by liberal japonicus
Here's a little note to put something to get the blog thru the week, Johns Hopkins reports that automatic faucets may be germier than old fashioned ones. It's a bit old (from March), but I thought we needed to put something up. I'd also remind you that, despite appearances, all the posts here, like the good old manual faucets, are not automatic.
Hello, LJ! Is this an open thread? Because, if so, can I point (sadly) to this obituary.
Paula Ettelbrick is someone with whom I have identified. She was a proponent of family, in the most inclusive sense of the word.
Posted by: sapient | October 10, 2011 at 09:03 PM
That article strikes me as very typical specimen of American journalism: it contains a bunch of facts that ostensibly inform you, but are so devoid of context that it actually makes you dumber. After reading it, you'll know less about the world, but you'll think you know more.
For example, if you read Atul Gawande's book Better, you'll learn that infectious disease experts have concluded that hand washing in hospitals simply does not work for limiting the spread of infections. In order to actually clean your hands, you need to wash with much hotter water for much longer than most people are willing to do. Water hot enough to effectively remove infectious agents from your hands is painful, so people don't do it, even when the ID specialists explain to them that they should. Studies that measure compliance with hand washing protocols have repeatedly shown that people just won't do it.
That's why hospitals use alcohol-based gel dispensers instead. Those systems are far more effective at removing infectious agents; they don't hurt, and treatment is a lot less time consuming than hand washing. People have known for a long time now that even medical professionals can't make hand-washing work as a means to limit the spread of infectious disease.
Posted by: Turbulence | October 10, 2011 at 09:06 PM
I thought the article was not about the efficiency of hand washing, but how automatic faucets could be a repository for germs that were dangerous to folks with compromised immune systems. It does have the opening about not having to deal with surface contamination, so I suppose that is problematic in so far as it keeps the notion that handwashing is effective alive, but I was actually hoping for some plumbing stories rather than anything about handwashing protocols, but it is an open thread, so if you want to talk about that, go for it.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | October 10, 2011 at 10:18 PM
It is believed the bacteria counts are higher in the electronic faucets because they have a complicated system of valves that is difficult to clean, researchers said.
KISS
Posted by: russell | October 10, 2011 at 10:31 PM
Russell, I suppose, but when you need to save resources, these automatic devices become quite important. Though I suppose a problem is that if you make things automatic, people don't learn.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | October 10, 2011 at 10:52 PM
I figure I can save resources AND avoid this legionella contamination by not washing my hands.
Just sayin', is all.
Posted by: JakeB | October 10, 2011 at 11:36 PM
(Apologies if this shows up twice. Clean-up requested if it does.)
Plumbing is the art and science of keeping clean water separate from dirty water, I once read somewhere. Like all aphorisms, it's either profound or ridiculous, or maybe both.
I can't think of a good reason why an automatic valve should be a safer harbor for bacteria in (supposedly) clean water than a manual valve. Except maybe one fairly esoteric one:
Any volume of relatively stagnant water can be a breeding ground for bacteria. The typical muscle-powered valve is direct-acting. Human hands (or, why not, feet) can operate large-cross-section poppets or sliders inside flowpaths that get thoroughly flushed on every actuation. There are typically no stagnant volumes inside manual valves.
"Cost-effective" battery-operated valves can't do that. The way they (have to) work is to use a very small, very low-power solenoid to lift a tiny little poppet off a tiny little hole, allowing water to flow into what amounts to a hydraulic cylinder; that pressurizes the cylinder, which then has enough force to actuate the main valve. Fresh water does not flow through the pilot chamber. A little bit of water flows in to pressurize it; a little bit of water flows out of it (to the faucet, typically) when the little solenoid de-activates. The pilot chamber could, I suppose, be stagnant enough, even over many cycles, for bacteria to breed in it.
I can think of all sorts of ways to avoid that stagnation problem, and if I can think of them it would astonish me to learn that the professionals haven't. So I am suspicious of my own hypothesis as to how the automatic valves could be "dirtier" than manual ones.
