• moopet@sh.itjust.works
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    8 hours ago

    My grandmother’s house had a push-button flush in the early 80s when I visited, so probably earlier. She wasn’t wealthy or anything, and it wasn’t a new house at the time. How “modern” is modern?

    • Bunitonito@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      I don’t think they’re modern in the sense that they were recently invented/introduced, but modern in the sense that they’re now becoming a lot more popular in places that have municipal/city sewer hookups.

      Anecdore time: my grandparents built a little cabin on an island when they retired (more Puget Sound than tropical, they weren’t bajillionaires lol), but they had one 30 years ago, alongside an outhouse, simply because draining a septic tank on an island cost a fortune. Septic service company basically uses a pontoon retrofitted with a tank and built up to float with that much weight, and they’d have to transfer that to a septic truck in order to haul it away on the mainland.

      They’ve been around for quite some time, but 20+ years ago you’d probably only encounter them being used in niche places like that, or in a recreational vehicle, or in other parts of the world where the cost of municipal water is a consideration