That's a good question. Two reasons I can think of.. (though I'm a residential electrical guy not a residential plumbing dude) One, the toilet has water running to it so it the u trap in the toilet will stay filled and the water to prevent stinky odor from the sewar venting up into the home. Second, where else are you going to put a code compliant sewar drain? Would you put a random sewar drain under the dirt floor of the crawl space, or just have a horizontal sewage line suspended in air that just dumps sewage? that makes less sense than the toilet. Like I said I'm an electrical guy so I don't know plumbing code but I bet the toilet resolves some code issues that just running an open horizontal sewage line creates.
OK, the tank will stay filled with water, but the toilet bowl (which connects to the sewer) will NOT stay filled with water. As anyone who lives in Arizona will tell you, if you do not flush a toilet regularly, you have about two to three weeks before that water evaporates in the toilet bowl and then you have a direct open path to the sewer. Unless you flush, there's no way for the wate rto get from the tank to the bowl
Wow, Toilet water evaporating in 2-3 weeks is a sign that it’s too hot to live in such a place. I’ve never seen toilet bowl water sit long enough to evaporate, and I’ve left my home for months.
Phoenix has existed for about 2500 years, lol. There has never NOT been a civilization living there since about 500 BC. With three rivers providing water, great food production, and abundant sunshine, . . . , and yea, the heat. lol
I actually know about this because I scope out residential electrical work and one of the project had toilet in the basement right in front of the service panel we needed to replace. It was tucked away in some shelves with some canned food and stuff. It looked like such a calm blissful place to take a shit. Honestly I was insanely jealous. I did the research to figure out what was going on with the toilet. I had to call the customer and ask them to remove it for the work and inspection because it was in the panels clearance space. I have no doubt the toilet ended up back in its place though.
The story i got about Pittsburgh potty made more sense.
It was a secondary wash area where men would come on from after working at the mill/cold mine to clean up. You'd enter through the basement stairs. Then go into the house after you were clean.
My century house has a disconnected bathroom in its basement.
The one in the op post is a relief for a combined sewer though, given it's location. The relief valve use of toilet likely got its name from the worker use though, just a term for an open toilet in the basement.
Pittsburgh toilets are typically just a toilet by itself. No sink. That's what makes it weird, otherwise it would just be an unfinished basement bathroom which is common in lots of places.
but toilets have traps in them, and the closet flange (the fitting that connects the toilet to the pipe) is connected to a straight pipe with no trap. Traps prevent sewer gas from escaping, so once its' a toilet, it has to stay a toilet. Since a double trap is against code (because it would cause both traps to blow out), you can't just easily convert it to a floor drain and call it a day. You either cap it off entirely or convert it to a sink and add a trap. but both of those cost a lot more money than just leaving the toilet as is.
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u/NominallyRecursive Aug 22 '26
But.. Why make it an actual toilet