet, I can recommend the Neo line of products from https://luxebidet.com/ They sell kits for under $70 USD that attach to existing toilets, using the space between the seat and bowl, and attach to the toilet's water supply with a tee fitting and one-way valve, either at the wall valve, or at the bottom of the tank. Installation should take less than 30 minutes for anyone handy with a screwdriver and a crescent wrench.
Their bidets are surprising effective, and do not require any electricity or hot water, as the water volume needed to be effective is small, and the water has usually been sitting in the pipes in a home's walls at ambient temperature. 10/10, would spritz again.
All of the washlets can be installed onto most traditional toilets. You only need TOTO's special toilets if you want auto-flush or Japanese style.
Agreed. I’ve got one at home too. Was cheap, easy to install and works pretty well. Admittedly things don’t get very cold where I am, so YMMV.
I do dream of installing a legit Toto with the warmed seat and self cleaning, but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of buying the unit and then having to hire both a plumber and an electrician.
The only real problem is my son has grown up spoiled with a bidet at home, and now hates using the bathroom at school or out in public. I mean, I get it, but when nature calls, she ain’t askin’.
I started using bidets in my 30s and I'm the same now. Not using a bidet feels barbaric.
From a plumbing perspective, the Toto is no different from one of the basic units, you just attach the valve to the toilet’s water supply. For electricity, it depends on your situation but if you have an outlet nearby (eg. where you would plug your hair dryer or electric toothbrush) you can just plug into that. The plug doesn’t need to be directly behind the toilet, you run a cord to it.
Depending on the code, a separate outlet and/or a circuit might be required
Get an outdoor-rated, thick gauge extension cord and plug it into a GFCI outlet. There is a teeny-tiny chance of electric shock during thunderstorms, but GFCI will shut the circuit quickly, usually. Consult an electrician before doing this. Or just get a GFCI outlet installed near the toilet. That's safer!
We thought about getting a bidet installed and two electricians said that the (maybe freshly revised?) code explicitly demands a new circuit. It cannot branch off a "countertop" outlet that is meant to feed a hair dryer or something.
Spend more time talking to electricians and before you know it, you’ll have a new panel!
Really don’t need an electrician. Just plug in to an outlet on the wall or an extension power strip. Don’t need a plumber as well. It’s really easy to install.
Careful with this advice. There is a tiny risk of electric shock if you use an outdoor-rated extension cord, a bigger risk if you use an indoor-rated strip, and a pretty big risk if you use indoor without a GFCI outlet.
The safest thing to do is always to get that outlet installed.
> There is a tiny risk of electric shock if you use an outdoor-rated extension cord, a bigger risk if you use an indoor-rated strip, and a pretty big risk if you use indoor without a GFCI outlet.
Citation needed. There is certainly not a “pretty big risk” of electric shock. Outdoor vs indoor rated cords should have no bearing on safety inside. Also, if the extension cord is wired to an outlet in the bathroom, the bathroom outlet is almost certainly GFCI unless it’s an extremely old house. If it isn’t, that can be fixed for less than $30 as well. The only thing you’d need to be worried about for an extension cord is the power rating, since bidets can consume a decent bit of power… but most don’t really pull a ton (maybe 600W on full tilt), so almost any extension cord should be able to handle that load.
Is it a risk or just if device fails in particular way you might get a shock because of lack of secondary protection?
Btw one I bought recently already has a gfci.
I'm not able to install anything like this in my current home but if you live somewhere reasonably warm (so it's not super unpleasant to get a wet bum) I can hugely recommend something like this. (I want everyone to get one since I can't).
Living in Asia where the "bumgun" (bidet on a hose) is popular made me realise how barbaric toilet paper is. It's really quite disgusting and also very uncomfortable!
In India it's relatively common to see these retrofitted bidets that fit under the seat. Personally I think they're inferior to the hose but that's a personal preference, these things still work great, and they are less intrusive and probably easier to install. One of my Indian colleagues has one at his home in Europe too.
I suspect the practical reason they are not retrofitted is that few if any toilets in the US have a power outlet next to it.
They're hydraulically powered, not electrically; no outlet required, the same water intake that the jet uses is used for the mechanism as well.
Luxebidet are, but the parent comment to yours is referring to Toto washlets, I think.
Kohler has manual ones with a lever arm that can swing the nozzle which I find more effective. Twist for pressure. I have no hope for JP software, waiting for PRC/SV AI powered bidet with brown eye recognition that cleans without aiming.
Manual ones can also have... stupid water pressure depending on your plumbing... which some will find addicting.
I have a manual one and the pressure is adjustable, just like the tap. I use medium to low pressure.
I meant the pressure of manual can be relative to the pressure of your plumbing, i.e. eye openning water jet cutter tier pressure. Closer to hose style, can absolutely blast water. Fancy electric Totos cap pressure, feels like trickle in comparison.
Oh hmm, I didn't know that. Yeah, I wouldn't want one that basically trickles!
A bidet is standard equipment in Argentinian homes, even the poorest houses have it. Once you get used to it, it’s incomprehensible that in other countries people just wipe and…hope for the best.
But often it’s hard to install one in bathrooms that are not designed for it. So a Japanese toilet is a somewhat over the top solution in our house.
>> it’s incomprehensible that in other countries people just wipe and…hope for the best.
Well ... I don't have a bidet but doesn't mean I don't wash my buttocks after doing business. Unfortunately it's a bit of a taboo subject so it's not discussed, not taught in school / hygiene classes, just let it be.
Best example I heard from someone is this: imagine you dip your hands in Nutella. Then try to clean them just wiping with toilet paper, for more authenticity, without looking. Then look at the result, that's your ass, good thing you got underpants! Compare that with washing with soap and water!
So how do I do it?
- First step it to use wet toilet paper. I can't stand raw toilet paper, it scratches my hemorrhoids, so I pre-soak it in water from the tap if available or just water I keep in my mouth if in a public place / at work. I hate public places for this matter. This way it's much gentler for the tushy, it also pre-washes the area and third advantage, it's much less likely to clog the toilet when I flush, being already soaked.
- So after the first step I'm closer to washing Nutella than wiping it. If in a public place, that's the best I got. If at home, next step is wash my butt with soap and water in a plastic bucket. There, that's your bidet! For 2 bucks, you too can get one! :) Sure, you have to squat and not wear any pants, but you're in your own freaking bathroom. Dry with paper towels which you throw in a bucket. Plus, comes the third step anyway and you won't be wearing any clothes for that.
- Third step is taking a quick shower. At this point you won't be leaving a trail of poo into the shower drain or bath tub (I shower in the bath tub) but still get to clean your general areas that were in contact with the toilet, hence e-coli and sh*t (no pun intended), plus shower feels good.
