Most Americans aren’t familiar with the bidet and will stand in a bathroom looking perplexed for a few seconds before figuring out the right appliance to use.

Many Americans are missing out on the benefits of a great invention.

A Bidet is simply a low-slung sink that a user can straddle and wash off harder to reach places. If you’re a man chances are you think the bidet is just a “womanly” device, not true! Plenty of men find a bidet a sanitary pleasing experience.

So the next question is  – How to choose a bidet?

The first thing to think about is the size of your bathroom.  Can you fit a full bidet into it?

Bidet’s take up a lot of room and can cramp a small bathroom. If you just don’t have the space then you can install a bidet kit that will attach to your toilet. It’s much cheaper, you still get all the hygienic benefits, and best of all you save space.

Next to consider is what features you want.  Here are a few of the options:

• Adjustable temperature: The user is able to custom set the bidet temperature. It’s a great comfort feature versus being blasted with a jet of cold tap water.

• Adjustable pressure: Higher end units will have the ability to adjust the pressure from gentle trickle to a forceful spray.

• Versatility: A well-built bidet can serve several functions. It should have a sink stopper that lets you fill the basin with water. This means you can use the bidet as a baby bath.

How to choose a bidet all comes down to the features you want on the unit.  Temperature and pressure controls are a great way to personalize your bidet.

Are you wondering what to look for when buying a toilet? Well there are a few things to consider.

• Color: You can find a toilet in any conceivable color to fit a bathroom, everything from white to pink. If you can’t find it at the store ordering one is just as simple as doing a little online research.

• Style: There are two main types of toilets, round and oval.  This is simply just a style choice as both of them work exactly the same. All that matters is what will look good in your own bathroom.

• Design: If you’re eco friendly then you have a few toilet choices. The first and most common is a low flow toilet. It uses much less water than a traditional one.  Moving up the price scale there are toilets that expand on the low flow principal. Popular in Europe are dual flush toilets. Luckily they are becoming more and more popular in the US.

A dual flush toilet has two buttons on the top of it, one for solid waste and one for liquid waste. Flushing a liquid takes much less water than a solid so why waste the extra water when you don’t have to?

If you’re seriously concerned about the environment you can find composting toilets. These don’t use any water but instead naturally degrade the waste.  They aren’t widely available though and you’ll have to check the local building codes first to ensure you can install one.

Color style and design are what to look for when buying a toilet. You can find one that will suit any household need. Installing a new toilet is a simple task that can be accomplished in under an hour. All you need to do is pop the old one out and put in the new one.

Here is your opportunity to be the King of your castle, well at the very least the King of your throne room.

Take a trip back in time with this olde tyme antique style  toilet,

Comes with a pull chain flush with bell,  there is an ashtray sunk into the arm, a candle holder, a plaque and  a rather attractive painted toilet bowl.

The ‘throne’ is made from solid ash and is coated with 3 layers of polyurethane giving a solid finish.

This toilet will perfectly suit a vintage style bathroom  and can be coordinated with a clawfoot tub to continue the theme.

Now this toilet does more than the general old run of the mill toilet because when the lid is raised  the toilet plays a song about Le Bon Roi Dagobert  (Good King Dagober) which is a song a French king who arrived at the minsters council with his trousers on back to front.

You can find the lyrics to the song here.  And as they are about a French King it stands to reason that they are in written in French.

SPECIFICATIONS:

• The overall height measures 63.3 inch
• The overall width measures 25.5 inch
• Has a standard 1.6 gallons per flush
• Hand-painted toilet bowl and plaque.

CLICK HERE to buy the Herbeau Creations Dagobert Throne Toilet to be the king in your throne room

If asked “Who built the very first toilets?” most people would probably think that the Romans were responsible. After all, they built amazing baths and spas with piped systems. The most famous one is probably at Bath in England, named after the Roman baths that still exist there today, surrounded with columns and watered from a spring of natural mineral water.