And now for something completely different on the plumbing theme. It was a quarter-century ago, in Japan, that I encountered a rather clever thing in the employee bathroom of a small company I was visiting. The cover of the toilet tank was basically a sink. The tank refill tube was actually a faucet spout over that sink. You could wash your hands (adequately enough, I thought) in the stream of (fresh) water that was going into the tank anyway to refill it for the next flush. This was not some home-brew set-up; it looked like a commercial plumbing product. Seemed like a sensible thing, but I only ever saw that one instance of it. Maybe lj has seen others?
--TP
Posted by: Tony P. | October 10, 2011 at 11:47 PM
"The typical muscle-powered valve is direct-acting. Human hands (or, why not, feet) can operate large-cross-section poppets or sliders inside flowpaths that get thoroughly flushed on every actuation. There are typically no stagnant volumes inside manual valves."
Three of the greatest sentences in the history of blogging, not to mention plumbing.
You, sir, are a plumbing elitist, according to Joe the Plumber, who is not an elitist nor a plumber, and has been recruited to parlay both of those know nothing "nots" into a run for a Republican plummy position in the House of Representatives with health insurance.
What a world, what a world.
Speaking of plumbing, how come socialists in Europe manage to outfit their hotels and homes with toilets that use little in the way of water but suck waste in a millisecond down the tubes with the power and dramatic noise of a jet engine, and we're stuck with endless and fairly ineffective slo-mo whirlpools of ineffectiveness.
That includes the old-style toilets AND the low water volume toilets ostensibly mandated by various levels of government here.
Americans manage, somehow, to f&ck up both the private and the public.
I wonder what Steve Jobs might have done for toilets, had he bent that way.
Bill Gates is working on toilet technology for the third world, I understand.
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 12:24 AM
No doubt, those gates-inspired toilets will require frequent reflushing after fatal error messages.
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 12:28 AM
The toilet technology here is pretty amazin. The combined sink/toilet is almost everyone, but it obviously doesn't let you soap your hands up. Still, with bird flu, alcohol dispensers are really common as well.
A lot of places have even higher tech stuff. From Wikipedia, which I share in the hopes that countme-in will use it as a starting point for some more reflections.
Other features may include a heated seat, which may be adjustable from 30 °C to 40 °C; an automatic lid equipped with a proximity sensor, which opens and closes based on the location of the user. Some play music to relax the user's sphincter (some Inax toilets, for example, play the first few phrases of Op. 62 Nr. 6 Frühlingslied by Felix Mendelssohn). Other features are automatic flushing, automatic air deodorizing, and a germ-resistant surface.
A number of other gems in that article.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | October 11, 2011 at 12:40 AM
"Speaking of plumbing, how come socialists in Europe manage to outfit their hotels and homes with toilets that use little in the way of water but suck waste in a millisecond down the tubes with the power and dramatic noise of a jet engine, and we're stuck with endless and fairly ineffective slo-mo whirlpools of ineffectiveness."
If I had to guess, I'd say it was because the socialists achieved it by making water really expensive. So people building bathrooms went through the usual selection process with water savings in mind, and picked a generally satisfactory toilet, which the manufacturers had time to get working right.
While here water remains cheap, and the government just abruptly ordered plumbing companies to stop shipping normal fittings. So a whole generation of homes and offices wound up outfitted with toilets which hadn't gone through the usual purchaser vetting process, and were just rushed through to satisfy orders which had been made prior to the law.
So we wound up with a bunch of showers that drool on you, toilets that need to be flushed two or three times, and so forth, because the transition was forced to occur faster than normal, by laws leaving the original incentives in place, and simply ordering manufacturers not to sell what the customers were asking for.
There's a lesson there of general application. Forced transitions are hard transitions, and leaving the old incentives in place while ordering people not to act according to them doesn't work very well.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | October 11, 2011 at 07:28 AM
I think Europe's problems with water predate socialism by a fair piece, Brett.
It ain't all about politics, except for when it is.
That said, I'm trying to score an illegal toilet from Canada.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | October 11, 2011 at 07:54 AM
I thought the article was not about the efficiency of hand washing, but how automatic faucets could be a repository for germs that were dangerous to folks with compromised immune systems.
The bit that matters is patient safety.
