[Carol Costello, Cnn Anchor:] It's not often we report on toilets and flushing. Just one of those things we don't really talk about, for all the right reasons. But all across the country, people are quietly raising a stink about the newer toilets that are out right now. As CNN's Bruce Burkhardt reports, now the toilets are being put to the test.
[Bruce Burkhardt, Cnn Correspondent:] 1.6 gallons, it is the law; ever since 1992 when Congress mandated the low-flow toilet. Since then, there have been complaints.
[Unknown Male:] You have to flush twice some times.
[Burkhardt:] While many blame the 1.6 gallon requirement, it may not be so much a question of how much water as it is, how well the toilet is designed. No sense throwing out the toilet with the toilet water. The fact is, low-flow toilets have saved huge amounts of water. The EPA reports, as do other studies, that the average family of four now uses 20,000 fewer gallons a year, enough to fill a small backyard pool. Here at the National Association of Homebuilder's Research Center, they test stuff: insulation, water heaters, and toilets. This is all the stuff you put down there? MOB HILL,
[National Association Of Homebuilder's Research Center:] This is stuff we can put down there.
[Burkhardt:] Mob Hill heads up the lab where they have developed a new testing method, because the old industry standard flushing 100 small plastic balls was just too easy. What's this stuff?
[Hill:] This stuff is the media we're working with now, or sponges. We've got two kinds of sponges.
[Burkhardt:] You call it what's this called?
[Hill:] Media.
[Burkhardt:] Test media. Do you have to call it the media? Is there I mean can you come up with a better name?
[Hill:] That's what the industry is calling it, is test media.
[Burkhardt:] In this case, the media is a bunch of small sponges, and some of them are weighted with a little nail, so they sink.
[Hill:] Basically we flush a number of sponges and paper wads down the toilet. We do five different, what we call, challenge levels.
[Burkhardt:] Each toilet is flushed repeatedly. They count up what went through, what stayed behind, numbers that are crunched in a computer to come up with the clog potential index. Or as toilet economists might call it, the
[Cpi. Hill:] This toilet left 100 pieces in the bowl from all those flushes.
[Burkhardt:] That's not good.
[Hill:] That's not good; high clog potential index.
[Burkhardt:] Even though the sponges and paper wads work pretty well in these tests, the search for the perfect media goes on. Let her rip [flushing sound]. Until such time, if you have to flush twice, you can always blame it on the media. Here goes [flushing sound]. Bruce Burkhardt, CNN, Upper Marlboro, Maryland.