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104

What are your arguments for or against letting it mellow if it is yellow? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 3 months ago by recapitated to c/asklemmy

70 comments fedilink hide all child comments

And if you somehow disagree with flushing it down if it is brown, I suppose I would like to hear about that as well.

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

Always flush. I have a septic tank and if you don't make sure to run some minimum amount of water into it, it'll get crusty and start to have clog problems. As long as we're running water though it's great for 8-10 years between pumps.
Better to just run more water when possible.

Also it's nasty if someone goes to take a dump and there's piss chilling in there. If you get hit with Posideon's kiss it's gonna be double nasty. So you flush it before doing your business and now the net effect is zero anyway, wasting the effort. Blech.

[–] bitwaba 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Posideon's kiss

I believe at that point it's Pissideon's kiss.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Poseidon's kiss

[–] randomaccount43543 4 points 3 months ago

😂 Love the balls poke

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

8-10 years between pump... As in emptying it or as in replacing the pump? Because if it's the former then that's way longer than it should!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

yes, 8-10yr between emptying it. It's a fairly large tank (1800gal iirc?) for a small family. The last time we had it done the local guy said it looked great and there weren't any problems. so something must be working right.

however a rental with a smaller tank constantly had problems with clogging. find out tenant was from california and brought all their water saving fixtures with them and took military style showers so the tank never got any real thru-flow. plus was a very heavy tp user... yeah. gotta have water moving, put original fixtures on and told them to start throwing their tp in a trash can. no problems since.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Septic tanks should be emptied every two years, the tank might look great, it's your drain field that will be ruined way more quickly. People not draining their tank often enough is the reason why municipalities have started just adding it to their taxes and taking care of it themselves instead of letting people contaminate their lot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

yeah that was probably true 30-40 years ago when small tanks without baffles and straight outlet pipes were common. if you have an old property that hasn't had the tank replaced, do that. but these days bigger tanks have baffle separators between settling compartments, an output baffle, and a strainer on the output. you almost never get any solids going out to the leech field unless the strainer collapses and the input will clog long before that is likely to happen.

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[–] Fondots 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I have a friend with a septic tank, the system is old, probably long overdue for some kind of serious maintenance or replacement that they've been putting off because the town is doing some big expansion of the sewer lines and their street is supposed to be on the list for it and they intend to get hooked up to it, but no one seems to know quite when that's coming. Their property also generally has some weird drainage issues and is sort of in a semi-wetland area, so their septic tank sometimes has a hard time dealing with things when we get a lot of rain, so they have to have a let it mellow policy sometimes depending on the weather. Most of the time the guys will just opt to go find a tree in the back yard.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Flush every time. Piss stinks and leaving it in the toilet causes those nasty water-level rings of scum on the toilet bowl. Fucking disgusting.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Grew up on a farm with limited water. Flush a shit, always, and piss only after it started to smell.

Fast forward 20yrs, living in town, have a family and we still do the same.

Water is a valuable resource everywhere; a bit of piss in the dunny really isn't a big deal.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Water is not valuable everywhere. Where I'm at water is very common and cheap. We all live in different situations.

[–] saltesc 5 points 3 months ago

My city flooded because we had too much of it and big rains hit. The dam had to be released which swelled the river and spilled into suburbs along it.

In hindsight, we all should've been under direction to waste as much water possible in the months leading up to it.

[–] Brkdncr 29 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I live in a desert and have my water trucked in every 3 weeks at significant cost.

Flush every time. Piss smells.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why do you use any water for your business? Maybe get some sawdust and bury that in the desert?

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[–] ShadowCatEXE 28 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Always flush. I don’t want to drop a log and have that piss water splash on to me. Not to mention that it just stains the bowl and sometimes smells. Just flush, cause if I see it’s not clear water, I’m going to flush anyway.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But you're a cat and cats poop in a box. Can we really trust your opinion on this important matter?