Hand washing does not effectively limit the spread of infectious disease. This is true no matter what kind of faucet is used. There are lots of reservoirs of infectious agents; for example, wedding rings generally harbor agents that are never removed during hand washing.
If a hospital is not seriously using alcohol sanitizers, the faucets are irrelevant: immunocompromised patients are already screwed.
Posted by: Turbulence | October 11, 2011 at 08:30 AM
when you need to save resources, these automatic devices become quite important.
A self-closing metering faucet will get it done. 10 seconds of water per push. No electronics, no infrared eye, no microcode, no power supply needed. It's just a simple mechanical doodad.
You do have to touch it, but then you wash your hands afterwards, in the water that comes out when you touch it.
Who knows, maybe they have the same issues. I can't tell you if they have stagnant volumes inside or not.
Maybe Tony P knows.
Anyway, electronic seeing-eye stuff to dispense water and paper towels just seems like wacky overkill to me.
And trying to avoid germ exposure in a public toilet seems, somehow, quixotic. As always, IMVHO.
I think I just have a pronounced anti-gizmo bias. That, and things I can't take apart and figure out bug me.
When it breaks, you can't fix it. This whole sophisticated apparatus to dispense a few seconds' worth of water, and if it breaks you have to throw the whole damned thing away.
That, or ship it to some place in Asia, where folks will gladly strip our trash for whatever little reusable electronic tidbit they can glean. I don't know what they do with them, they probably build some other seeing-eye gizmo out of them and sell it back to us. Maybe a seeing-eye toothpaste dispenser.
We won't do that kind of recycling here, it's not cost effective. We'll just throw it away.
All to dispense a couple of seconds worth of water, in a way that doesn't require anyone to touch a piece of metal. In a public rest room.
How do you get in the public rest room, anyway? Does the door have a handle?
It seems, to me, to be profoundly crazy.
Each to his or her own.
Posted by: russell | October 11, 2011 at 09:15 AM
There are issues, admittedly, whentalking about dealing with people with compromised immune systems.
that said, the largest problem for our immune systems is . . . excessive, not to mention obcessive, concern with avoiding germs. The healthiest kid I know spent infancy crawling around the floor in her mother's store. Was there lots of dirt and stuff there? You bet! And her immune system got built, at the age when it is designed to get built, to handle all of it. As a result, she stays healthy when the rest of her elementary school classmates are coming down with one cold after another.
This is not to say that we made a mistake ingetting waste water separated from drinking water. Just that our culture has gotten a misplaced horror of children playing in the dirt. Including an enthusiasm (driven by persistent marketing campaigns) for disinfecting everything in the house early and often. Sweep the floor regularly? Sure. But mop with Clorox every week (or more!)? Not a good idea.
And, by the same token, automatic faucets are pointless in almost any context where the general public might encounter them. Even if they did reduce germ transmissions.
Posted by: wj | October 11, 2011 at 10:32 AM
Maybe a seeing-eye toothpaste dispenser.
Well, I thought I was making a joke.
But, no.
And as an aside, I find it delightful to read ad copy translated from other languages by (apparently) non-native English speakers. It has the enthusiasm and gee-whiz energy of ad copy everywhere, but also the j-random surprise and sheer found-object zest of the best of Dada.
Fun stuff for free - free as sunshine, right there for everyone to enjoy - always puts a spring in my step.
Posted by: russell | October 11, 2011 at 10:49 AM
I dunno, the push faucets never seem to be timed right. I either seem to need a little more water or I'm finished and the water is still pouring out of the faucet. Of course, I'm not sure that with a push faucet, it would ever be the right amount of water, but that is more an existential kind of question than an engineering one...
Posted by: liberal japonicus | October 11, 2011 at 11:35 AM
I dunno, the push faucets never seem to be timed right
I hear you, LJ.
that is more an existential kind of question than an engineering one...
Aren't they all?
Posted by: russell | October 11, 2011 at 12:25 PM
Yes, I can imagine Charlie Chaplin or Curly Howard doing a solitary bit in a fully automated but poorly actuated bathroom.
I just completed a cross-country drive to and fro from Colorado to Pittsburgh and the highway rest stops offer a highly inconsistent variety of automated technology.
