Across the United States, about 4 million students are starting college in the next few weeks, and 3 million of them can expect to encounter a clogged toilet.
It’s basic math. About 75% of new students live away from home, and most of them will depend on traditional, gravity-based toilets. And, while those toilets may vary widely in age, design, and water usage, one commonality among gravity toilets is that, sooner or later, they will clog.
Clogged toilets are annoying for students and expensive for colleges and universities, who have to dispatch maintenance crews to remove the clogs and clean up any resultant messes.
If your maintenance teams have better things to do, you may want to consider pressure-assisted toilets.
Why College Dormitory Restrooms Clog So Often
Remember your college days? Why were clogged toilets such a regular hassle?
For starters, they get used more often by more people than toilets at home. And many of those people are living away from home for the first time, so they may encounter toilets with lower flushing power than they’re used to. Or they may assume that toilets in a communal dorm restroom are “industrial grade” and believe they can flush almost anything.
Plus, college kids sometimes overdo the partying. They may use too much paper, drop things into the toilet that shouldn’t go there, or otherwise treat their toilets less than kindly.
Finally, many university dorms are fairly old, and their toilets are old, too. Many older toilets were designed for 3.5-gallon flushes and simply can’t handle larger volumes of waste with today’s more common 1.6-gallon flushes. And newer, suite-style dorms may have been built with lower-quality toilets that generate minimal flushing power.
All these factors contribute to college dormitory toilets clogging frequently. How much time do your maintenance crews spend with plungers and mops?
How Pressure-assisted Toilets Transform Dorm Restrooms
Clogs will almost never be a problem if your dormitories have pressure-assisted toilets. Here’s why.
With a conventional gravity toilet, water basically just falls from the tank into the bowl, creating a siphon effect that pulls the bowl’s contents through the trapway and down the drainpipe. If something is blocking the trapway or drainpipe, the siphon may not be strong enough to pull it through.
Pressure-assisted toilets — sometimes known as power flush toilets — are a powerful alternative. They force water into the bowl with compressed air, pushing waste into the pipe instead of pulling it through. That creates a 233% waste extraction advantage over gravity toilets — using the same amount of water — so your dorm toilets should clog far less often.
And that frees up your maintenance crews for, well, actual maintenance.
Water Savings, Cleaner Bowls, and More
You get more than reduced clogs with pressure-assisted toilets. You can also enjoy significant water savings by replacing gravity toilets with power flush systems that use far less water, such as the 0.75 gpf Flushmate 503UH that uses 53% less water than “low flow” gravity toilets. Plus, students won’t have to double-flush as often with pressure-assisted toilets, so your restrooms can reduce water usage even more.
In fact, one apartment complex in Baltimore reported a 57% average drop in daily water usage after renovating with pressure-assisted toilets.
Water savings don’t just save your institution money — they can also make it more attractive to students. A recent study found that 62% of prospective students consider a university's sustainability practices to be very important, and 48% prefer a sustainable university to one ranked in the top 100.1
So, pressure-assisted toilets can make dormitory life more pleasant, save money on maintenance, and help boost your school’s sustainability efforts. Want to banish clogged toilets from the curriculum? Talk to the experts at Flushmate to learn more.
1—Quacquarelli Symonds, “Shaping sustainable futures: Students, universities and green skills,” April 2025