A Pittsburgh toilet, or Pittsburgh potty, is a basement toilet configuration commonly found in the area of Pittsburgh in the United States. It consists of an ordinary flush toilet with no surrounding walls. Most of these toilets are paired with a crude basement shower apparatus and large sink, which often doubles as a laundry room.
The most popular explanation for the Pittsburgh toilet is related to Pittsburgh's status as a major industrial city in the 20th century. According to this explanation, toilets such as these were said to be used by steelworkers and miners who, grimy from the day's labor, could use an exterior door to enter the basement directly from outside and use the basement's shower and toilet before heading upstairs. [1] [2] [3]
Alternatively, they may have served to prevent sewage backups from flooding the living areas of homes. As sewage backups tend to flood the lowest fixture in a residence, a Pittsburgh toilet would be the fixture to overflow, containing the sewage leak in the basement. [4]
Pittsburgh is a city in and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the second-most populous city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, and the 68th-most populous city in the U.S., with a population of 302,971 as of the 2020 census. The city is located in southwestern Pennsylvania at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River, which combine to form the Ohio River. It anchors the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which had a population of 2.457 million residents and is the largest metro area in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 26th-largest in the U.S. Pittsburgh is the principal city of the greater Pittsburgh–Weirton–Steubenville combined statistical area which includes parts of Ohio and West Virginia.
A bathroom is a room in which people wash their bodies or parts of their bodies. It can contain one or more of the following plumbing fixtures: a shower, a bathtub, a bidet, and a sink. The inclusion of a toilet is common. There are also specific toilet rooms, only containing a toilet, which in North American English tend to be called "bathrooms", "powder rooms" or "washrooms", as euphemisms to conceal their actual purpose, while they in British and Irish English are known as just "toilets" or possibly "cloakrooms" - but also as "lavatories" when they are public.
A bidet is a bowl or receptacle designed to be sat upon in order to wash a person's genitalia, perineum, inner buttocks, and anus. The modern variety has a plumbed-in water supply and a drainage opening, and is thus a plumbing fixture subject to local hygiene regulations. The bidet is designed to promote personal hygiene and is used after defecation, and before and after sexual intercourse. It can also be used to wash feet, with or without filling it up with water. In several European countries, a bidet is now required by law to be present in every bathroom containing a toilet bowl. It was originally located in the bedroom, near the chamber-pot and the marital bed, but in modern times is located near the toilet bowl in the bathroom. Fixtures that combine a toilet seat with a washing facility include the electronic bidet.
A shower is a place in which a person bathes under a spray of typically warm or hot water. Indoors, there is a drain in the floor. Most showers have temperature, spray pressure and adjustable showerhead nozzle. The simplest showers have a swivelling nozzle aiming down on the user, while more complex showers have a showerhead connected to a hose that has a mounting bracket. This allows the showerer to hold the showerhead by hand to spray the water onto different parts of their body. A shower can be installed in a small shower stall or bathtub with a plastic shower curtain or door. Showering is common due to the efficiency of using it compared with a bathtub. Its use in hygiene is, therefore, common practice.
A plumbing fixture is an exchangeable device which can be connected to a plumbing system to deliver and drain water.
A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor. Especially in residential buildings, it often is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system are located; so also are amenities such as the electrical system and cable television distribution point. In cities with high property prices, such as London, basements are often fitted out to a high standard and used as living space.
A portable or mobile toilet is any type of toilet that can be moved around, some by one person, some by mechanical equipment such as a truck and crane. Most types do not require any pre-existing services or infrastructure, such as sewerage, and are completely self-contained. The portable toilet is used in a variety of situations, for example in urban slums of developing countries, at festivals, for camping, on boats, on construction sites, and at film locations and large outdoor gatherings where there are no other facilities. Most portable toilets are unisex single units with privacy ensured by a simple lock on the door. Some portable toilets are small molded plastic or fiberglass portable rooms with a lockable door and a receptacle to catch the human excreta in a container.
A laundry room or utility room is a room where clothes are washed, and sometimes also dried. In a modern home, laundry rooms are often equipped with an automatic washing machine and clothes dryer, and often a large basin, called a laundry tub, for hand-washing of delicate clothing articles such as sweaters, as well as an ironing board. Laundry rooms may also include storage cabinets, countertops for folding clothes, and, space permitting, a small sewing machine.
A drain-waste-vent system is the combination of pipes and plumbing fittings that captures sewage and greywater within a structure and routes it toward a water treatment system. It includes venting to the exterior environment to prevent a vacuum from forming and impeding fixtures such as sinks, showers, and toilets from draining freely, and employs water-filled traps to block dangerous sewer gasses from entering a plumbed structure.