Come to think of it, I did a Curly in the middle of the night in one mid-western state rest stop bathroom wherein the automated sink faucet came on and then shut off as I was dispensing soap but before I could wash. So I moved to the adjacent sink, which wouldn't activate at all, then noticed the first faucet activated, moved back just in time for it to shut off, and then the second faucet activated.
At this point, Curly-style, I ran in place vigorously and began running my soaped palms alternately and quickly from forehead to chin while emitting a high-pitched whine of frustration.
I then barked ferociously at both sinks, and the third one for good measure, at which point the toilet I'd used some moments before finally flushed, either because nothing worked in a timely manner or, and this is what I suspect, a full complement of state highway department employees working the graveyard shift were observing me via the remote security camera (paid for with Homeland Security money), activating various toggle switches for their and my amusement, and having one hell of a jolly time.
Giving up on the hand washing, I moved to the automated paper towel dispenser, punched the button with the side of my fist and was awarded with about an inch and a half of towel, which I tore off in bits and dabbed my hands and face, repeating this routine four of five times, alternating barks, until I was barely presentable to the night time traffic on I-70, punched the button one last time with a karate sidekick out of sheer frustration, at which point the device dispensed over many tens of seconds about four feet of pristine towel.
I talked to the machine, like Curly, "Oh, wise guy, huh!", Moe-slapped myself, turned on my heel and, now slipping into a more dignified Stan Laurel persona, calmly and softly slapped my palms together as if to say "We're done here, aren't we Ollie, thank you very much," and continued on my way.
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 12:36 PM
I'll be back later to relate third-world banyo-dysentery tales, including an illustration of Brett's "forced transition" principle, which I experienced first hand.
Hint: Francis Ford Coppola, builds multi-million dollar "Apocalypse Now" set outside a barrio on the far, primitive east coast of Luzon complete with barracks bathrooms for western crew and extras AND local Filipino workers alike, for many of the latter of whom this was their first experience with modern bathroom technology.
As it happens, this was where Robert Duvall uttered the famous line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"
That's not all that smelled.
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 12:47 PM
I think I just have a pronounced anti-gizmo bias. That, and things I can't take apart and figure out bug me.
For me, the long list of "things I can't take apart and figure out" starts with software :)
The first time I saw a motorized paper-towel dispenser, the conservative (nay, crotchety) part of my mind said "Oh, puhleeeze! Isn't it enough that not even the cheapest new cars have manual windows any more? Do we really need sensors, microprocessors, and motors to pull a foot or so of paper off a roll for us? Kids these days!" The liberal (or perhaps, Keynesian) part of my mind soon took over, though. I reflected on the fact that electrical and software engineers need honest employment in this world, just like mechanical engineers do :)
We won't do that kind of recycling here, it's not cost effective.
I am a pack rat. My basement is full of old "broken" devices that any self-respecting American homeowner would have thrown out long ago. It might seem like a trash dump to any normal person; to me, it is a sort of mine of not-exactly-raw material.
A few months ago, I built a contraption that had a rocking beam whose oscillations I needed to keep count of. Over the course of several days, it might rock back and forth a thousand times. Among the design constraints was that I had literally zero budget for materials.
So I took apart an old wall clock -- the dirt-cheap kind that runs off an AA battery. I severed the connections to the motor on the little circuit board and soldered in a pair of wires that I could run to an external circuit. A bit of experimentation revealed that the "motor" works this way: shove 1.5 volts across the leads momentarily, and the clock ticks forward by one second; apply the reverse voltage momentarily, and it ticks forward another second; repeat. Perfect! I harvested a pair of microswitches from an old mouse and mounted them so the rocking beam would trip them alternately. Wired them appropriately to the clock, and to a "wall-wart" transformer from some long-lost electronic device. Presto: a counter that could tell me how many times the beam rocked back and forth. (To avoid confusion between seconds, minutes, and hours of elapsed time and the reading on my counter clock, I designated the "meter" units to be Ticks, Micks, and Hicks.) A fun little project, it was. And cost-effective too, since I valued my time at zero dollars per hour -- as I seem to be doing right now, come to think of it.
--TP
Posted by: Tony P. | October 11, 2011 at 02:01 PM
Tony P., you're a regula Steven Jobs ova heah.