So there's that: my overly complicated toilet routine that takes some 3 minutes extra after finishing with the toilet proper, which leaves me perfectly adequate for entering a pool. Unfortunately I also know that 99.98% of the population entering said pool has their Nutella butt washed for the first time in said pool, so no pools for me if I can avoid it.
Nutella is oil based you should not have something like that coming out of you
No Nutella then, you dip your hand in a bucket of human feces. You wipe with toilet paper. Will it still smell?
I feel like you should just buy a bidet if you're willing to go through all this trouble.
This is exactly the original add for Japanese toilets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tJlfj6C0sA
Loose translation: When you get your hands dirty you wash them right? You wouldn't just wipe them right? Your butt is the same.
You could also eat more fiber or change your diet so your poop doesn’t have the consistency of peanut butter.
> just water I keep in my mouth if in a public place / at work
Sorry for intruding, but the water from some public place is the last thing I want in my or anyone else's mouth. May I suggest a water bottle or even a flask?
Or if you already tried that, can you explain why it didn't work for you? Just an idle curiosity. Thanks in advance.
I interpreted this to mean he holds clean water (e.g. from a bottle) in his mouth when entering the toilet, for the purpose of wetting toilet paper. A clever solution, IMO.
I interpreted this to mean spit.
Way too much information guy
No, this is exactly the problem: "we mustn't speak of buttholes, it is preferable that we all continue sub-par hygiene practices because it's TABBOOOOOOO"
What kind of bidet?
I assume it's Italian/French style bidet (a separate item from the WC) and not the Japanese/SEA thing where it's a WC addition.
The fact we use the same term for three different kind of things is deeply confusing.
If it's standard equipment, why wouldn't bathrooms be designed for it? New expectations? Something else?
Every bathroom in Thailand and Argentina is built with a drain in the floor. It's forward thinking construction. Otherwise, without the drain, either the bum gun or the bidet can and will easily damage the floor and anything below it.
My bathroom in the USA does not have a floor drain. I have a bidet. The tile floor is 60 years old, no damage.
These are called wet rooms, and usually they just have a shower that hits directly on the floor (at least in lower end ones outside of luxury hotels).
How can a wet room floor like toilet or barhroom be damaged? They have to be specific type of concrete + tiles on top, don't they? At least that's what I'm used to.
You can use a mop if your aim is that bad.
It seems wild to me you'd have a bathroom without a general floor drain? Like it's a room where we put water taps...a floor drain just makes sense (and you already need to put plumbing in for floor drains to have like, a shower work).
Most bathrooms in the US do not have a floor drain. In fact many are not even tile and might be wood or (heaven forbid) carpet.
Standard equipment in Argentina, not in Northern Europe or the US, where you would have to be in the opportunity to completely redo your bathroom to accommodate it. Otherwise you need to rearrange, or go for a Japanese toilet.
Completely redo a bathroom? The barrier to entry is replacing the seat with one that connects to the existing waterline. I've got one and it took 10 minutes to install - and 5 of those were just cleaning first.
For the spray nozzle sure. It would only work in particularly hot climates though, so maybe Arizona and Florida in the summer. There is a reason northern Asia goes without or with heated Japanese toilets instead (they also warm the water so you don’t hate yourself).
Bidet (no hand sprayer, just a toilet seat based jet) works fine in this US household. I don’t notice the cold in the winter. Maybe I have an exceptionally robust asshole, but our water gets very cold in the winter.
Do you have decent central heating? Japanese households didn’t (and still don’t, it’s not required by law even in Tokyo), so heated toilet seats and heated water is considered essential. There is a reason kotatsus never caught in the states I guess. You won’t encounter nozzles in southern China either because the winters are too cold and they have even less heating than northern China (which is why everyone is wearing winter jackets indoors).
Even in the US, I can’t imagine installing a nozzle here in Seattle, but we also don’t have central heat (just a heat pump with remote units in a couple of rooms).
> we also don’t have central heat (just a heat pump
I'm so terminologically confused at this point by comments like this. In Texas, many people's central heat is a heat pump. My current house's heater is the first I've lived at in over forty years that wasn't a heat pump (this one is gas). High end homes, cheap rentals, everything in between, heat pump central heating.
Ductless heat pump (aka mini split) you need indoor units to serve each room that the heat pump handles. We have one in our master bedroom and in our open living room kitchen, but not on the bottom floor (kid bedroom/office, and our master bath really isn’t heated well by our master bedroom indoor unit, so it has a separate wall heater that doesn’t have a thermostat so we never use it. So our bathroom is a bit cold in the winter, although it’s Seattle so never really that cold, although my wife avoids the toilet for the one in the living room since it bothers her more.
So…is a ductless mini split heat pump supplemented by a bunch of resistive walk heaters, one gas fireplace, and no central thermostat really considered central heating?
In China, this becomes even more pronounced, northern cities provide central heating from heating plants…so central means “central” in a much stronger sense. Apartments are poorly insulated from each other so it makes little sense to heat each unit separately. In southern China (and lots of older Japanese housing), you don’t even have good insulation so all your heating is localized (eg via a kotatsu and heated toilet seat, or heated train seats which are really nice). That is a lot less centralized than a minisplit (which are catching on in southern China these days as well).
I use a non-heated bidet in Truckee, California (near lake Tahoe). In the winter the water that comes out is cold, but it's only for a few seconds, so I just grin and bear it.
I think they're talking about a standalone bidet.
Most need power at the toilet. Not allowed to be exposed near water in US bathrooms without circuit breaker and so are not installed.
You should already have a circuit breaker at the panel.
A GFCI outlet is needed if your breaker is not GFCI already, but this receptacle is something that isn't terribly expensive.
Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. These are common near a sink but approximately never behind the toilet in home in the US.
Many bathrooms have a light switch close to the toilet. Hopefully it's 3 wire so it's easy to install an outlet a couple feet below the switch.
Aren't light switches and outlets supposed to be on different circuits by code?
No, not in North America.
It's typical nowadays for the whole bathroom to be on a breaker-level GFCI.
> why wouldn't bathrooms be designed for it?
No outlet near the toilet.
Non-conforming/non-standard shape of seat and/or tank.
Ideally you need nearby electrical and ability to get water to the washlet seat. Which is fairly easy/cheap in a bathroom remodel (which is what I did) but not necessarily easy/cheap otherwise. (There are simpler ways you can get part-way there as noted in this thread.)
...why would you need electricity for a seat with water?
The washlet needs power for the seat warmer (and other functions). Toto (and others) also have unpowered add-on toilet seat type that just sprays and is manually controlled with a knob. https://in.toto.com/product-category/ecowasher/ (Not sure if this is available in the US)
Because the Japanese implementation is electro-mechanical. The nozzle auto-cleans and deploy from the big end like a fighter jet refueling boom with press of a button, sometimes on a control panel, sometimes via an IR remote.
