The issue was not the bowl. It was the tank.
The Poughkeepsie powder room had very little space around the waste line. A normal toilet put the tank directly into a boxed column. The renovation had reached the point where one small room could create a surprisingly technical problem.
My preferred answer was an old-style tankless toilet, the kind that uses a flushometer and a strong rush of water. They were common in commercial buildings and still showed up in some New York apartments.
Getting one into this house was another matter.
I sent the contractor photos and asked for three measurements around the column, wall, and toilet center. We could push out the wall near the ceiling and use a high tank, but that meant tearing into tile we had already finished. I wanted to avoid that.
I found an old bowl that looked right and asked whether it could work without a tank. The contractor had not installed one before but thought his plumber probably had. I wrote the seller too.
The answer was wonderfully unclear.
They could adapt the gravity bowl for a flushometer, but it might flush too hard. They had no way to test it. Another proper flushometer bowl existed, but it was a different shape.
Water volume was the next question. The system would need enough supply to create the flush. I went from signing renovation documents to asking what size water service came in from the street.
This was one toilet.
The options were now a narrow normal tank, a high tank with more tile work, or a tankless setup that might require different plumbing and might flush too vigorously.
I had not picked one yet. I had at least learned the correct word: flushometer.