So, it's killing me: This contraption with the rocking beam whose oscillations you needed to keep count of ... to what end?
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 02:12 PM
Countme, it was a flow meter to measure the biogas coming out of the anaerobic digester that an equally impecunious friend of mine is fooling around with. I wish I knew how to post a picture of my contraption, for you might get a kick out of the fact that another key component of it was a pair of 2-liter Diet Coke bottles. I suppose that in a sense they cost me 10 cents, so my budget was not exactly zero :)
Incidentally, I shudder to think what someone of your gonzo creativity might have inflicted on the world, had you bent toward engineering. Rube Goldberg meets Mel Brooks. What a concept!
--TP
Posted by: Tony P. | October 11, 2011 at 02:41 PM
Does anyone else find it vaguely embarrassing to be walked in on in an automated public bathroom while you're fruitlessly waving your hands around like a magician conjuring doves under the tap or in front of the seeing eye on the towel-dispenser?
How bout re-entering the toilet stall you've just used to gesture maniacally and interpretative dance your body around to trigger the seeing-eye flush, which hadn't activated yet?
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 02:43 PM
"How bout re-entering the toilet stall you've just used to gesture maniacally and interpretative dance your body around to trigger the seeing-eye flush, which hadn't activated yet?"
Did this, in the airport, this morning. Then I inconspicuously just opened and closed the stall door several times so no one would notice.
Posted by: CCDG | October 11, 2011 at 02:50 PM
Gonzo here has a new idea: guns with the magic eye technology of today's bathroom devices, that would load themselves, draw themselves from the holsters, and fire!
A wave of the hand.
Think what these tough guys could do with that!:
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/10/guns-public
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 02:55 PM
Tony, should I ever engineer anything, it would be drone technology that instead of launching missiles, would catapult whipped cream pies onto the enemy below..
Or, something like this: Watch! Slart will like this, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w
I was considering the technology of the lowly bookshelf the other day and how it would be about my speed to replace full wall length, floor to ceiling bookshelves (seen in nearly all Woody Allen movies) with a single, very, very narrow and short shelf on which I would place my Kindle.
As it is, I lean my Kindle against my books on my bookshelf and ignore it, preferring the old way.
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 03:10 PM
In our local community center, where my son was having some sport-team pictures taken, I think, and where I had to bring my daughters because my wife was attending the school meeting scheduled for the same evening, they have automatic-flush toilets.
One of my daughters had an accident, and I was trying to clean her panties the best I could in one of the toilets, but it wouldn't flush no matter what I did. I moved over to the next stall for some fresh water - same thing. Once the water got dirty I went over to the next stall.
In the middle of my third round of trying to get the panties clean, something, I don't remember what, needed my immediate attention. I left the stall with the panties still in the toilet only to hear the roar of the automatic flush. The toilet easily swallowed the panties. They were gone.
I could have achieved the same result in one step had I gone to the right stall and just fushed the panties away in the first place. My life is a sticom, sometimes.
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | October 11, 2011 at 03:19 PM
Apropos only of disposing of human waste, I find this uncanny:
http://cheezburger.com/siri2k/lolz/View/4585656832
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 05:57 PM
In the further realm of bathroom humor about my favorite professional poo-flinger, Erick Erickson has three jobs:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 06:02 PM
That was Delong's 10:57 am post today and for further details about the one real job Erickson had until recently while not showing up for work, but collecting his government paycheck like any old dirty effing hippie, go back to Delong for the gruesome details in his 11:57 am today.
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/
Posted by: Countme-In | October 11, 2011 at 06:10 PM
To be fair, Eric son of Eric was really doing his constituents a favor by not showing up for work. Can you imagine the damage he might have done had he actually showed up for work? Given that's a crook, this really wasn't so bad.
Posted by: Turbulence | October 11, 2011 at 09:20 PM
Erick Erickson has three jobs
One of which is blogging for Regnery.
Erick Erickson can kiss my sweet patootie.