Toilets in Japan are sometimes designed more elaborately than toilets commonly seen in other developed nations. European toilets occasionally have a separate bidet whilst Japan combines an electronic bidet with the toilet. The current state of the art for Western-style toilets in Japan is the bidet toilet, which as of March 2016 is installed in 81% of Japanese households. In Japan, these bidets are commonly called washlets, a brand name of Toto Ltd., and they may include many advanced features rarely seen outside of Asia. The basic feature set commonly found on washlets consists of anal hygiene, bidet washing, seat warming, and deodorization.
A public toilet, restroom, public bathroom or washroom is a room or small building with toilets and sinks for use by the general public. The facilities are available to customers, travelers, employees of a business, school pupils or prisoners and are commonly separated into male and female toilets, although some are unisex, especially for small or single-occupancy public toilets, public toilets are sometimes accessible to people with disabilities. Depending on the culture, there may be varying degrees of separation between males and females and different levels of privacy. Typically, the entire room, or a stall or cubicle containing a toilet, is lockable. Urinals, if present in a male toilet, are typically mounted on a wall with or without a divider between them. Local authorities or commercial businesses may provide public toilet facilities. Some are unattended while others are staffed by an attendant. In many cultures, it is customary to tip the attendant, especially if they provide a specific service, such as might be the case at upscale nightclubs or restaurants.
A sump pump is a pump used to remove water that has accumulated in a water-collecting sump basin, commonly found in the basements of homes and other buildings, and in other locations where water must be removed, such as construction sites. The water may enter via the perimeter drains of a basement waterproofing system funneling into the basin, or because of rain or natural ground water seepage if the basement is below the water table level.
Potty parity is equal or equitable provision of public toilet facilities for females and males within a public space.
Forbes Hall is a residence hall of the University of Pittsburgh and is located in Forbes Pavilion on Forbes Avenue approximately four blocks from the Litchfield Towers complex. The name Forbes Hall, which specifically refers to the residence hall component of the building, is sometimes interchangeably used with the name Forbes Pavilion, which refers to the entire six-story structure.
Anal hygiene or anal cleansing refers to the practices that are performed on a person's anus to maintain hygiene, usually in the aftermath of defecation. Post-defecation cleansing is rarely discussed academically, partly due to the social taboo surrounding it. The scientific objective of post-defecation cleansing is to prevent exposure to pathogens. The process of post-defecation cleansing involves washing the anus and inner part of the buttocks with water. Water-based cleansing typically involves either the use of running water from a handheld vessel and a hand for washing or the use of pressurized water through a jet device, such as a bidet. In either method, subsequent hand sanitization is essential to achieve the ultimate objectives of post-defecation cleansing.
In a building or ship, a room is any enclosed space within a number of walls to which entry is possible only via a door or other dividing structure. The entrance connects it to either a passageway, another room, or the outdoors. The space is typically large enough for several people to move about. The size, fixtures, furnishings, and sometimes placement of the room within the building or ship support the activity to be conducted in it.
A toilet is a piece of sanitary hardware that collects human urine and feces, and sometimes toilet paper, usually for disposal. Flush toilets use water, while dry or non-flush toilets do not. They can be designed for a sitting position popular in Europe and North America with a toilet seat, with additional considerations for those with disabilities, or for a squatting posture more popular in Asia, known as a squat toilet. In urban areas, flush toilets are usually connected to a sewer system; in isolated areas, to a septic tank. The waste is known as blackwater and the combined effluent, including other sources, is sewage. Dry toilets are connected to a pit, removable container, composting chamber, or other storage and treatment device, including urine diversion with a urine-diverting toilet.
The University of Pittsburgh Applied Research Center (U-PARC) is a one-million-square foot, high-security research park campus of the University of Pittsburgh. Comprising 53 buildings situated on over 85 acres (0.34 km2), U-PARC is located 14 miles (23 km) from Downtown Pittsburgh in Harmar Township, Pennsylvania adjacent to the Route 28 expressway and Interstate 76, the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The Moody Mansion, also known as the Willis-Moody Mansion, is a historic residential building in Galveston, Texas located at 2618 Broadway Avenue. The thirty-one room Romanesque mansion was completed in 1895. The home is named for William Lewis Moody, Jr., an American financier and entrepreneur in the cotton business who bought the home from Galveston socialite Narcissa Willis. The mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 13, 1994. Tours are offered, and the facilities can be rented out for weddings and other events.
An intelligent toilet or smart toilet is a bathroom plumbing fixture or type of electronic bidet toilet which incorporates traditional bidet cleansing, with the added enhancement of modern SMART home technology.
transplants [to Pittsburgh] to the area might be pleasantly surprised by a few aspects of Pittsburgh housing stock. No, we're not talking about the Pittsburgh toilet, the ubiquitous basement fixture that harkens back to the heyday of the steel mills and coal mines. Not usually a big selling point, it nevertheless provides a good starting point for a basement powder room.