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago

Increasing water efficiency is likely to result in reduced demand for water, with less water therefore flowing through drains and sewers. Some parties have suggested that this could lead to blockages, drainage problems and homes flooding due to backed up sewerage systems.

In Germany our toilets usually have two buttons, one for the yellow which flushes but with a lower amount of water and the bigger button for the big brown business and maximum water flow.

Depending where you live and depending on drought being a thing in your place of the world, using less water can have unwanted side effects:

backed sewerage systems
not enough water can lead to environmental problems if the sewage isn't watered down enough for your sewage treatment plant to deal with it or if it goes straight to a river it is worse than with more water (that one is always really bad but definitely extremely worse with less water)

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago

Allways flush, leaving pee in the bowl will cause stains and make it look disgusting

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why is your piss yellow and smells? That would be my bigger concern

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Maybe people are trying to conserve water by never drinking any. That'll do it for sure.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Just flush the toilet. Get a water efficient toilet if need be, problem solved

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[–] saltesc 18 points 3 months ago

The more it mellows, the more it smells, especially if you have a healthy diet. The person following has to deal with that smell which worsens the moment the water is agitated.

It's also a breeding ground, so you'll be cleaning much more frequently.

Only if your city has directed saving water in a drought scenario should you be not flushing your waste.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

Everyone saying that piss stinks really need to be drinking more water #Hydro Homies

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

First of all, if you can't smell the uric acid and urea in piss, there's probably something wrong with your nose.

Piss sitting in a bowl for hours will become really stinky later. When leaving the body of a healthy person, piss can be considered sterile. Once it's exposed to air and sits in a bowl however, microorganisms will start living off of it and will reproduce, which alters it and often creates extra smells.

This has nothing to do with how much water you drink. It's just because of urine is how the body gets rid off waste. There are spores in the air and bacteria clinging to difficult to reach areas of the bowl, as well as living in the pipes beyond it. Those will reach the bowl and find some of the waste can still nourish them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

K but if you're drinking water regularly, you're going to be peeing regularly. So you're probably not leaving it to sit for hours. Flush every two pees and it's no problem!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

For real. I have a pissoir in my garage that i don't use too often. Once my dad was over and used it and apparently didn't flush. I went in there a day or two later and it was full of murky brown-ish water that smelled absolutely disgusting. I know the last time he drank water was probably in 2006, but still

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

...or they just live with someone who needs to be drinking more water.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

If I'm living solo, sure, I'll let it mellow, but never brown. If others are around, I never mellow, as a courtesy.

[–] kava 15 points 3 months ago

I only see one argument for not flushing urine, and that's for the environmental impact. However, you also must consider that not flushing urine will force you to clean the toilet more often as urine will stain the sides of the bowl. Without a detailed analysis we can't know which one is worse for the environment, but personally I will always flush.

It takes next to no effort to flush and it keeps the bathroom cleaner.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When the house is sleeping, let it mellow quietly.

When everyone is awake flush, every time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Yeah. Both the adult bedroom and the kids' room are wall-to-wall sith the bathroom. We only flush poop during the night. When it's daytime we flush away though.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

If you don't immediately throw someone who doesn't flush off of your property to never return, you're nasty too.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Flush. Your basic water usage is absolutely miniscule compared to what major companies use. I'll start not-flushing the day they start doing things to minimize their own water waste. I'm taking my hour-long hot shower, too.

[–] fcuks 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I get what you're saying but if the whole population of where ever you are does the same, then the water usage would be huge. and not sure if you were joking but if not, what do you do the whole time in hour long showers, jesus ! haha

[–] kava 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

tl;dr/conclusion: just flush your urine. this post isn't accounting for the increased used of cleaning products caused by urine stains, so really all of these numbers are even lower than they appear. if you actually want to reduce carbon emissions and energy usage, your energy is better spent on political actions. and if you insist on reducing consumption, stop buying avocados and turn off your air conditioning - that's gonna have magnitudes more of an effect than not flushing.