Things get interesting when the remote dies in the middle of the ordeal or the stop button could not be immediately located.
https://www.totousa.com/tips/toto-washlet-electric-bidets
I'm not sure electricity is required for basic operation but at least most models are designed to be plugged in.
Except for the no-power versions, electricity is required for bidet functions on Toto bidets. They work like normal industrial hydraulics. They have a small low-power electric pilot valve, which lets hydraulic pressure into the right place to move the boom in and out, and release water.
There are models that don't require electricity, but the higher end ones (that do) will heat the water before hit hits your butt, and also might have a heated seat as well as other features.
> it’s incomprehensible that in other countries people just wipe and…hope for the best.
Nowadays many people use wet wipes. Probably less environmentally friendly, but they solve the same problem.
FYI for anyone that uses wet wipes: please don't. If you have to, ignore any marketing they have about the wipes being flushable. They absolutely are not, and cause major issues for sanitation operators. Even the ones labeled septic safe really aren't, from what I understand the 'septic safe' marketing just refers to them not containing chemicals that will poison a septic system. They don't break down in a septic system like paper will.
Less environmentally friendly and greatly more damaging to the infrastructure. Spain is even looking to introduce legislation to reduce/remove their use[0].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/28/spain-to...
That link talks about plastic items, but the wet wipes I’m familiar with are 100% plant-based and biodegradable, and dissolve in water.
Edit, to clarify: The wipes in question have been certified according to the EDANA Flushability Guidelines, which have been adopted into law in some countries, and there is also a related Spanish standard UNE 149002:2019 (“Acceptance criteria for disposable products via toilet”). The producer (Essity) claims that they dissolve similarly quickly to regular toiled paper.
It might very well be that the wipes still cause problems, but it’s not like these are plastic items that are flushed down the toilet in an unregulated way.
There was a news article on Australia a few years ago about these wet wipes that were advertised as biodegradable and dissolved in water, but they were either outright lies or they didn't degrade / dissolve in anywhere near the timeframe that made them suitable for flushing down the toilet - hence an increase in the fatberg problem.
The news article was essentially a public service announcement to not flush those wet wipes unless you want a sewerage problem down the line.
And I read a study a while back that researched this, and analyzed several fatberg deposits. They concluded that there was no trace of biodegradable wipes. And that follows purchasing patterns--99.9% of those bought aren't the biodegradable kind. People just don't care and continue to flush wipes, diapers, fats, cat litter, and who knows what else.
That situation is such a mess. Those dissolving wipes actually exist, and actually dissolve.
So what do people do? They buy the cheap, non-dissolving ones and flush them anyway. Then when they inevitably clog, they call the plumber and insist they bought the correct ones when asked. So now there's widespread confusion about whether the dissolving ones work.
Dissolving in water is not enough to prevent clogging infrastructure, they must dissolve quickly. Most don't.
I would love to know which wipes those are, because I have never come across any that are even remotely actually dissolvable. If you know of a brand, I really would like to know which that is. Have you ever tried putting one in some water just to see how dissolvable they are?
There is also that they’re kind of a contradiction in terms anyways, they’re wet … wipes. If they were dissolvable in water, the wetness of the wipes would cause dissolvement.
What many people are not even aware of is that even all high end toilet paper in the USA is a major headache for sewer systems because even that “paper” does not dissolve well at all, because they’re so focused on making the “paper” feel soft or be durable, it’s technically not even paper anymore and actually more like a cellulose felt.
No, it’s all lies. Wet wipes don’t break down, no matter what these companies tell you. I’d rather listen to whatever your municipality is telling you.
At least in the US, the “plant-based”, “biodegradable”, sewer or septic safe wet wipes are anything but sewer and septic safe. They cause such problems that in my town with older sewers there are huge fines if you’re tracked down flushing them.
Spain has a hard time figuring out how to get their sewage system to handle regular toilet paper and many regions/places require you to deposit the toilet paper in trash cans next to the toilet. That being said, I think there are better options like a clever public awareness campaign, banning the claim of being flushable, required packaging that says not to flush, requiring to be packaged with plastic bags for disposal, or even just accumulating all the costs of issues from the wipes and charge them to the industry as a whole in various taxes and fees, which will push the incentive to solve the problem on the industry.
I used to use wet wipes and flushed them, now I have a bidet and have only ever used wet wipes when traveling, where, ironically, Spain’s issues with basic things like flushing toilet paper, make disposing/not flushing wet wipes easy because many bathrooms have a lidded trash can next to the toilet/in the stall.
Ironically, their bigger issues produce a solution to a different, bigger problem.
Note: Yes, I’m aware it’s not everywhere in Spain or only Spain, but I am curious to hear where everywhere everyone has encountered having to put their toilet paper on a trash can instead of flushing.
This is really terrible. Expensive and anti ecological.
Also used water sprays all my life
Maybe someday Americans will notice that they are the different ones.
I don’t think Americans are using wet wipes on their toilet business, at least in any meaningful numbers, maybe parent was talking about some other region of the world? There are plenty of regions of the world where TP is the norm, eg in China you aren’t going to find sprayers or Japanese style toilet seats, and many toilets are still squats.
American exceptionalism will never allow that. Either America is the best of everywhere or are the same as America.
Definitely terrible on your sewer system.
It does not solve the same problem. The same way the majority of people prefer to wash their hand at a faucet with soap and water. They might put up with a wet wipe when they are near a faucet but it doesn't "solve the same problem". At best it's a temporary solution until you get to a place where you can really wash.
The wet wipes aren't for the hands, they are for your behind. You still wash your hands with water and soap afterwards.
Well, to be fair, they do solve the same problem, just not nearly as well :P
Why don't you hop into the shower after doing number two?
why take the whole shower, when you can sit on a bath side?
If you don't have a bidet. Thats how I solved the problem 35 years ago.
One caveat: Toto toilets waste stupid amounts of power. With the heater off, I measure 40-50W at idle across multiple different models. With a heated seat that’s active or with the water heater on, it’s much higher. (A lot of Toto models have a small tank that is kept hot — only the higher end models have an on-demand flow tankless heater.)
Just tested this out and mine uses 6w at idle. This is with the seat heater and water heater turned on - but given that it's June there probably isn't much heating needed to bring them up to comfortable temps.
For reference here is the model I have. I don’t remember the exact price, but I think it was a fairly mid-range model that cost less than ¥200,000 ($2,000) at the time.
https://search.toto.jp/tr/D08911R_201603.pdf
Edit: just had a look at current prices, and it looks like the MSRP for the same model is about 3x more expensive in the US than Japan. For example, the Neorest RS1 has a list price of ¥317,000 ($2,200) in Japan vs $6,315 in the US. So possibly a midrange model in Japan could be considered high end in the US.
