LET'S TALK ABOUT TOILETS!


If you're a woman, you won't care about this page.  If you're a young man you might not care either -- but if you live long enough, you will!

You see, as a man gets older, things droop.  And when things droop far enough, this particular dimension will quite suddenly become vitally important:
Space for your junk
Teabagging yourself when you sit on your toilet is not a pleasant experience!

For purposes of this discussion, I am defining "scrotum clearance" as the vertical distance between the water level in the bowl of the toilet and the rim.  It's easy to measure:  First make sure the bowl is as full as it gets; you can just pour water directly into the bowl, it'll rise to spillover level and no farther.  Then put a straightedge across the rim, and measure from the straightedge down to the water level.

Technically what's important is the vertical distance to the seat, but most seats are reasonably close to the same thickness, adding about an inch to the measurement described.  There are spacers available as well as special seats that are thicker -- often to meet ADA requirements for seat height without having to buy a whole new toilet -- but such seats are not really an acceptable solution.  Some of them are just gross.

If you search online for "toilet water level" you'll get a thousand hits talking about the water level in the tank.  Yes, the water level in the tank is important for proper flushing, but it's also easily adjustable.  Remove the tank cover; you'll probably be able to figure out how to adjust the water level in less time than it took to read this sentence.  Unfortunately, this has zero impact on the water level in the bowl.

The water level in the bowl is not easily adjustable.  In fact, it's not adjustable at all.  It's a built-in characteristic of the design of the toilet.
How The Level In The Bowl Is Controlled

That spillover in the outlet passage is cast into the bowl itself.  You can't change it.

Ideally, you'd want a scrotum clearance of 6" or more.  Anything less than 5" is just cruel.  A toilet with a scrotum clearance of 4-5/8" inspired this page.  Why would any toilet manufacturer ever make a toilet with less than 8" of scrotum clearance?  Ya got me.  If you run into a toilet designer, be sure to ask him!

After each flush, the bowl is refilled by a tap in the valve assembly that is refilling the tank.  So, can't we just fiddle with that tap so it doesn't fill the bowl quite so far?  Well, yes, you could, but you shouldn't.  First off, it may interfere with proper flushing action.  But also remember that anything that lands in that bowl after that will raise the level -- and that cold water surprise doesn't get any better with those additives!

Toilet bowls typically come in two different rim heights, 14" (Standard) and 16-1/2" (Chair).  So, just buy a toilet with a higher rim height!  That'll fix it, right?
Toilet Rim Height

Unfortunately, no.  When the rim gets higher, the water level gets higher right with it!  It's almost as though the designers want everyone to have an equal opportunity to enjoy wet balls!

If you're having to "hover" over the seat to keep your nutsack dry, you're going to want to replace that toilet before you get any older.  Just run right down to Lowe's or Home Depot and select a toilet with a scrotum clearance of 6" or more.  Well, that'd be a good plan except that toilets for sale at Lowe's or Home Depot have a schematic that lists all the important dimensions -- and scrotum clearance isn't one of them.  And you can't determine the scrotum clearance mathematically because they don't divulge the water level in the bowl in any way.  The only way to accurately ascertain the scrotum clearance on a display model toilet would be to fill the bowl with water and measure it.  Good luck with the helpful staff at the store!

But don't despair!  Here's a tactic that might work for you:  On most toilets (not all!) you can plainly see the outline of the outlet passage on the exterior of the ceramic toilet.  You won't know exactly where the spillover is within this outline because you don't know how thick the ceramic is, but you can get a pretty good idea.  Borrow a measuring tape from the tooling department and either measure the distance from the rim down to the spillover directly, or measure the height of the spillover above the floor and subtract that measurement from the rim height.

Looking over the selection of toilets at Lowe's and Home Depot in 2019, it quickly became apparent that someone at Delco listened when grandpa complained.  Delta toilets appear to have more scrotum clearance than any other model on display.  Some of the other models seem to have very little scrotum clearance at all, like they were designed for women only.  A Delta Foundations toilet was purchased from Home Depot, and once installed and operating the scrotum clearance was measured to be 6-3/4".  By the time my junk sags that far, I'll probably be too senile to care.