Posted by: russell | October 11, 2011 at 09:26 PM
What bugs me about all these automatic sink faucets and auto-flushing toilets is this: what happens if the power goes out? Power outages do happen every so often, you know; I assume that if the power goes out, that means nobody's able to flush the toilet. (I recall hearing somewhere that the users of the facilities at UCSD discovered this for themselves during the recent power outages in San Diego.)
Posted by: rmtodd | October 11, 2011 at 10:15 PM
what happens if the power goes out?
They tend to only be used in places like hospitals and office buildings. Hospitals have redundant power (often a diesel generator backup) and if a hospital did lose power, losing access to toilets would be the least of its problems. Office buildings don't generally need to function indefinitely without power.
Posted by: Turbulence | October 11, 2011 at 11:38 PM
Good story! Also good to know that these kinds of mishaps aren't aimed solely at me.
My youngest, when still a barely-speaking tyke, was terrified of public toilets. She'd hold it forever, rather than use one. We finally got to the bottom (so to speak) of this terror, when attempting to (in near-extremis of having to go) bring her into a public restroom, she asked: "Is it the flushing kind?" It took a few more questions after that, and then we were able to convince her that we could keep it from flushing if we held our thumb over the little red window on the auto-flusher. Or, best of all, if we could find some public restrooms that still had manual flushers. That required that we stand right next to her when she used the toilet. At first, at least until she could trust that we could thwart the gods of premature flushing, she would tightly clutch whatever hand was not engaged in said god-thwarting.
Terrified, as in crying and shaking. Those toilets that flushed while she was trying to have a quiet poop scared the crap out of her, so to speak. The opposite, really, but that's getting too specific. There's just no quickly reasoning with children: that which scares them, scares them, and it takes a while for them to find a logical escape.
One problem with the flushing kind is they don't know when they're clogged, and if they're on a sufficiently sensitive hair-trigger, they'll flush every time someone opens and closes the stall door, which sometimes (all too frequently) results in a flood of unmentionable material. I can't tell you how many times I've seen that happen.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | October 12, 2011 at 08:41 AM
"the gods of premature flushing"
I like that. Looking at it from a child's point of view reveals the sinister rather than the comic.
One wonders how scary an outhouse at night was for the young.
That's a wonderful anecdote, Slart (and hairshirtthedonist) one you and your daughter, if she can remember, will look back on with tenderness.
In fact, when you think about it, mothers and fathers coaching and coaxing their kids through the perils of everything that happens in that room, especially as they transition out of diapers and become confident enough to handle it on their own, is the setting for some of the really important tenderness of child-rearing.
This reminds me that one of first things my son (now 21), noticed as he learned to use a public bathroom was that the toilet tissue and even some of the fixtures had his name on them (think of the name of a prominent toilet tissue manufacturer; no, not George, as in Georgia Pacific!).
He would sit there and repeat his name while pointing proudly at it embossed all over the stall.
No wonder he was such an easy kid.
He must have thought many of the public bathrooms he experienced were designed and personalized with his welfare in mind.
Add in that fact that the room itself was called "the John", and well, you can count me as seeing his point.
Posted by: Countme-In | October 12, 2011 at 10:39 AM
There's just no quickly reasoning with children: that which scares them, scares them, and it takes a while for them to find a logical escape.
Yes. My middle child clogged our powder room toilet with an excess of toilet paper a couple of years ago, early in her potty training, and it overflowed, which terrified her for some reason. She will not willingly flush a toilet to this day, regardless of what's in it (or not in it).
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | October 12, 2011 at 11:18 AM
Speaking of toilets:
http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/12/8288725-ryanair-ceos-latest-plan-replace-toilets-with-seats?gt1=43001
Now, this guy must have been traumatized by toilets as a child.
I'll bet he spends a lot of time playing with his feces, counting it like money.
A better idea, I believe, would be to replace all of the seats on a plane with toilets.
Posted by: Countme-In | October 12, 2011 at 06:08 PM
tony p. could you drop me a line at libjpn at gmail? Just a offlist question/favor. thanks
lj
Posted by: liberal japonicus | October 12, 2011 at 08:49 PM
Did anyone yet mention the new Japanese toilet bike?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4IJix0tUi8
(promoted as first motorbike to be 100% driven by biogas)
Posted by: Hartmut | October 13, 2011 at 05:24 AM