The Prius of Toilets

Recently I've been looking for a dual-flush toilet to replace one of our obsolete 3.5-gallon dinosaurs. For you water-conservers out there: A dual-flush toilet can flush either of two ways - a gallon or less for, umm, light duty and 1.6 gallons for ... well, you get the idea.

The Caroma was too expensive; the Mansfield was too big; and the recently released Toto Aquia seemed just right for our small house. But like the Prius, making the decision to purchase one was the easy part. The local Toto distributor told me they weren't yet able to get the Aquia. Several Denver distributors said the same thing.

I finally found one at Bell Plumbing in Aurora, a Denver suburb about 60 miles from here. Bell apparently has a very good relationship with Toto, because the salesman told us they had the only Aquias in town. "Only 10 were allocated to Denver," said the salesman, almost causing me to laugh out loud at the word "allocated." "You just bought #9. Our distributor tells us it'll be 14 weeks until we can get more."

If the talk of allocations and waiting lists sounds familiar to Prius owners, there was one major difference in our Aquia experience: no jerking us around on the price. In fact, the salesman gave us about 15% off MSRP. I shudder to think how many dollars that would have saved us on the Prius ...

(Posted under Environmental Discussion because water is likely to be a big deal in much of the west before fossil fuels are.)