So my buddy and I were sitting around talking about the houses we want to have eventually, when an interesting question was raised. How do basement toilets work? I mean, I've always thought that toilets worked on a gravity sort of basis. The basement is below the water level. Wouldn't everything just spit back at you when you flushed?

they use a pump.

http://www.naturalhandyman.com/iip/infplumb/infupf.html

hmmm....sump pump eh? Didn't think of that.

Must have been a contradiction to the plumbers creed....

"Hots on the left,cold on the right and **** don't flow uphill"

Depends where you live I guess. My basement toilet is gravity flow; the water comes in at about 3' above the floor but the sewer and grey water lines out are about another foot under the floor.

every single basment I've seen the poop goes straight down into the concrete. it then runs out to the street that way.

the sewage level is usually 15feet or more below ground

Depends where you live. In the city I think Hans has it. But if you are out in the country with a septic tank you gotta have a pump.

i think its actually called a refuse pump. A sump pump is used to move water i believe. We have a sump pump in the dozing tank of our above ground drain field. When we had to replace it, there was 2 kinds of pumps at lowes, a sump and a refuse. A refuse was for basements and solids/water mixes.

We've got city utilities, and our basement plumbing has an "ejection pit" as my contractor called it. Refuse pump down in a sump pump style pit, and a check valve so the **** don't flow downhill into my basement. The sewer line comes into the basement 4 feet off the floor.