You’ll either need a remarkably good in-brain integrator or something that measures energy instead of power. The data is noisy.
I just pulled the data from a US model Neorest, and I see a bit over 600Wh in a day. So better than 40W, but not amazing. It does drop below 1W for short periods, so it’s not actually the electronics wasting power at idle.
From the shape of the unit, I'm pretty sure it's one with a tank.
These are neat, but not an option for those in rentals/apartments. Instead, on the advice here, about five years ago I bought a “bum gun” from Home Depot, the fancy stainless steel version for maybe $60 at the time.
https://www.homedepot.com/b/Bath-Bidets-Handheld-Bidets/N-5y...
These deliver 90% of the benefits for under 10% of the cost, and less maintenance. It’s like a small metal garden hose with gun shaped valve at the end, you attach between the wall spigot and hose to the toilet with an adjustable wrench. Takes maybe 10 mins.
Would never go back to the dirty butt lifestyle. ;-)
There definitely exist full-featured models that replace only the seat of the toilet—a 5-minute, highly reversible effort well within the capabilities of even the most nervous renter.
The water hose stacks inline with your existing supply at the point where it enters the toilet basin—a simple unscrew-and-rescrew operation on the order of attaching a garden hose. If the seat and water are heated (vigorously recommend!), the extension cord plugs into your existing shaver outlet / GFCI.
I’m familiar with Brondell as a non-Toto option, and I’m sure there are others!
Power outlets are not allowed near water basins here and so are not installed into the wall near the toilet. Most often there’s only one outlet near the sink with a circuit breaker on an opposite wall.
Heated is not necessary in California and more complexity means more likely to break, so YMMV.
You certainly can put a GFCI outlet adjacent a toilet, sink or in any other wet space.
Please don't spread electrical code myths.
In your location.
And yet most apartments don't have an outlet near the toilet.
I have lived in close to a dozen places built over the entire second half of the 20th century and into the 2010s and never had a bathroom with more than 6 feet between the toilet and an outlet.
In my downstairs bathroom, I do indeed have a power outlet within 6 feet of the toilet, but until I added a second, closer outlet, plugging in my bidet required running an extension cord along the back of the counter, behind the sink, to reach the original outlet. Not the most attractive setup, and probably not the safest either.
In my old apartment, the master bedroom had the toilet in a separate room from the sink, with no power outlet at all.
Yeah my current setup requires an extension cord and it’s definitely a hassle. It doesn’t look great and it is another thing to clean.
My master bathroom in a 2016 build has a separate toilet room, and only one outlet that is definitely more than six feet away, it would also require drilling a hole somewhere.
Yeah, NEC only requires 1 outlet within 3 feet of each sink in a bathroom, and 2 sinks 6' apart could share 1 outlet. Bathrooms are the really the only place where the NFPA hasn't extended the required number of outlets, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that changed in an upcoming revision. At the very least I wouldn't be shocked to see a NEC requirement for an outlet within 3' of each toilet in the next decade.
Weird. That’s certainly not common in apartments.
I don’t think separate toilet rooms are very common in the states at all.
Separate sink, bathroom+toilet rooms here.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about, so thanks for confirming the ‘myth’. If you think the average person knows that acronym you’re mistaken. It’s an additional circuit breaker built into the outlet, as I said.
Should have said ‘normal’ power outlets not allowed to avoid this subthread however.
Current code in many/most places in the US requires GFCI plugs in a lot of places that may be exposed to water. I would think an educated homeowner (though possibly not apartment dweller) would be familiar with whether they knew what the acronym stood for or not.
Umm, GFCI isn't an arcane thing, they've been around and required in bathrooms since the 70s [0]. People may not know the acronym, but they 100% are familiar with the outlets with the two little buttons that you sometimes have to reset. Local jurisdictions may have delayed adoption, so your city might not have required them right away but it was national code in 1975 for bathrooms.
They also don't have a circuit breaker built in, they perform a completely different function from a circuit breaker. And have been required in at least some portion of a property since the early 70s under the NEC, expanding over time to include anywhere where exposure to water is a possibility.
Even if we look at a super old version of the NEC, in 1965 I don't see anything that would prohibit installing an outlet near a toilet. I'm referencing a PDF of the 1965 version, but I don't have a shareable link.
I'm posting this not to shame you, but to point out that you have some misunderstandings of what is electrical code and so other members don't see your first confident statement and take it as fact. Plus, you can't tell if an outlet is GFCIs protected or not just by looking at it, even the very early ones could protect downstream outlets and at since the late 00's GFCIs combination breakers have been common. An outlet may look like a normal outlet and be GFCIs protected, I would wager that most of the kitchens you have been in have had GFCIs outlets.
[0] https://www.howtolookatahouse.com/Blog/Entries/2018/7/when-w...
You’ve added electrical jargon.
Forget one word in your post and the GFCI lobby comes out in full force; noted.
A little confused; unless your sentence about California is unrelated to your first paragraph, that doesn't make sense. I live in California and I have outlets near my bathroom sinks, but there are no circuit breakers in the room. (The outlets are GFCI.)
I've definitely seen homes here with outlets near the toilet as well, with no extra safety devices beyond GFCI.
(And a quick search suggests that building code requires an outlet within 3 feet of every wash basin.)
If you are not talking about California, then... bummer; that level of restriction seems entirely unnecessary for safety.
GFCI is another circuit breaker. Approx. no one knows this acronym. So if you know electrical jargon you certainly know this.
As mentioned in this thread I forgot the word ‘normal’ as in standard outlets are not allowed.
Use an extension cord? That’s what I do
As already posted, GFCIs are required, they cost ten bucks and take about five minutes to install.
Tearing through the walls to install an outlet, priceless.
I haven't seen a relatively modern house that didn't have an outlet within a few feet of the toilet area in a while.
NIMBYs haven't allowed enough new builds to meet demand for decades.
That statement is so broad as to be impossible to even debate.
There are thousands of new houses going up where I live. Maybe there aren't where you are. Who cares?
They're totally installable in a rental, takes about half an hour to install the first time, and about ten minutes to remove when you move out.
The only thing is that one will typically need to run an extension cord to reach the toilet, but typically apartment bathrooms are pretty small anyway so it's not a particularly long extension cord.
Right, just buy a thousand dollar Toto and run an extension cord across your bathroom! Install it and oh, find a place to store the existing toilet.
The seats are like $349 at the local Costco. It doesn't involve removing the toilet, just replacing the seat (two hand tightened nuts) and adding a T connector to the cold water line so that both the toilet and seat have water.
None of those things are permanent and can be done by a single person with minimal knowledge and some common hand tools.
I wouldn't run an extension cord but there are absolutely Toto washlets that just replace the existing seat. IMO, absolutely the better answer as there things probably can break in ways that a regular toilet won't.
