10 ms·

Zimbabwe residents synchronize toilet flush

37 points by gregcohn 14y ago

dawernik 14y ago
There's something beautiful about simple low tech solutions that require cooperation or blunt force - even if it doesn't work. I once dropped a car into a creek in a third world country and it was deep down a ravine off a cow path. In America, that thing would still be rusting away. But a couple trucks, some super winches and two big guys working for four hours moving it inch by inch by leveraging trees and rocks later and... Thing came out with hardly a scratch. Again, don't know if it will work, but love these types of solutions as a first line of attack before some over architected solve. Im sure there are some good engineering analogs as well.
- zalew 14y ago
  > I once dropped a car into a creek in a third world country story, please
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mynameishere 14y ago
It would certainly empty out the public water towers or cisterns in a hurry.
- krisoft 14y ago
  Exactly my thoughts. If any civil engineering out there could answer the question: Could this type of coordinated action lead to some 'cascading failure' in the water system? Or it would just drastically reduce the pressure, and that's it?
  - stevoski 14y ago
    Do residents in Zimbabwe mostly use a joint water system? Or do they have individual water tanks?
  - snowwindwaves 14y ago
    if everyone simultaneously cooperates to increase the demand on any network beyond its capacity then the the network is not able to supply any additional demand. In the case of the electricity network, either demand is reduced or the whole thing grinds to a halt and nobody gets any power at all when the load exceeds the generation. In the case of the water supply system water would cease to flow at points in the network when pressure reached zero. what is there to fail? an extended demand exceeding supply could empty reservoirs folks who engineer communication networks really have the most control over what to do when demand exceeds capacity as they can prioritize some demand and curtail other demand.
  - jordanb 14y ago
    Toilets have their own reservoirs, so the flush wouldn't have any effect on the supply side of the system. And I think that's the point: there's more water stored in distributed toilet reservoirs than the city could dump in through a centralized point. Refilling them all at once may exceed the city's ability to supply pressure though. If pressure is provided by pumps, they'll increase their flow rate to maintain pressure until they reach their maximum rate, at which point the pressure will fall. On the sewer side, I could see the flush creating water hammers that damage various parts of the system. I could see them reasoning that they can do the flush and then go ahead and repair any water hammer damage, and that will be easier overall dealing with thousands of blockages.
  - gregcohn 14y ago
    This was exactly my question/concern in posing the link. And, of course, I'd love to understand what the consequences of such a failure would be.
- ars 14y ago
  It would do no such thing. 3.4 gallons * 1 million = 3,400,000 gallons. A single typical water tower holds approximately 400,000 to 500,000 gallons, and I'm quite sure a city of that size has more than 7 of them. A small reservoir holds around 500,000,000 gallons.
hinathan 14y ago
This reads like satire — I mean it's a clever idea but I feel like it falls into the 'too cute' category, subject matter aside. Will be curious to see a follow-up as to whether it worked, was a disaster, or turned out to be a hoax or publicity stunt.
malkia 14y ago
That sounds like a new olympic discipline!
PaulMcCartney 14y ago
Did it work? The article does not say
ThaddeusQuay2 14y ago
Synchronized flushing won't change the fact that Zimbabwe is a fucking shithole. This kind of "let's cross our fingers and hope for the best" measure was never necessary when the place was called Rhodesia, because when Whites were in control, they knew how to engineer around droughts. If Mugabe's government would simply stop killing Whites, there might be enough left to help out with such situations, even if they are in the minority.
- cup 14y ago
  This is a beautiful statement in regards to how ignorant and racist it is. Zimbabwe, despite It's history of turmoil and colonial exploitation, is on the verge to economic security and prosperity. I recently met some government ministers from Zimbabwe at a network security conference in Malaysia where they had been instructed by their government to not come back until they understood how to develope respectable and effective network infrastructure that would support the local people. Sure Zimbabwe and many other African countries have issues, but so does every country around the world. The constant perpetual negative cloud that people associate Africa with really denegrates the vast growth and improvements the continent has recently gone through.
  - ThaddeusQuay2 14y ago
    I'm a race realist, and the racial reality in sub-Saharan Africa is that blacks have very low IQs. No amount of foreign aid and wishful thinking will change this fact. You say that it is "on the verge of economic security and prosperity" with the government wanting to "develop respectable and effective network infrastructure that would support the local people", yet you conveniently leave out the fact that Zimbabwe, as Rhodesia, already had all of these things. Whites created economic security, prosperity, and an overall infrastructure which supported everyone, including blacks. It wasn't perfect, just like in South Africa, but it worked, and it did so due to Whites applying their knowledge and creativity to solve hard problems. The current majority, over the last few decades, has been slowly dismantling the civilization which Whites created, while simultaneously drastically increasing the amount of foreign aid the country now needs.
ojiikun 14y ago
This might not work as well as they'd think. We did an experiment in my primary school physics class: hook a fluid pressure sensor up to the class faucet and start graphing the water pressure. We then sent a team to the restroom to flush a toilet. Then two at the same time. Then four. Around eight, the combined flush lowered the water pressure so much that many of them simply refused to work.
- ars 14y ago
  Commercial toilets don't usually have tanks and rely on water pressure for the flush. But (most) home toilets have tanks that act as a buffer and can flush even with no water pressure at all.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
So many of my younger days were spent in Las Vegas and I remember reading about the very real problem of a 5000 room hotel having synchronized flushing. They could run low on water pressure and as a result tanks would not refill, which meant a toilet bowl with no water and sewer smells could come back into the room. As it turned out one of the big bad guys was their porno video channel. It ran basically continuous movies from some flat fee, and whenever a movie ended a large number of flushes would happen, enough to cause a few dry toilets while waiting for pressure to come back up. Their "fix" was a hack to offset the feeds to various floors to move the breaks up.
- srj55 14y ago
  Haha, Is this true? ...reference?
  - adgar 14y ago
    I call bullshit - nobody finishes at the end of the porno.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Yes, but so far I've been unable to cough up the Review-Journal article on it, it would be from 1977 or 78 which is sadly pre-web. Similar effect : http://www.wwdmag.com/super-bowl-flush http://www.wwdmag.com/super-bowl-flush
chaostheory 14y ago
This article is interesting to me because it highlights a symptom of a more commonly occurring problem, even here in the US. Drought or the dwindling supply of cheap drinking water is yet another problem we need to solve.
gregcohn 14y ago
My understanding is that most water pumping and sewage systems are vacuum and pressure driven and reversible -- ie there aren't closing one-way valves between your toilet and the sewer pipe; it's more a system where the 'pressure in' provides the 'pressure out'. Isn't it possible that this could lead to reversal or other catastrophic events -- like in the sense of sewage backing up into freshwater supplies, or massively out some exits in the system (ie some people's toilets)?
blorf 14y ago
lolniggers
antman 14y ago
If this is successful, it will cause a "water hammer" which will effectively destroy the sewage network. In hotels there is a high pressure pipe without locally storing water so if everybody flushes together there won't be too much water. In an apartment building or small hotel the local storage is enough to destroy the building's sewer. It's like if when you had a network congestion the cable broke! The schools in my country go once a year a trip, usually staying in a hotel. It was sort of customary the day they left the hotel to do the synchronized flush thing to see if the hotel survives. The one I witnessed had a sort of thundering noise and the network bursted in a couple of places.

37 points by gregcohn 14y ago

There's something beautiful about simple low tech solutions that require cooperation or blunt force - even if it doesn't work. I once dropped a car into a creek in a third world country and it was deep down a ravine off a cow path. In America, that thing would still be rusting away. But a couple trucks, some super winches and two big guys working for four hours moving it inch by inch by leveraging trees and rocks later and... Thing came out with hardly a scratch. Again, don't know if it will work, but love these types of solutions as a first line of attack before some over architected solve. Im sure there are some good engineering analogs as well.

zalew 14y ago
> I once dropped a car into a creek in a third world country story, please

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mynameishere 14y ago

It would certainly empty out the public water towers or cisterns in a hurry.

krisoft 14y ago
Exactly my thoughts. If any civil engineering out there could answer the question: Could this type of coordinated action lead to some 'cascading failure' in the water system? Or it would just drastically reduce the pressure, and that's it?
- stevoski 14y ago
  Do residents in Zimbabwe mostly use a joint water system? Or do they have individual water tanks?
- snowwindwaves 14y ago
  if everyone simultaneously cooperates to increase the demand on any network beyond its capacity then the the network is not able to supply any additional demand. In the case of the electricity network, either demand is reduced or the whole thing grinds to a halt and nobody gets any power at all when the load exceeds the generation. In the case of the water supply system water would cease to flow at points in the network when pressure reached zero. what is there to fail? an extended demand exceeding supply could empty reservoirs folks who engineer communication networks really have the most control over what to do when demand exceeds capacity as they can prioritize some demand and curtail other demand.
- jordanb 14y ago
  Toilets have their own reservoirs, so the flush wouldn't have any effect on the supply side of the system. And I think that's the point: there's more water stored in distributed toilet reservoirs than the city could dump in through a centralized point. Refilling them all at once may exceed the city's ability to supply pressure though. If pressure is provided by pumps, they'll increase their flow rate to maintain pressure until they reach their maximum rate, at which point the pressure will fall. On the sewer side, I could see the flush creating water hammers that damage various parts of the system. I could see them reasoning that they can do the flush and then go ahead and repair any water hammer damage, and that will be easier overall dealing with thousands of blockages.
- gregcohn 14y ago
  This was exactly my question/concern in posing the link. And, of course, I'd love to understand what the consequences of such a failure would be.
ars 14y ago
It would do no such thing. 3.4 gallons * 1 million = 3,400,000 gallons. A single typical water tower holds approximately 400,000 to 500,000 gallons, and I'm quite sure a city of that size has more than 7 of them. A small reservoir holds around 500,000,000 gallons.

hinathan 14y ago

This reads like satire — I mean it's a clever idea but I feel like it falls into the 'too cute' category, subject matter aside. Will be curious to see a follow-up as to whether it worked, was a disaster, or turned out to be a hoax or publicity stunt.

malkia 14y ago

That sounds like a new olympic discipline!

PaulMcCartney 14y ago

Did it work? The article does not say

ThaddeusQuay2 14y ago

Synchronized flushing won't change the fact that Zimbabwe is a fucking shithole. This kind of "let's cross our fingers and hope for the best" measure was never necessary when the place was called Rhodesia, because when Whites were in control, they knew how to engineer around droughts. If Mugabe's government would simply stop killing Whites, there might be enough left to help out with such situations, even if they are in the minority.

cup 14y ago
This is a beautiful statement in regards to how ignorant and racist it is. Zimbabwe, despite It's history of turmoil and colonial exploitation, is on the verge to economic security and prosperity. I recently met some government ministers from Zimbabwe at a network security conference in Malaysia where they had been instructed by their government to not come back until they understood how to develope respectable and effective network infrastructure that would support the local people. Sure Zimbabwe and many other African countries have issues, but so does every country around the world. The constant perpetual negative cloud that people associate Africa with really denegrates the vast growth and improvements the continent has recently gone through.
- ThaddeusQuay2 14y ago
  I'm a race realist, and the racial reality in sub-Saharan Africa is that blacks have very low IQs. No amount of foreign aid and wishful thinking will change this fact. You say that it is "on the verge of economic security and prosperity" with the government wanting to "develop respectable and effective network infrastructure that would support the local people", yet you conveniently leave out the fact that Zimbabwe, as Rhodesia, already had all of these things. Whites created economic security, prosperity, and an overall infrastructure which supported everyone, including blacks. It wasn't perfect, just like in South Africa, but it worked, and it did so due to Whites applying their knowledge and creativity to solve hard problems. The current majority, over the last few decades, has been slowly dismantling the civilization which Whites created, while simultaneously drastically increasing the amount of foreign aid the country now needs.

ojiikun 14y ago

This might not work as well as they'd think. We did an experiment in my primary school physics class: hook a fluid pressure sensor up to the class faucet and start graphing the water pressure. We then sent a team to the restroom to flush a toilet. Then two at the same time. Then four. Around eight, the combined flush lowered the water pressure so much that many of them simply refused to work.

ars 14y ago
Commercial toilets don't usually have tanks and rely on water pressure for the flush. But (most) home toilets have tanks that act as a buffer and can flush even with no water pressure at all.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

So many of my younger days were spent in Las Vegas and I remember reading about the very real problem of a 5000 room hotel having synchronized flushing. They could run low on water pressure and as a result tanks would not refill, which meant a toilet bowl with no water and sewer smells could come back into the room. As it turned out one of the big bad guys was their porno video channel. It ran basically continuous movies from some flat fee, and whenever a movie ended a large number of flushes would happen, enough to cause a few dry toilets while waiting for pressure to come back up. Their "fix" was a hack to offset the feeds to various floors to move the breaks up.

srj55 14y ago
Haha, Is this true? ...reference?
- adgar 14y ago
  I call bullshit - nobody finishes at the end of the porno.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Yes, but so far I've been unable to cough up the Review-Journal article on it, it would be from 1977 or 78 which is sadly pre-web. Similar effect : http://www.wwdmag.com/super-bowl-flush http://www.wwdmag.com/super-bowl-flush

chaostheory 14y ago

This article is interesting to me because it highlights a symptom of a more commonly occurring problem, even here in the US. Drought or the dwindling supply of cheap drinking water is yet another problem we need to solve.

gregcohn 14y ago

My understanding is that most water pumping and sewage systems are vacuum and pressure driven and reversible -- ie there aren't closing one-way valves between your toilet and the sewer pipe; it's more a system where the 'pressure in' provides the 'pressure out'. Isn't it possible that this could lead to reversal or other catastrophic events -- like in the sense of sewage backing up into freshwater supplies, or massively out some exits in the system (ie some people's toilets)?

blorf 14y ago

lolniggers

antman 14y ago

If this is successful, it will cause a "water hammer" which will effectively destroy the sewage network. In hotels there is a high pressure pipe without locally storing water so if everybody flushes together there won't be too much water. In an apartment building or small hotel the local storage is enough to destroy the building's sewer. It's like if when you had a network congestion the cable broke! The schools in my country go once a year a trip, usually staying in a hotel. It was sort of customary the day they left the hotel to do the synchronized flush thing to see if the hotel survives. The one I witnessed had a sort of thundering noise and the network bursted in a couple of places.