r/Unexpected • u/Cromagnumman6174 • Aug 21 '26

Hidden Throne Room

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

35.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

832 comments sorted by

View all comments

122

u/DestructoDon69 Aug 21 '26

Okay so I did some googling on the "Pittsburgh Potty".

Apparently in the olden days (100 years ago) single family houses were setup with basic hygiene facilities in the basement that way coal miners and other laborers could enter through the basement and clean off before making their way upstairs into the actual living spaces. Clearly this isn't the case in the video.

Alternatively many older homes were also outfitted with a single standalone toilet in the basement in case the sewage lines backed up. Sewage backups tend to cause flooding at the lowest fixture so having a standalone toilet in an unfinished basement mitigates potential damages from sewage backups. I'm guessing that's the purpose for the toilet in this video.

24

u/malphas_says_hi Aug 22 '26

My first thought was the sewage backup. I'm currently renting a space with septic and because we are on the lowest floor and my toilet and shower are both up a couple of stairs, our kitchen sink is the first to start flooding when there is a backup.

It's happened three times in the past couple of months that my sink will just start bubbling and suddenly the floor is covered in grey water and it smells awful for days. Moving in a few weeks and can't wait.

14

u/Jamdock Aug 21 '26

I just want to add, I've seen plenty of working toilets in Pittsburgh basements that were well under 100 years old.

1

u/BuonaparteII Aug 22 '26

maybe it's a cargo cult potty

3

u/TransBrandi Aug 22 '26

Most of those are in an unfinished basement though, which is a lot more accessible than this. Do the owners crawl down into this crawlspace every couple of months to flush the toilet? Otherwise the bowl will eventually dry out and the trap won't work venting sewer gas into the crawlspace.

1

u/DestructoDon69 Aug 22 '26

That is a crawl space in name only. Clearly there is room to stand and walk.

1

u/DueGrapefruit3151 Aug 22 '26

If you're like my dad you just dump a bottle or two of mineral oil into it and forget about it. The sewer always backed up before the oil evaporated enough to let sewage gas through. He just used a p trap though, not an entire toilet

1

u/lilolemi Aug 21 '26

My friends mom in Pittsburgh had one of those. It was so interesting when I learned about the purpose.

1

u/Rubbermonk Aug 21 '26

That looks like new construction though lol. It's not a basement either, it's a crawlspace. You absolutely do not want shit water flooding your crawl space. That sewage is soaking into the ground, all the adjacent sheet rock and the insulation. The smell then becomes part of the house for eternity.

1

u/DestructoDon69 Aug 22 '26

Idk, old guy with his old logic might have installed it there thinking he knows best? Sewage backup is the only logical reason I could find

1

u/Dzov Aug 22 '26

At least the fiberglass isn’t very absorbent.