http://www.househacker.com/ househacker/tags/toilet Brondell Swash, the Harmony toilet seat seems like a pretty ingenious product. The seat makes use of a small connector that runs from the bottom of the toilet seat latching mechanism to a float that you place in the toilet tank. When the toilet is flushed, the float lowers with the water in the tank which triggers a lever on the connector under the seat, which in turn releases a latch that activates the seat closing action. The seat closes very slowly for, as the company refers to it, a pinch-free close.

The unit is currently only available in Home Depots of the American Midwest.

Also: Froogle Search gives a price of about $80.
Promo Video of the seat in action.

Link: Harmony Toilet Seat]]> http://www.househacker.com/permanent/Harmony-Flush-Activated-Toilet-Seat Google, toilets account for anywhere between 20 to 40 percent of household water consumption. Given that we waste clean, otherwise drinkable water flushing our toilets, it should come as no surprise that many people harvest rainwater for toilets and other household purposes where potable water isn't necessary.

The author of this howto walks us through the setup of a rainwater-to-toilet system, while sharing his reasons for doing so:

While it doesn't come close to making up for our gas-guzzling, high-consuming lifestyles, rain harvesting does have a positive impact on our environment. Domestic potable water collection requires effort, energy, and chemicals for purification and transport...
Your house is an "impermeable surface". Rain would otherwise hit the ground where your house is and soak into the underground water table or enter a natural stream. Instead, rainfall from the roofs of many urban homes is tied into the sewer system. During periods of heavy rain, this storm surge from houses, parking lots, and streets into the sewer system can max out treatment capacity, causing raw sewage to flow out untreated into waterways. Harvesting some of this storm surge can reduce peak demands on our water treatment facilities.
Besides the more important environmental issues, most of us in urban areas pay for domestic potable water. I have calculated that each flush of the rainwater toilet (1.6 gallons) saves me just over 1 cent. Costing less than $100 to install, this system will pay for itself over the years.
Also, I have the satisfaction of a small level of self-sufficiency from an urban lifestyle otherwise dependant on society for survival.
The guide covers the details of rainwater collection, a formula for calculating your harvest potential, detailed pictures of the entire setup (including how to mesh the rainwater system to standard toilet plumbing via selector valve, enabling the toilet to run off of either system) as well as a breakdown of parts and costs for the project.

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The Internet claimed that disassembling a toilet to check the flange or to replace the wax ring was easy. Invariably, the same sites that talked about how easy this task was would follow that up by saying, "A TOILET BREAKS EASILY BE CAREFUL!!!!" The sites also varied in how detailed their instructions were, in one case even going so far as to skip the whole "removing the tank" part. As a public service, I'm going to give you the definitive step-by-step guide to disassembling a toilet to repair it.

Also be sure not to miss the toilet diagram Stephen has created, which, although highly technical and beyond the comprehension of the layman, is a useful toilet anatomy nonetheless.

Link: How To Disassemble a Toilet In Many Easy Steps]]> http://www.househacker.com/permanent/Funny-Toilet-Disassembly-Howto Dave Samuel. The one time dot com entrepreneur was not content to simply relax on some Caribbean island after co-founding and subsequently selling internet radio company "Spinner" to AOL for $320 million. No, Samuel combined a fascination with high end electronic Japanese toilets with a mind for business to produce a start-up called Brondell. Samuel's goal is to bring Japanese toilet technology to America, and the Brondell Swash 600 is his first offering (along with the non-bum-drying Swash 400).

The 600 offers a warm-air dryer, temperature-controlled heated seat, remote control, massage, dual nozzle action, and gentle close lid. ]]> http://www.househacker.com/permanent/Brondell-Swash-600-High-Tech-Toilet-Seat