Looking for Sanitaryware for your new house / renovation of house / office space? There is no single place to feel "fully informed" about the western toilet bowls (European Water Closet or EWC is its official name) you are buying. World Toilet Conference was held in Delhi recently, but still all leading Indian sanitaryware ads on TV and even in news papers only have a romantic theme without any information on product details. It is very difficult to find out from a dealer how much water your toilet will consume and decide on which models suit you best.
It is very difficult to call oneself an "informed buyer" in this space. All the more difficult to find out if it will flush the first time and every time. There are lots of leading and popular manufacturers who rate their products to be consuming very less water. But they never assure that the toilet bowls will flush for sure with that quantity. Imagine yourself being a guest / visitor who uses the toilet which never flushes. You can never come to terms with the embarassment. I had to renovate my house and change the toilet bowls. Chennai has a natural affinity for parryware sanitaryware as they are locally manufactured. Every hardware store will tell you that they are the best. They also tell "there is no service for other brands".
I have never known service men attending to toilet bowls. There are huge margins involved in the Sanitaryware business and the least information is shared. Most of the low end models (for middle class) never flush in the first attempt. May be high end models do, but let us be reasonable that every toilet must flush in the first attempt. If you talk more, the experts will blame the plumber saying that Indian plumbing is "crude". So I decided to ditch the idea of traditional wisdom on selecting the EWC for my house renovation work and decided to choose any other brand which will flush for sure in the first attempt. I wanted to get a toilet bowl like the ones in the US where the bowl siphon works for sure. (those who have seen it will know what I am saying).
But I read the website https://joneakes.com/cgi-bin/getdetailscals.cgi?id=1429 and learnt the drawbacks of the bowl siphon approach and advantages of the Indian (call it European if you want) "wash down" flush. Finally I chose the "Hindware - studio" toilet bowl by reading detailed product specs on their website. I did not expect it to work like a bowl siphon. But after installation (by a very crude plumber who too believed his traditional wisdom), it DID work like a bowl siphon "with the wash down". It had a "suction" action at the final moment of the flushing i.e after all the water has drained from the flush tank into the bowl.
This "ENSURED" that all the faceas was pulled into the drain for sure. There is also the dual flushing system and you can spend 6 liters of water (instead of 3 lts) if you still want to. However the suction action works even on 3 liters and every time. After this I am purchasing 1 more Hindware - Studio for another toilet in my house as well. The one small drawback is that the length of this toilet bowl is 13 inches. It may be a slight problem for bulky "men" (most men are unaware that EWC manufacturers keep the users physical features in mind when designing toilet bowls). But Hindware does have other models like "Constellation" etc whose length is 14 inches and have an identical flushing system. The price I got hindware studio (straw white colour) in chennai was Rs.4036 from Vijay enterprises on Eldams road.
The price of Constellation is Rs.4625 from the same dealer. Hence please feel the want to be an "Informed buyer" and dont get flushed by those romantic ads on TV.