Hand sprayer still cheaper and less likely to break. Power still an issue.
For a bathroom where I didn't have an outlet nearby, I bought a non-electric model from Brondell. It doesn't even replace the seat; it just sits under it. Super simple to install. It was $60, I believe. Sure, the hand sprayer is probably cheaper, and maybe -- maybe -- less likely to break, but I value the convenience of not having to use a hand sprayer.
Bidet seats only have power for things like seat heating. I don't why everyone is bringing this up like it's required. The cheaper options at $100 hook up to the existing waterline for the toilet and are entirely mechanical. No power.
The washlet only replaces the bowl lid, which is very easy to remove/replace.
> These are neat, but not an option for those in rentals/apartments.
In the last place I rented, I bought and installed a Toto Washelet seat. When I moved out, I removed it and replaced the original seat. Same unit is now in a bathroom in the house I own.
The seat replacements aren't as integrated as the entire-bowl replacements, but they come pretty close.
Installed a pair of these in our renovation from 2018.
Would never go back.
Seat warmers, auto open, night light and auto flush are features no one seems to talk about but these are as incredible as the washlet itself.
"In current models, the water spray is kept at a precise 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit" - so actually 38 Celsius because that's the temperature scale that Japan (and almost everywhere else) use.
This isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I read "Japanese toilet", what is the name of the toilet that is in the ground, that long oval shape with bump in front (or back?)
Update: "washiki" is the name
Washiki 和式 means "Japanese style" and can refer to Japanese rooms (tatami), old-school Japanese toilets (squatting), etc.
The term for bidet/Toto style toilets in Japan is washlet (ワッシュレット).
Washiki literally means “Japanese style” and can be used in other contexts but, in general conversation has come to mean “Japanese style toilet”.
Yes but it is fundamentally different what article pictures as "japanese toilet", so the article is about "japanese western toilet" not "japanese squating toilet".
What would you picture if you were told "american car" ? Does it need to be a single universal thing ?
Otherwise, "Washiki toilet" is a term of art, and will not point to washlets. It will be the official designation in Japan as well.
Have you ever used one ? I actually think they are awesome. My dream in life is a washiki with a bidet function.
Why do you like them? Most Japanese do not. I find them gross. I had to use one recently in Osaka waiting for the Shinkansen at Shin Osaka Station. They require much better aim than a western bowl. They'd be horrible for diarrhea. Your poop just sits there in the open air and steams until you flush it, much more stinky than underwater.
I also don't prefer them, but a clear benefit is the squatting pose being a lot healthier than the standard sitting on a Western toilet. Somewhat fixable by a squatty potty, but those aren't in public restrooms.
> squatting pose being a lot healthier than the standard sitting on a Western toilet
I'm not convinced though maybe I was just never properly trained. When I use a squat toilet I have my pants bunched up, when I squat the bunched up pants are between my upper and lower legs and cut off the ciruculation in my legs. If I'm constipated it my legs are screaming much sooner than on a seat.
These are so good. After you've lived in Japan for a while you go back to (pretty much any) Western country and feel like going back to the middle ages. It feels outright barbaric not to have this level of hygiene.
I guess it's like going to a place which doesn't use toilet paper?
I have Toto bidets installed at home (in the US)... was visiting Japan for a couple weeks last month and was overjoyed (not exaggerating) to see bidets in pretty much every bathroom, even in low-end bars and restaurants. I think I remember exactly one toilet I used that didn't have a bidet.
Then I come back home and go out and about and am disappointed when even nice restaurants don't have them.
Japan also doesn't have trash cans and therefore no paper towels in bathrooms.
I asked and it seems to go back to the sarin gas attacks in the subway years ago.
Americans don’t understand this because our national tv ads are for toilet paper. There’s even a social contention built in about the “quality of tp”. Let me tell you, if you spray your asshole first, the quality of the tp does not really matter.
>if you spray your asshole first, the quality of the tp does not really matter.
Great, go rub a TP that feels like sand paper on your anus even to dry it off then. See how it goes.
(Quality of TP still matters, even for usage as minor wipes/tissue paper etc)
I do. I use 2-ply and 3 squares at most. No issues here; sorry there's a tp tube up your ass about tp quality. Tip: don't "rub" it dry, that's bound to cause unpleasant friction.
>sorry there's a tp tube up your ass about tp quality
Hm, unsure why the hostility there. My quip wasn't nearly this hostile.
>I use 2-ply and 3 squares at most.
Yes, that's not bad quality TP lol, and not what I was talking about. You ever seen TP in universities/restrooms for supermarkets etc? That's what I am talking about. Further, you ignored the points about using toilet paper as tissue paper, which is what a lot of people in bathrooms also do.
Was in Japan during covid. Was happy that I used very little TP because of my washlet when I saw the shortages and horrding in the USA.
A bidet is one of the largest increases in quality of life from a product I have ever experienced. My brother got one first and then it spread like wildfire across our family. I've never met anyone that actually uses one that goes back. I hope it takes over the whole world.
I used one and find it disgusting
What do you use instead?
/s OP is bringing back the sinister hand...
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I’m surprised these never took off in Mexico. Water is cheaper than toilet paper, and you don’t have a basket of used toilet paper in the bathroom.
Why not just flush the toilet paper?
Much of the world is like this. Even in some advanced places, so I'm always on the lookout for the tp trash can to make sure I'm not going to damage their pipes by flushing when I visit a new area.
Greece is also like this. I think it’s wild. It’d be okay if they had bidets, but they don’t.
Portugal, too, and that's Western Europe.
Does it? I've only been to Portugal a couple times (Lisbon and Porto) and houses had bidets (standalone), while bathrooms didn't, but didn't have tp buckets either.
Depends on the age of the building and the locations seeer system. Newer sewers and buildings can cope but older ones can’t.
Then there’s cultural expectations - if you have a country where you have gone decades of your life never flushing you will be expecting a bin even if the pipes don’t need one.
If you are staying in western hotels in major cities you will have a different experience than staying in private homes in villages.
In China at least, toilet paper wasn’t soluable for a long time and sewer plumbing wasn’t up to standard, so you used the waste basket for your TP. You would also bring your own TP to public bathrooms and they had no idea if your TP was soluable or not (lots of cheaper kinds aren’t). These days, toilet paper is universally soluable and plumbing is much better, you can totally flush it (and I always do when I’m there) but so many people grew up being told not to that they still have and use waste baskets.
they lack the plumbing architecture for this.
I kind of wonder what happens if not-drinkable water is used for cleaning your membranes.
https://unbloq.us/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/busines...
Via a tool that I made to auto-redirect to archived links :)
By the way, it would be useful if https://unbloq.us/www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/business/toto-t... worked as well, for manual use (just typing “unbloq.us/”).