When it comes to the humble toilet, the Romans were a long way behind in the queue. Here are some fascinating toilet facts that would bring any dinner party to a screeching halt!

Stone Age Conveniences

During the winter of 1850, the islands of Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, were battered by a huge storm which ripped the grass from a large mound in Sandwick that the locals called Skerrabra. This revealed some stone buildings which underwent various episodes of excavation up until the 1930’s. In the 1970’s, materials from the site underwent radio carbon dating which showed that the settlement was a stone age one, from the late Neolithic period.

The dwellings dated from around 3000 BC. There were probably only 6 to 8 houses on the site at any one time, providing shelter for 50 to 100 inhabitants. And yet an impressively sophisticated draining system existed in the village, which archeologists believe may have included toilet facilities. Some stone huts had drains built under them and some of the houses had cubicles sited over the drains. They may have been some of the very first indoor toilets…very welcome when an Orkney gale was blowing!

Skara Brae is now one of the major tourist attractions on Orkney.

Nile Style…

At around the same time, in Ancient Egypt, wealthy folk had bathrooms inside their homes, which included toilets with seats made from limestone. Underneath the toilet there was a container of sand which was regularly emptied by slaves. The middle classes used clay pots filled with sand. The slaves and poor of the community had to manage on a wooden stool with a hole in it, again positioned over a container of sand…but they had to empty their own!

Indian loos…

Situated where modern day Pakistan now exists, was the Indus Valley Civilization. This was so called because it was along the Indus river basin. These people flourished from 2,600 BC to 1,900 BC. Their streets were in a grid system, as Manhattan is today. Underneath was a network of sewers. The progression here was to toilets that flushed – probably by having a bucket of water thrown down into the holes.

Greek sewers…

Slightly later, (2,000 BC to 1,600 BC) the Minoans on the isle of Crete also had drainage systems incorporating sewage disposal by the ‘flushing’ of toilets with water.

Enter the Romans…

…probably a lot later than you would have thought! In the first and second centuries AD the Romans built the first public lavatories. They would not have been happy places for anyone who was shy as there was no privacy at all – just a row of stone seats next to each other. The Romans built drains that collected rainwater as well as sewerage and had a Goddess of sewers called Cloacina. Despite the public toilets, many people still relieved themselves in the street. It is known that after using the toilet, Romans wiped themselves with a sponge on a stick.

The fall of the Roman Empire…and with it, the loss of drainage systems…

When the Roman Empire fell in 500 AD, plumbing systems disappeared with them for hundreds of years. In the Saxon age, (500 – 800 AD) a toilet was a hole in the ground with a wooden seat over it if you were lucky. For the poor, this was to remain the method of going to the toilet for the next few centuries.

Medieval water pollution…

If you walked past Portchester Castle, in Hampshire, England, during the 12th Century, a common site would be monks sitting on a stone ledge overhanging the sea. The Monks did what they had to do through holes in the ledge and the tide went in and out, taking the sewerage with it.

In the castles of the Middle Ages, the toilet was a vertical shaft topped off with a chilly stone seat, which emptied into the moat. The smell must have been overpowering but people hung their clothes there because they thought the pong would keep moths away. The toilet rooms with clothes hung in them became known as ‘garderobes’ from the French ‘protect clothes’. Over time, this word became changed to ‘wardrobe’ that we use today.

For après toilet hygiene, rich people used rags for wiping whereas the poor used a plant called the woolly mullein.

The first cistern

In 1596, Sir John Harrington invented a lavatory that flushed and had a cistern but for some reason, it wasn’t a hit and people carried on using either chamber pots (the first ‘potties’) which were then emptied into the streets – or just holes over pits. Before flinging the contents of the potty into the street below, it was customary to warn those walking beneath by shouting “gardey loo!” This is thought to have been derived from the French “regardez l’eau” which means “Look! Water!” This is also where the term ‘loo’ probably originated.

