h a l f b a k e r yLeft for Bread
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Sometimes the water PSI of the crapper design is not enough to do the job. In such situations we have traditionally called upon the utility of the standard plunger to finish what we have started.
Everyone who has resorted to this often necessary measure, knows how unlpleasant it can be. Without
going into detail, plunging can be a messy and often frightening experience. "My god, it's overflowing!" Not to mention, the clean up that is required of the plunger afterwards.
The plunger seat has all the utility of the standard plunger without the mess. The seat, which is composed of the same rubber as most plungers is put in the place of the standard toilet seat or, as some wish to say, cover.
The plunger seat forms a tight seal around the rim of the toilet bowl when closed. A stick, which is kept beside the toilet bowl, is used for the plunging action. When the toilet is flushed and begins to overflow, the user repeatedly sits down in the center of the plunger seat and bounces around there until the clog is removed, allowing the toilet to flush.
The plunger seat which is slightly domed, does not need the rather severe dome of the smaller standard plunger for it is much larger. Because "you need to be able to generate around (+/-) 2 psi with a hand plunger in order to clear a clog... the proposed 'seat' will require 226 lbs of force to do the same amount of work, due to the increased surface area".(2XEntendre, 03) This can apparently be achived by "jumping up and down(2XEntendre, 03)" on it. The slight dome also effectively increases the volume capacity of the bowl, further preventing overflow.
For the plunger to effectively remove the clog in the drain, a rubber skirt is placed around the rim of the toilet bowl so when the plunger forces its tremendous pressure downwards, the skirt presses against the inlets blocking them as a path of least of resitance.
After usage there is no clean-up required. The major drawback of the plunger seat is, depending on design, the inability to sit upon the toilet cover. The Plunger Seat comes in assorted pastel colors.
How Toilets Work
http://www.howstuffworks.com/toilet.htm
Includes an animation (Flash required) [krelnik, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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You can't form a seal around the rim. The water inflow will defeat your purpose. |
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It won't work. When you try to plunge, you'll just make bubbles in the toilet tank (and possibly cause a partial flush). |
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Yeah, waugs is right. To make this work you'd need a modified toilet that had a tightly sealable cut-off valve of some kind between the tank and the bowl. That's the only way your pressure is going to push in the right direction. |
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No, it's not air flow that's the problem. The problem is that when you try to seal over the rim, you're covering both the outlet (plugged drain) and the inlet (water from the tank), both of which are located in the bowl. When you apply pressure, it's not going to push against the plug. Instead it's going to be released back up through the inlet, into the tank. |
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To prevent this, you have to do what krel says, somehow close up the tank inlet while plunging. This will force the pressure against the plug. |
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Would extending the rubber over the inlet work? |
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I can't picture how you'd do that with this device. Inside most bowls, you have a number of inlet areas. There's the large main inlet at the back of the bowl, and a series of smaller inlets around the inside perimeter of the bowl. There'd be no way to cover all of these. |
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Apart from other feasibility issues mentioned above, I've gotten out the tape measure and made a trip to the bathroom (*purely in the name of science*, not what you all were thinking, I did 'that' experiment years ago), with the following conclusion:
While I'm not certain of the dimensions of a normal bowl in other countries, I consider mine to be average here in the US, and it measures approximately 12 inches in diameter. The plunger which I have handy for situations like those described above measures approximately 4 inches in diameter.
I've heard that as a general rule, you need to be able to generate around (+/-) 2 psi with a hand plunger in order to clear a clog. After a couple rounds of pi*r^2, I find that this equates to 25 lbs of force with my 4 inch plunger, which seems about right. The proposed 'seat' will require 226 lbs of force to do the same amount of work, due to the increased surface area.
The problem here is that I don't weigh anywhere near 226 lbs, and would need to jump up and down on the 'seat' to generate the needed pressures.
I think this idea would be better named as "Toilet Trampoline". |
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I appreciate your applied mathematics X2Entendre, and I hope there is some flaw in your reasoning, but I can only hope. To address Waugs, perhaps if a rubber skirt were placed around the rim of the bowl it would press up against the inlets, when pressure is applied, blocking air from entering. Note revisions to idea. |
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You're saying the water inlet is *in the drain*? Not on any toilet I've ever seen. |
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The standard US toilet design has a two main pieces, the "tank" on the back, and the "bowl". The bowl has exactly one water inlet and one water outlet. The outlet obviously is at the floor, the inlet is behind the toilet seat hinge up under the bowl. That inlet "fans out" in the bowl itself to provide water all around the rim and to the siphon jet. |
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As the idea was originally written, the pressure you applied would go out both the inlet and the outlet as waugs described in the first two annotations. (Although fogfreak has an interesting point: why does the siphon jet not cause an issue here with regular plungers?) |
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Anyway, I suggested that if you built a modified toilet that had a closable valve on the inlet, you could turn off that valve before you started using this invention, and waugs' objections would disappear. |
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Hopefully thats clearer to everyone. |
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I don't care whether it works or not, the image of the user bouncing up and down post-crap made me snort tea through my nose. |
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