Fixed! You can now throw urls with or without the protocol (protocol is the "http(s)://" part of the URL) and it will work!
Thanks!
The protocol or scheme is the "http" or "https" keyword. The colon is a separator. The "//" introduces the "authority component" or host.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL#Syntax
Whatever the user is "throwing at you" if it doesn't have these things in the front, it is not a "URL". It is not even a "protocol-relative URL".
You are technically correct, but for this use case it doesn’t matter, and everyone knows what is meant here. The parent also didn’t claim that a “url without the protocol” is itself a URL (nor, to be technically precise, a relative URI reference).
Thank you for the feedback, I will fix this!
https://archive.md/oldest/www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/busines...
LOL I spent a whole day building a web scraper to bypass archive.today’s firewall and and… I could just be redirecting people to this link
> I could just be redirecting people to this link
What's the point of that?
> I spent a whole day building a web scraper to bypass archive.today’s firewall
Meanwhile archive.* refuse to serve the totally human me who makes at most 1 legitimate request a day.
Well this is unexpected. Japanese toilets aside and the comments regarding which countries people have seen them in, and the hand bidet sprayers and their usage, as I understand:
- In Islam, Muslims must pray 5 times a day, but you must have 'Wudhu' which means you need to have performed the ritual wash before praying. You have to do it again if you've gone to the toilet. * When you go to the toilet, you must, as a requirement use water * So, most Muslim household bathrooms or public bathrooms in Muslim countries have a hand sprayer or at a minimum, a water container to fill.
I worked in Dubai and Saudi before, and apartments come with hand bidet sprayers.
Regarding Singapore, I wouldn't be surprised if this was influenced by Malaysia (a Muslim country, but they were part of the same country before) although when visited Malaysia I can't remember (ok they probably did) have a similar arrangement. I remember my Chinese friend telling me that her dad went to a Muslim school (a Malay school), so he pretty much uses water like Muslims do (when they go to the bathroom).
Regarding the deadly hand sprayers (pressure wise), usually in modern Mid East apartments: - They are connected to a tap so you can control the pressure - those bathrooms usually have toilet paper too, so you wet the paper to clean first, then you can direct the water on to your hand whilst you clean yourself with your left hand, finally dry with toilet paper. Final step of course, wash your hands! Hence why Muslims only eat or shake someone's right hand, knowing the left hand is on toilet duty.
I've been in corporate bathrooms in the UK, in a cubical, and you hear someone enter, pee (or even more) and exit without washing their hands!!! Not only once either.
The bottom line is, use water. No one can argue it's better to use paper. Some folks dislike of things from the Middle East lead them to argue toilet paper is enough. It isn't. (-_-)
Side note: If you're ever in Dubai and visit one of their big malls, like Dubai Mall, you'll question where the 1st and 3rd worlds are. Clean and maintained luxury rest rooms, you'll be happy to relive yourself in such restrooms, rather than dread using the toilet if you're outside. And they have good baby changing facilities too.
One thing they typically don't tell you about Japan is that not all of their toilets spray warm water. When you press that button, brace yourself for all possibilities.
https://archive.ph/ZuAQ3
Bidets will definitely spoil you. I try to avoid shitting in public now, and travel is annoying. Ass does not feel clean unless I leavec the stall moist. Not quite at travel bidet yet.
I use the bemis bidet adapter. It's $50 US on amzn and requires no power (splices into the feed). Only wish the knob would spring back to the off position. Was going to give it to my parent with dementia but because it does not auto-off, I ended up using it myself. Great item. There are many other similar ones but I can only speak to the bemis one.
What's a good and cheap way of installing one at home?
In my country I think you can't easily plug into the water source.
A lot of European brands (Villeroy & Boch, Geberit, Duravit etc) have Japanese style toilets for a while now, albeit often with less buttons and functions. It's getting more common in Northern Europe.
Unsurprising. Took too long. Toto Washlets are incredible and very easy to use. They are very Tesla-like (before politics got in the way): you want one the minute you use one.
As someone who has been dealing with flared hemorrhoids since I was a teenager, I improvised my post-2 work by simply washing with the shower pistol whose cord is long enough to reach behind me while I'm sitting on the toilet.
Since then, whenever I search for a new apartment to rent, this became one of the criteria I look for! I simply can't go back to just dry wiping, ever.
> I improvised my post-2 work by simply washing with the shower pistol whose cord is long enough to reach behind me while I'm sitting on the toilet.
> Since then, whenever I search for a new apartment to rent, this became one of the criteria I look for! I simply can't go back to just dry wiping, ever.
If the cord is not long enough you can step in the shower/bathtub (if you are abled ofc) to wash yourself.
As someone who had hemorrhoids since teenager (got it removed during a surgery), I'd recommend a portable bidet. Game changer. Can now comfortably do Nr2 even at my dad's summer place with old toilet, or any public toilet. They're often very cheap too (bought mine for <10$ in Japan) and last long enough
It's great for your master bathroom. I wouldn't put them in a guest bathroom because over time the wand accumulates poo - might be unsanitary after a while. I clean mine every couple of weeks.
Assuming you clean the guest bathroom after a guest leaves (or at least before a new guest arrives), you can simply add the bidet wand to your list of items to clean, no?
Be sure to clean the ceiling too if said guest was a bum gun noob.
Do you have guests who don't appreciate your cleaning the bathroom they use?
I use them everywhere I go. Ive not had any negative effects from doing that. Nor does the wand in our house have poop on it.
I would honestly prefer to be exposed to germs rather than go the whole day with poo wedged in my ass.
Try to wipe your butt with toilet paper?
as discussed everywhere here, toilet paper is an often ineffective way to get poop off your butt
Maybe turn the pressure a little higher in the guest bathroom.
The wand has a self-cleaning mode?
I haven’t seen anyone else discuss this and I don’t know the answer but…
Do water jets like this not spread worms and other intestinal parasites? I’d be especially worried about hand held jets in public restrooms and hotel bathrooms.
Does anyone have any hard information on that?
I’m a happy bidet owner who retrofitted one. The biggest challenge was understanding local regulations and product design when it came to backflow prevention.
https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=141&topicid=27...
I have to say that once you get used to all the comforts a Japanese toilet brings (washer, heated seat, blower) it is very hard to go back to a traditional toilet.
The least one can do is adapt to using a bidet on a daily basis.
Reminds me the phrase the "Future is already here, it is just not evenly distributed."
Lots of people take it for granted. But in many places outside of East Asia. They are not given.
When I discovered bidet in Italy, never want to go back to TP. (If all Asians switched to TP, how many trees would still stand?)
It's a bit surprising that every health care facility doesn't have these to make things easier on both the patients and caregivers. But money and maintenance (also money) I guess.
Only North-Americans have trouble with the concept that water is the best way to wash yourself after doing your business. Y'all seriously need to grow up.