Flushed with success

In 1775, Alexander Cumming was given the patent for a lavatory that flushed. This was improved on a few years later in 1778, with a design by Joseph Brahma. In 1782, the U Bend made its’ first appearance. However, toilets that flushed were a luxury for many years and did not come into common use until the late 1800’s. During the 1800’s, most people used an ‘earth closet’ which was a pan, which was used and then had the contents covered by clay, released from a box by the pull of a lever. In rural areas, these earth closets were still in use until the early 1900’s.

Working class homes almost always had outdoor toilets and in the early 1800’s, many homes often shared one, with queues resulting!

At the turn of the century, some homes were built for specially skilled workers and these did have indoor bathrooms and toilets but it was still far from common. Toilet pans were made of porcelain and if you were wealthy, they were often painted or decorated. Seats were almost always wooden and the toilets emptied by pulling a chain fixed to the overhead cistern.

The Thomas Crapper myth

Thomas Crapper didn’t invent the flushing toilet but he did hold the patent for the ballcock. He provided the future King Edward VII with toilets at his new home, Sandringham and received a Royal Warrant for his troubles. He was a great salesman and was the first to have a bathroom and toilet ‘showroom’ so although he didn’t invent the loo, he did a lot to popularize it.

Some Quick Toilet Facts…

• In 1547, it was forbidden for people to relieve themselves in the courtyards of Royal Palaces so there must have been a lot of crossed legs…

• The first public lavatory in London opened in 1852.

• The Ancient Chinese used paper to wipe themselves but packaged toilet paper didn’t go on sale until 1857. It was hard and scratchy and soft paper didn’t appear until 1942. It remained a luxury with most families using torn up newspaper.

• We take our toilets for granted but in developing countries, there are millions of people who still have to use pits and holes in the ground.

• The word lavatory is derived from the Latin ‘lavare’ which means to wash, because in the 1600’s, the ‘lavatory’ was where one washed.

BioLet is a self contained composting toilet system that is easy to use, easy to install and  easy to use.

So if you have a hunting cabin in the woods or somewhere in a remote area where the family spend holidays, or you just live in a house that is off the grid, in fact anywhere where there is no electricity available, then this composting toilet system is ideal for you.

IBiolet have incorporated new innovations incorporated that give you  advanced liquid controls, mixing and air circulation.

This composting toilet is as easy to use as a flush toilet and can be installed in just a few hours by anyone   anyone with basic handyman knowledge.

This toilet system is also idea where solar power is available.

The Biolet 30 NE is designed to accommodate full  time use by  3 people  and part time use for 4 people although the capacity can be increased to accommodate full time use by 4 people  and part time use by 6 people simply  by adding the auxiliary 12VDC fan.

The toilet comes equipped with a convenient drain tube which drains off the excess liquids to an auxiliary container, French drain or leach field.

Once the compost bin has filled you simply transfer the humus to an auxiliary compost container outside for further composting.

So you are doing your bit for the environment by saving water, electricity and providing nutrients for the garden.

Toilets are an integral part of your bathroom décor and functionality and they are available in an extensive range of styles to suit your bathroom design.

They are available in vitreous china or stainless steel and come in a range of colors from muted pastel shades to bold colors as well as the ever popular white. White can be used to great effect as either a contrast or to tone in with other accessories in your bathroom décor.

You can purchase toilets in round, oval or square styles to suit your bathroom design. There are models with a choice of single or dual flush as well as electronic  toilets that do not use water to flush; always a consideration for today’s concern with water conservation.

So remember, give the purchase of toilets a bit of thought and dress up your bathroom décor with an elegant shaped toilet in a colour to compliment your bathroom theme. Complete the overall effect of your bathroom design by having a matching bathroom sink.

And don’t forget that you can use modern designed toilet seats to tone in with your bathroom décor or add some colour to the bathroom.