Let's do the math. Average toilet uses about 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³) of water per flush *ᵃ. Flushing doesn't actually use energy, but it takes energy to both

1) treat the water before it gets to your house and

2) to pump that water to your house

It takes about 1 kWh to treat 1,000 gallons of water (3.785 m³) *ᵇ. That translates to about 0.0016 kWh per 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³). So it takes 0.0016 kWh in order to treat the amount of water your toilet flushes in a single flush.

It takes about 3,300 kWh to pump 1 million gallons of water (3785 m³) *ᶜ. That translates to about 0.00528 kWh per 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³). So it takes 0.00528 kWh in order to pump that 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³) of water per flush.

If we add those two together, we get 0.00688 kWh needed to pump and treat the water every time you flush. Let's try and put that amount of energy into reference.

Microwaves use about 1000 watts (1 kW) when running. Therefore, 0.00528 kWh could run a microwave for about 0.318 minutes (or about 19 seconds)

Computer Desktop: Assuming a desktop consumes around 400 watts, 0.00528 kWh would power it for roughly 0.0132 hours (or about 47 seconds)

Toasting Bread: A toaster might use around 1 kW of power. Therefore, 0.00528 kWh could power a toaster for about 0.32 minutes (around 19 seconds)

So, let's see how much energy we would save if every single household in America flushed one time less per day. There are about 125.7 million households in the US *ᵈ. That would translate to about 864,816 kWh per day, assuming every household flushed exactly once less than they usually do. Let's put that figure into reference.

In 2022 the total US consumption of electricity was 4,271.88 TWh *ᵉ which is about 11.7 billion kWh per day. This means that if everybody flushed one time less (meaning 864,816 kWh less), it would reduce total energy consumption by about 0.0074%.

Bitcoin globally consumes around 150 TWh per year *ᶠ, which translates to approximately 411 million kWh per day. 864,816 kWh represents about 0.21% of the total energy spent on Bitcoin mining per day.

Air conditioning consumes approximately 6% of the energy in the US *ᵍ. Since we know that total US consumption in a year is 4,271.88 TWh, that translates to about 702.23 million kWh per day. 864,816 kWh represents about 0.123% of the total energy spent on A/C per day.

sources

a: https://www.savingwater.org/indoors/toilets/how-much-water-does-your-toilet-use/

b: https://www.esmap.org/sites/default/files/esmap-files/FINAL_EECI-WWU_TR001-12_Resized.pdf--

c: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/water/us-water-supply-and-distribution-factsheet

d: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HSD410222

e: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Electricity_consumption

f: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

g: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/air-conditioning

[–] fcuks 4 points 3 months ago

fairs man, you convinced me!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

It still wouldn't compare, fortunately.

And I'm a woman with very thick, long hair. I wash it, condition it, mask it. I scrub the budding calluses on my feet and moisturize, then I shave most of my body.

Granted, hour-long showers only happen once a week, because I only wash my hair once a week, so my everyday showers are more like 30 min, but you'll rip those hour-long ones away over my dead body.

[–] Clent 12 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Piss in the sink. Wash hands. Problem solved!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

better to piss in the sink, than sink in the piss

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Delete the sink, hit hands, problem up.

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[–] EssentialNPC 10 points 3 months ago

I went through a period where I was under doctor's orders to treat any fluid produced by my body as a biohazard. That meant any time I urinated I had to close the lid and flush twice. So yeah, there was no mellowing in that case.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It fucking smells after a few hours. If you have more than one toilet in your house, this can be a real issue if you invite people over.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

Whoever came up with "if it's yellow let it mellow" is a disgusting person. Piss smells. Yes, yours too. Flush the damn toilet!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The more I flush the more water I use.

The more water I use the less money I have.

The less money I have the more sad I am.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So the more pee you have, the happier you are?

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[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble 3 points 3 months ago

Idk about you, but having to smell rotting piss makes me a lot less happy than having a few bucks less every month.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Just flush the fucking toilet. 😬

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