Zimbabwe residents synchronize toilet flush | Hacker News Reader

Zimbabwe residents synchronize toilet flush

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37 pointsgregcohn51 comments

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.

Haha, Is this true? ...reference?

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

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.

> I once dropped a car into a creek in a third world country

story, please

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)?

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.

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

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?

Do residents in Zimbabwe mostly use a joint water system? Or do they have individual water tanks?

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.

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.

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.

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.

That sounds like a new olympic discipline!

Did it work? The article does not say

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.

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.

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.

I love your website. http://thaddeusquay.com/

edit: I don't really love your website.

What's on my website doesn't change the facts on the ground in the former Rhodesia. Unlike most people with specific belief systems, I feel that I can be objective about anything.

A racist who's too cowardly to own it. Why is racism and cowardice such a common combination?

I'm not a coward. If I was, I would have resisted making my original post, because a coward would care about losing HN points. I make the distinction between "racism" and "racial realism" merely because I care about using terms properly. The latter is more precise, whereas the former is tainted with negativity. Also: Why should I refer to myself using a term which I know others see as negative? I would gladly call myself a "racist" if its meaning were taken to be "someone who sees the differences between races and acts appropriately on that knowledge", or something to that effect.

The symbology on your website is typically seen as negative as well. Perhaps you should consider an alternative there if you are concerned with what others see as negative.

That's a good point, but what you see there is my personal symbol, which is the banner of the Third Reich with the swastika's tips chiseled. The symbolism is therefore unique to me, because, as far as I know, no one else uses it. Also, I give a detailed explanation of whether I am a Nazi. It just takes a few clicks to get to it. I've let that website wither, and really should get it into shape some day.

Let me be very clear: I am saying you are a racist independent of whether or not you recognize differences between races, real or imagined.

Of course it has negative connotations. Most people don't like racists. You can't seem to deal with that, and your weasel words make you a coward. Whose respect are you trying to earn (or keep) anyway? I'll tell you something, owning up to it won't lose you any more respect. But at least you'd be less insufferable.

Okay then, I'm a racist, and I'm only saying that because I don't want to seem as insufferable as you make me out to be. See? I can be accommodating. However, your first sentence is not at all clear, because you contradict yourself. You are saying that I am a racist independent of whether I recognize differences between people based on the concept of "race". Well, no, calling me a "racist" is absolutely dependent on whether I see race as a real thing, not a concept, and on whether I use it to gauge people based on their differences, which are most obviously indicated by skin color.

"Racism is generally defined as actions, practices, or beliefs that reflect the racial worldview: the ideology that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called "races". This ideology entails the belief that members of a race share a set of characteristic traits, abilities, or qualities, that traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural behavioral characteristics are inherited, and that this inheritance means that races can be ranked as innately superior or inferior to others."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

The definition you just quoted fits perfectly with what you said you wished racism meant. Mazel tov!

Why are you arguing about this? Your homework is to go out and tell everyone you know that you're an unrepentant racist.

"the racial reality in sub-Saharan Africa is that blacks have very low IQs."

I've had the pleasure of meeting enough sub-Saharan Africans that I can not only personally call bullshit on this, the statement is so nonsensical it reads to me like a claim that the moon is made of Swiss cheese.

http://amren.com/news/2004/08/solving_the_afr (Solving The African IQ Conundrum: "Winning Personality" Masks Low Scores)

http://amren.com/news/2012/04/six-brain-damage-scourges-that... (Six Brain-Damage Scourges That Cripple IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa)

http://amren.com/news/2012/07/things-fall-apart-greg-cochran... (Things Fall Apart: Greg Cochran’s New Theory of the Cause of Racial Differences in IQ)

Public Service Announcement: the poster you are replying to has decorated their personal homepage with swastikas. I wouldn't waste your time.

What's on my website doesn't change the facts on the ground in the former Rhodesia. Unlike most people with specific belief systems, I feel that I can be objective about anything.

Your objectivity is very, very clear.

>>/dev/null

Throw some facts my way and we'll see how objective I can be.

Well...

To be fair...

When it was called Rhodesia...

They also hung black guys from flying military helicopters with piano wire.

So they can live in a "...fucking shithole...", or they can live in a "...fucking shithole..." where they are hung from helicopters with piano wire.

They say "...the good old days, weren't always good..." That rule DEFINITELY applies here.

following the example set at http://thaddeusquay.deviantart.com/ this dude needs to be banned. he's a real fruit.

As a sub-saharan African(Zambia ).I think your views are terribly short sighted, whether or not the Zimbabwe economy was better during white rule gives you no right to refer to a whole race or group of people across multiple countries as less than. My country just got a bond at the same interest rate as Spain, according to you, the Spaniards are just as "dumb" as the Africans for being in debt and having a bad economy at the moment .Should we throw in the Greeks?,speaking of economies,maybe most of the E.U Let us continue with the illogical statements:Zimbabwe's economy is bad so all sub-saharans are "dull"....Hitler and the NAZI regime caused millions of deaths sooooo all Germans are murders? is that your line of thought? Thinking of any human as being less than yourself and only fit to be treated as such has been the root of most evil. It is people who think like you that have committed some of the worst atrocities.

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