Deeper into toilets

[Paul Kedrosky]

Here's some more on the recently moribund toilet topic. If you recall, in
response to a discussion of toilets in Pynchon and in Major Motion Pictures,
someone posted about how the powers that be in New York had recently begun
fortifying their toilets, something about how people attacked traditional 
toilets with keen savagery. 

Anyway, the following is something an acquaintance who is an engineer sent me
on the subject. Seems he has direct experience in this area ...

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
To:            "Paul Kedrosky" <pkedrosk at sms.ivey.uwo.ca>
Subject:       Re: (Fwd) What did it ever do to you?

Actually, strangely enough, people are not always the culprits!  I know of
at least one toilet which spontaneously combusted and several others which
had to be "put to sleep" (ie sledgehammer) in order to ensure that some poor
unsuspecting soul was not injured.

Over the last year, a large office/employee facility was installed at [my
company]. Shortly after the building was opened to the employees, a problem was
discovered.  When a plumbing inspector came to inspect the site, one of the
toilets exploded while flushing!  No one was injured but there was very little
left of the toilet.  Seems that the high pressure flush toilets can sometimes
develop too high a pressure due to problems in their manufacture.  All of the
toilets were then smashed in order to ensure that they were not used again
(could really surprise someone if the toilet they are sitting on explodes!). 
We have now installed non-exploding toilets. 

Paul
pkedrosk at sms.ivey.uwo.ca