Wash your hands, flush… all in the same place

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/10/2009 (5859 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AT first blush — make that flush — it didn’t sound like a product consumers would wildly embrace.

One of the stars of a plumbing-and-heating trade show that rolled through Winnipeg on Thursday was a new Australian product that combines a toilet and a sink to create a single unit that uses the same water for both purposes.

But the “eeews!” quickly changed to “hmms” when manufacturer’s agent Ryan Neville of Tom Beggs Agencies explained how Caroma Industries’ Profile Smart product works.

Instead of a traditional toilet tank, the Profile Smart unit has a toilet tank with a sink on top. The fresh water you use to wash your hands empties into the toilet tank instead of down the drain, and is used to flush the toilet, thereby saving on water consumption. And to compound the savings, it’s a dual-flush toilet, which uses a piddling three litres of water for small flushes (liquid waste), and 4.8 litres for big flushes (solid waste). That’s about nine litres per flush less than an older, single-flush toilet would use.

The Australian-made product has only been available in Winnipeg for about a month, and Tom Beggs Agencies’ owner Tom Beggs said about half a dozen units have sold so far.

They retail for about $600 and are available at about half a dozen bathroom boutiques in the city.

Blaine Stoll, of Melville Plumbing & Heating in Melville, Sask., was one of the contractors eyeballing the product at Thursday’s trade show, which was organized by the Canadian Institute of Plumbing & Heating (CIPH).

“It wouldn’t be for everyone’s home,” Stoll said. “But I could see applications for it in homes with smaller washrooms.”

Beggs agreed, saying, “homes with small bathrooms and cottages — that’s where they’ll do well.”

The toilet/sink combo was one of a number of new green-technology products on display at the one-day trade show, which featured about 50 exhibitors and drew 300 visitors.

On the other side of the trade-show hall, Richard Goodman of RNG Marketing Inc. was showing off a new Quebec-made product called a Thermo Drain, which recovers about 70 per cent of the heat in waste hot water from things like showers and dishwashers and uses it to heat the cold water that’s entering the home before it gets to the hot-water tank. The product’s manufacturer — EcoInnovation Technologies Inc., estimates the product can reduce water-heating costs by about 40 per cent for an average household.

Goodman said although the product was originally aimed at the residential market, it’s also being installed in a growing number of apartment blocks, hotels and other commercial buildings.

The CIPH’s Western Canada Roadshow is a mini-trade show that gives manufacturers of plumbing and heating products a chance to show off their products to local contractors, wholesalers, engineers and government representatives.

Winnipeg was the first stop on this year’s Roadshow schedule, which includes stops in Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton and Vancouver.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca