Ingenious - Sink on Toilet - water goes into toilet to be used in next flush

What a nifty little device. You use the toilet and then wash your hands in the attached sink. The greywater goes into the resevoir to be used in the toilet's next flush.

Perhaps, except I don't see an indicator that shows the toilet tank has enough volume to handle a "full deposit." A half flush just clogs the line, and one is forced to plunge in(to) unsavoury waters.

How about this one then?

Howdy "Elanor"!

Both are great. But how do we know when the tank below the sink is full enough to flush the loo properly?

At my place, capturing the water from the shower as we wait for it to warm up would work like a charm.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Both are great. But how do we know when the tank below the sink is full enough to flush the loo properly?

If the system was designed intelligently, it would have a float system and the tank would direct fill to a minimum level before flushing, if there wasn't enough grey water.

I've seen similar to the first picture and wouldn't buy one as it looks too awkward to use. The second one seems over-sized, but much more user friendly.

Jay Angler wrote:If the system was designed intelligently, it would have a float system and the tank would direct fill to a minimum level before flushing, if there wasn't enough grey water.

Right on -- that would make sense.

Then again, looking at the "life, the universe, and everything" in general, and consumer products in particular, the phrase "if the system was designed intelligently" is wonderfully optimistic. These days it means your toilet is bluetooth connected and will call in your plumber and order a case of meta-soluble-fibre from Amazon without asking you.

I could see this for a half-bath, but I do have issues with it, in a main bath. For one thing, that first one really does look incredibly awkward to use, especially with dresses, nightgowns, robes, etc. I also particularly don't want to brush my teeth (or several other things) quite so close to my toilet, with either design. That means either a need for a second sink, or my house gets redesigned, to move everything I don't want to do over or at the toilet to a different room, which then discombobulates both bathroom and time organization.

Edited to add: in a public lavatory, oh hell no. Too many people would abuse it and leave it disgusting. There is good reason these have never been combined, until now.

Carla Burke wrote:Edited to add: in a public lavatory, oh hell no. Too many people would abuse it and leave it disgusting. There is good reason these have never been combined, until now.

Public toilets generally don't have seat covers, which means people would splash their drippy hands over the toilet seat. YUCK!!! Beyond the yuck factor, I somehow don't think public health departments would let that fly.

That said, if bathrooms were intelligently designed (yes, Douglas, in my dreams, but a lady's allowed to dream) the toilet shut-off wouldn't be 3 inches above the floor in an almost unreachable spot at the back edge of the toilet and would have a simple ball valve that only had to move 90 degrees rather than a valve that's got to spin over 360 degrees.

I suspect that it would be possible with just a slightly higher than average sink, to have it drain several feet sideways to an input to a toilet tank. Personally, if water is that precious, I'd go for sink water being filtered by a mini artificial wetland and then feeding a mini food forest through a weeping system underground. Then install one of the toilet systems that is either like the Wheelie bins at Wheaton Labs, or that vermiculture one out of Spain, where the water is cleaned and distributed to plants.

What I'm still not sure about is how to deal efficiently with large quantities of urine. I need more plants that like to suck up nitrogen in the winter... when there's no sun...

While I'm dreaming, how about intelligently designed small apartment buildings with composting systems pumped to mini-forests and roof-top gardens. Much of our basic city infrastructure is designed with the "away" mentality which was adequate 100 years ago, but is failing us now. Spend on that, rather than gimmicky toilets.

When a toilet is flushed, the water is not confined to the bowl - it sends water droplets into the air. Usually extremely tiny droplets - but sometimes, a toilet will... chug(?) or belch (?), sending bigger splashes, too. Neither is something I'd want to wash or brush my teeth in. 🤢

These toilets are very common in Japan, have been for decades.
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/07/12/201470855/everything-old-is-new-again-the-toilet-sink-edition
That said, they're for washing your hands in, if you prefer to. Most people have a towel hanging directly next to it and close the lid, so you're not dripping everywhere.
Before they got fancy, the water simply flowed through the faucet when you flushed, that was the fill mechanism (with clean water coming directly from the pipe), and you just took advantage of the water that was already "on". The video at the bottom of the page above shows this kind of toilet.
The sink where you brush your teeth was separate and in fact in a different room separated by a door (even now with more consciousness about water use, I don't think anybody would go for that).

I like any chance of using greywater that I can get. I live near water. Because of that we have a septic holding tank. Every single drop of everything that goes down a drain goes into that tank and has to be picked up by the septic man and hauled off.  My bill is $130 per month just to haul away a majority of greywater.  

That Japanese sink/urinal makes more sense than the pooper sink.
Take a leak and when you wash your hands it flushes the urinal too.

I like having a bath/shower that is close to the toilet, with room for a bucket between them
so bath/shower water can be used to flush by bailing water out of the tub and into the bucket
then using that to flush.

It's more work, but it works well.