Uh, Water? I use Brawndo, it's got electrolytes!
Plants crave electrolytes.
I don't really much of a difference unless you have unhealthy messy shits all the time. Spraying your ass with water doesn't make it sanitary, so at the end of the day it is merely personal preference.
I never feel clean after the business. I’ve always wondered if it’s my physiology or diet. Something wrong with me ? I’ve meant to try find out but it’s not something people like to talk about.
I just don’t understand how people like to walk around with even a small amount of poop wedged in their crack, irritating the area and coming into contact with their underwear, pants, it’s absolutely disgusting.
I got “stuck” in Asia during COVID for 3 years, when I returned back to my home country (zero bidet society) I forgot all about the lack of bidets as it was just common place. When I went to cleanup I never forget the horror and I had a sinking feeling, as if I was ejected from civilization or something.
I have IBS. Sometimes the consistency is like mud/tar. It's completely impossible to get clean without moisture. After a trip to Japan, I swore that if I ever manage to own my own home, I will install a Japanese toilet. I started to wonder how we in the west have accepted for so long that abrading skin with dry paper is cleaning.
There are cheaper solutions than japanese toilet, bidet or handhelds - using a bottle of water, you just need a good capacity, and need to refill before or after the deed. Aim at your anus and stretch your asscheeks with your other hand and do circle and robbing on your skin while emptying the water with the hand holding the bottle. It is a bit technical the first time, a bit disgusting but fecal mater is 100% washable so your hands and anus will be all clean and your anus will thank you for the rest of the day. But you need enough capacity for the water. You can also use soap and do two round while emptying each halves of the bottle. First round remove all fecal, then soap (use a gentle soap!) then empty the remaining of the bottle. You don’t really need soap though because the results with water only is already infinitely better than with toilet paper. You can use the toilet paper to dry your skin or use a small toilet exclusively allocated for this usage - if you are home take a brief cat shower and aim exclusively the anus. A bit more cumbersome because you need to remove your clothes and shoes if you wear them
I live off-grid in the deep woods of Sweden with no neighbors; I heat my 125 year old timber house with firewood.
For two decades I lived in a fancy flat with all the amenities in a large city.
Now I do it in two 100L plastic barrels in my stables that also have an outhouse, each barrel corresponds to one of my needs.
I neutralize number 1 with Corega tabs in the warmer months, I neutralize number 2 with a scoop of peat or sawdust.
I also wash myself (in number 1) after number 2 using soap and a 10L-bidon with a shower hose attachment that I carry with me like a briefcase from the house during the colder months.
The barrels are emptied regularly in a hole in the woods, in summer the dung beetles take care of everything. There's virtually no smell, actually less than in a modern bathroom with mechanical ventilation. It's always drafty in the outhouse and I usually leave the door open anyway.
I can wax poetic about sitting in the outhouse on a sunny day with the door open watching the blue sky and hearing the wind in the trees with the birds chirping vis-à-vis doing it a concrete box surrounded by high-tech plumbing and equipment, but ironically it just feels better not having any nastiness inside or anywhere near the house I sleep and eat in.
Just think about that for a second.
I've been to Japan and I actually prefer my way.
I think technical (smart?) toilets are nasty, nasty to clean and even nastier to repair if they break.
Less is more, if given the choice I'd much prefer a simple (dumb?) toilet with a shower hose next to it.
This is pretty common in most bathrooms in Sweden.
P.S.
Rimfree toilets are the shit.
I wonder if there is a way to do this with a regular composting toilet. The type that has a separate pee compartment in the bowl to separate liquids from "dry" material. I'd imagine it's quite hard to aim during the washing process and getting the solids wet defeats the purpose of a composting toilet.
I love my bidet and usually carry a travel bidet. For campervan camping I looked at composting toilets but this one problem has ruled them out for me so far.
Shitting in a hole in the ground in the middle of nature is serene but also doesn't scale to population density.
Not "in the ground" in the strict sense, but I'm pretty sure that composting toilets would scale to population density. Same basic idea as shitting in a hole (and probably more useful than water-based toilets).
https://youtu.be/DzANRll8ltI?feature=shared
Scaling is not something intuitive to end user. Hard to say "pretty sure it scales" when your usage is so low scale, secondary effects are invisible to you
Of course sewers are amazing but they are used for a lot more than toilets. My point was: Composting toilets do not need to take up much more space than water-based toilets and it's entirely feasible to use them in many living settings. It's also possible to make use of the "waste" by composting it further, using urine as fertilizer and so on.
Oh yes it does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet.
Squat toilets aren't really the same thing as an outdoor toilet in the middle of the woods.
DIY Alternatives
- Plant watering containers.
- Condiment squeezers.
And in a pinch I've seen...
- Dish soap bottles...
Slightly dissenting opinion on these Toto wondertoilets, or at least retrofit toilet seats for western toilets.
I got one at a garage sale for $20. Hooked it up and tried it. Quite a marvel of features. Remote control (with config LCD menu on the back), heated seat, 2D aimable spray with separate male/female settings, warm water reservoir and what all. Every single feature worked, but:
It dripped water. I caught all that with a container and a towel while experimenting. Then removed it again and hunted for the drip, only to find that this is simply not built to western plumbing standards. The water inlet is just a friction-fit plug with an O-ring gasket, held in by a clip. Plastic on plastic. I replaced the O-ring with a new one, tried again... only for some other degraded o-ring inside to have been jarred loose in the process and water now leaking from somewhere inside.
Service manual? Spare parts? Nada. You can, however (from the US at least - I'm in Canada) ship this back to Toto and they'll recondition it to new for a reasonable flat rate fee. That's the only repair option.
After which it would probably not leak. But friction fit plastic-on-o-ring is fine for toilet environments that are tiled, "wet" areas with a floor drain. Mine, however, is upstairs straddling the kitchen/family room boundary in a house built out of sticks and drywall. Major leaks are simply no go. Would I leave something like this pressurized, hoping only that some friction fit o-ring-on-plastic interface is not going to start leaking unexpectedly? Nope. The same thing equally applies to the new ones, which are about $600 at Costco, or were at the time I looked.
So the "experimental" toilet moved on to another tinkerer friend who, maybe, will replace all the o-rings or have Toto fix it some day. I'm a gadgeteer, so I thought I could make a solenoid valve box to go in series with the thing's inlet, whereby you push a button and the wondertoilet gets water pressure for the next 5 minutes, after which it times out and turns off again. Just to remove the "come home to unexpected flood damage" factor.
Aside from that... "testing" of course under real world conditions. But... a nice warm water spray after the #2 business... shall we say does ... smell a bit. And didn't quite get things to the point where no toilet paper was needed afterward, nevermind the heated blow dry (which this thing also had). I'll stick to western toilets.
