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Having moved here from overseas - why is it that the United States have not done more to promote dual flush, water saving, eco friendly, green building materials such as this?

I had not seen a toilet that wasn't dual flush for 8 years, until I moved here...

How did you decide on a Caroma rather than, say, a Toto?

Forgive my ignorance of all things plumbing related but what's so special about a dual flush toilet?

Would it not use more water than a regular toilet (dual flush = dual water)? Or does it have sort of a full flush/half flush function?

Clear it up for me folks! :)

wow. i feel like i've been living in a cave... until now, i didn't even know that these existed :( i need to get to europe. stat.

dual flush gives you two options to flush your junk - more water or less water - depending on your needs.

low flow is a different thing though i think - it just uses less water. people complain that they end up using more water by pressing flush more times in order to clear out the junk.

Melissa82 - It's options for full flush/less flush.

I work in a LARGE office building in downtown DC. The day after Earth Day, we came to work to find that, over the weekend, the building management had retrofitted all the toilets to dual-flush. It was great and everybody's into it.

Hee! I have one of these by default. Something in my tank is broken, so you have to hold down the handle for the duration of the flush. I realized I could hold it down a shorter time depending on the state of things, so I've decided not to fix it so I can control how much water I use (or don't).

Better living through [broken] technology!

I first discovered one of these on vacation in Vancouver.
My hubs was super confused when he heard me flush and yell "genius!"
Low-flow if complete BS, we have one here at my office that no joke i once had to flush 6 times in one trip.

Not all Low Flows are the same. We just installed a Toto low flow and it's awesome. One flush takes care of everything - even after an ill-advised trip to Taco Bell (if you know I mean).

Cool! I've never seen that before. It's a great idea.

Ditto on mdeathstar's comment on the toto low flow. My version uses just 1.3 gallons per flush, which is about half of what a normal low-flow toilet uses. I have never had to flush the thing twice to you know, uh, "clear the chamber."
I also had a dual flush toilet in a rental, it worked great. People in this country really net get on this sort of innovation.

Low flow toilets are definitely improving...my parents got a new one in their lake cottage that uses very little water but never has problems. It's totally worth replacing an old one, for the environmental benefits and the water bill savings. When researching, whether you want dual flush or low flow, pay attention to how many gallons a model uses per flush and also ask around/check reviews to see if one flush does indeed do the job.

It's hard to comment about this topic without being gross. :)

What is really lame is that many of us don't have water bills and consequently very little feedback on our water use, or even clear incentive to reduce it.

I'm desperately looking for a new toilet - anybody have a gravity fed eljer titan?

I had no idea a toilet was only $319 bucks. :D

i am with all of you who are saying...what's taking the u.s. so long to catch up with all this? i worked at a summer camp in the texas hill country, and their water-saving technique was to "let the yellow mellow." a dual-flush (or low-flow) toilet seems even better. i rent, and our water bill is divided between the whole building...so it's difficult to know how much we save/waste with our water usage.

Funny we have such problems talking about a product every single one of us has in our homes! Anyway--we need to to replace my low-flush, cheap and broken toilet and Home Depot/Loews offer little for my $250--I was going to search AT today for the topic! I'll look up Toto--any other suggestions on economical low-flush solutions for an old plumbing system would be greatly appreciated.

If you’re considering installing one of these high efficiency toilets, you might want to check out your local water districts for any rebates being offered. For example, Orange County homeowners can apply for a $150 rebate for replacing inefficient toilets (pre-1994 that use up to 3.5 gallons) with HET models.

http://www.mwdoc.com/documents/WUEBrochure.pdf

(The Caroma Sydney model mentioned in the original post is on the qualifying list.) Such a great incentive and worth looking into!

Funny that it's called the "Sydney." I live in Sydney and these are the exact same toilets we have in our bathrooms at work.

Also, if you look at the International Small Cool entry from Sydney you'll notice that they have a dual flush toilet (picture 8). Dual flush toilets are the norm in Australia.

Well, Stoat. that's because Caroma is an Australian company!! Got mine almost 20 years ago, and the recent ones use even less water.

Yet another thing that i miss from Europe.