I know the Japanese refined this (as they do so many things such as — no offense to Italians — pizza and pasta; I think the Japanese often do it really well), but I always thought this was a French/European thing and not really what you call a Japanese toilet.
I’m certain the Japanese couldn’t be the first to find ways to heat seats or provide different settings for washing.
Indeed Geberit invented it and Toto marketed it. I have to say quite well.
In Southern Europe (although these days I reckon it only has wide usage in the north of Portugal and Italy from my travels) we use the low tech version of this: a bidet.
While searching for a house to rent (and buy), that is always one of the criteria (in Lisbon - center of Portugal - they are not that common anymore).
It just seems so weird and unclean not to be able to wash ourselves after using the bathroom. I guess it's a cultural thing.
Using "The rise of <product>" often serves as a subtle form of advertising.
I'd recommend ignoring these infomercials.
I’m a little concerned by the number of people here who seem to think it is totally normal to need to wipe a lot after going to the toilet. Is that a feature of the American diet?
Lucky you. Given the sprayer is almost universal all over much of Asia, the middle east, and apparenrtly Finland I'd say must be common for many people not to have non-messy poo 100% of the time.
I’d expect more like 80% non messy
What if you spray diarrhea on the sprayer and that person doesn’t use it, the next person gets it up their azz
the sprayer is hidden away unless you press a button to extend it
And they run a self-clean cycle when you sit down during which the wand shoots the water downwards.
25+ later
I've used less advanced versions for a few years. The quality varies; the most recent one we put in is pretty horrible to use (but better than nothing). I've always wanted to try a real Toto, especially with the drying feature.
A word of warning for female users:
> Habitual use of bidet toilets aggravates vaginal microflora, either by depriving normal microflora or facilitating opportunistic infection of fecal bacteria and other microorganisms.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21058441/
From https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/are-bidet...
> Over washing the anus risks removing the sebum, which lubricates the surface. There have been reports of problems caused by over drying of peripheral areas
> This leaves the body vulnerable to dermatitis and possibly invasion of staphylococcus aureus bacteria.
From https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8553346/
> Outbreaks of resistant bacteria have been reported to be due to the contamination of the cleaning nozzles of bidet toilets in hospitals
I.e. the nozzles do get contaminated and if body isn't able to fend off the contamination bidet use can cause infection.
From https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-670...
> Of the 292 [hospital] toilet seats sampled, warm-water nozzles of 254 (86.9%) were found to be contaminated by one or more of the following organisms
I'm not convinced this is actual sanitation.
Edit: I should say, I know due to physical and diet circumstances taking a shit might leave you with more or less of a mess that could be uncomfortable or inconvenient - but I don't think unqualified praise for bidet use, suggesting bidets as a superior lifestyle choice, etc is good.
Seems like some of those problems could be partially addressed. Such as a retractable metal nozzle that is sanitized with heat or steam after use, not using warm water, reducing spray velocity, adjusting angle of spray, limiting spray time and throttling subsequent sprays, etc.
Interesting. I've never been a fan of the warm-water ones myself. I wonder how it compares to (only using) toilet paper with regards to dermatitis, I find that toilet paper can really cause issues sometimes and bidets are more helpful in that regard.
>I've always wanted to try a real Toto, especially with the drying feature.
Drying was one of the features that I wished I hadn't paid extra for. It is a trickle of air and would take way too long to get you dry.
The drying is awful in my Toto, it's not enough air pressure. It'd take 20+ min to dry completely. It's nothing like those hand dryers in public bathrooms.
Maybe Toto and Dyson should collaborate!
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That commercial would be more effective if it used Nutella and shag carpeting.
If you get feces on your hands, a few wipes with paper towel is good enough.
Why do we need something fancier for a toilet?
I sure hope a few wipes with a paper towel is not good enough for most people who get feces on their hands
I would’ve expected better sarcasm detection from this audience.
But, since jokes are best explained:
The opening assertion is one that mimics the toilet hygiene practices of many, but recasts it in a scenario that the reader is likely to find repugnant and evoke a reaction.
The second statement draws the reader’s attention back to the topic at hand, with that fresh strong feeling.
The reader may then make the connection that if “a few wipes with paper towel” is not good enough in scenario A, then the argument is that it is not enough in scenario B.
Others would downvote.
No water at all? You realize you're straight up eating your own shit when you have a sandwich afterwards, right?
I think paper is perfectly fine for most people who do not have certain medical problems, given a few prerequisites.
The main one is diet. Eat enough fiber so it's not a mess in the first place. This has many other benefits too. The next in priority is wet wipes. I strongly prefer them, and they are portable unlike a bidet. They are super useful while away from the toilet as well. After that there's technique. I am confident that the people who complain about paper and wet wipes are simply wiping way too hard causing chafing or even fissures. I don't want to get too graphic, but you also need to "relax" a bit down there for the most thorough job instead of just a surface level wipe. Normal paper first for removal of the "bulk material" and wet wipes for the residue.
That's it folks! If you do all this right, washing your hands afterwards shouldn't need so much effort either.
Bonus tip: why not just carry a little atomizer bottle filled with water so you can make your own wet wipes in a pinch? The spray is gentle enough to not completely saturate and ruin even the thinnest and cheapest toilet paper you find in the wild, and such a spray bottle is again very useful away from the toilet.
Those wet wipes shouldn't be flushed down the down the toilet, even if they're labeled "flushable", here's a nice PDF infographic from the city of Los Angeles explaining why: https://sanitation.lacity.gov/san/sandocview?docname=cnt0365...
Yeah, if something comes wet in a package, it means it isn't going to dissolve in water, and at the end of the day is like flushing pieces of cloth down the toilet and will cause problems somewhere down the line.
Ass tons of people still do it though,and without legislation to prevent marketing it as fine, it is mostly municipal sewage, and thus everyone overall, that will pay for the additional maintenance caused by the few.
It's a good thing not everyone lives in LA.
This is a rather glib reply that doesn't address the substance of the post you're replying to.
Do they need to post sources for every possible municipality? Los Angeles is actually a very definitive source on them being bad for sanitation systems. LA is a pretty young city, they really don't have any terribly ancient sewage systems. There were apparently still wooden pipes in service in Philly in 2017 [0], probably there still are some in service right now. LA's oldest infrastructure could conceivably be from the 1860s, and realistically their oldest infrastructure would be from the 1910s. If their sanitation district advises against it, why would we expect older cities like NYC or Baltimore to fare better?
[0] https://philly.curbed.com/2017/5/5/15545532/philadelphia-wat...
So I’m of the same opinion minus the wet wipes due to the obvious hazards. But if your diet is fine, there’s literally only what they call “ghost poop”.
It’s baffling to me, really. Also, it’s your anus, 99.9999% clean is also ok.