Turn Your Ordinary Toilet into a Bidet with the Smart Bemis bioBidet BB-1200

At CES in January, Steve and I interviewed James Amburgey from Bemis about their smart bidets. I’m excited to tell you that they were kind enough to send me one to review. Go ahead, make all your potty jokes to yourself right now, and then read the toddler book “Everybody Poops” by Taro Gomi. Ok, got it all out of your system?

Terminology

Let’s get started by defining some terminology. A bidet can either be an entire toilet or just a seat replacement for your existing toilet. The function a bidet performs is to provide warm water for cleaning yourself, and optionally other functions like a heated seat and a blow dryer.

Bemis sent me the bioBidet BB-1200, which is a $399 seat replacement. Check out the entire Bemis catalog of bioBidet seats where you can find them ranging from $99 to $699.

One important note before you consider purchasing a bidet. Since bidets pump water around and heat the water, there’s a very strict requirement that you have a power source near the toilet. If you don’t, you simply can’t have a bidet.

Do you want your toilet seat to be smart?

The first question you might ask yourself before considering the product I’m about to describe should be, “Do you want your toilet to be smart?” Let’s keep that question in mind as I go through the features of the bioBidet from Bemis and maybe we’ll be able to answer the question at the end.

Installation

Installation of the BB-1200 was relatively easy, compared to pretty much any other plumbing project.

Toilet seats are connected to the toilet by two screws, usually with some kind of cover over the screw heads to make them look nice. The first installation step is to remove the two screws and remove the old seat. The bioBidet comes with the replacement screws and replacement rubber gaskets that help hold the screws tightly into the holes.

While toilet seat sizes appear to vary by country, at least between the US and Europe, I found indications that the mounting screws are the same distance apart. Be sure to check all of the specifications before buying a toilet seat of any kind to ensure it will fit your existing toilet.

Before putting the screws into place for the new bioBidet seat, there’s a plastic catch plate designed to help you position the seat forward and aft to get good alignment.

You will need to turn off the water supply at your toilet, which is something you need to know how to do in case of emergency anyway. A few years ago, we had a plumber change out our shut-off valves from the old ones where you had to turn a round handle about 28 times to turn off the water, to what they call a quarter-turn shutoff. It was life-changing.

Next, you’re advised to flush the toilet to drain it as you’ll be rerouting the water supply.

The bioBidet comes with a T-valve which allows your single water supply to go through the normal supply line to the toilet, but also to go through the included hose to the bidet for the squirting of the water. I won’t go through all of the details, but I did want to mention that all of the attachments of the hoses were done with plastic threaded nuts that were very easy to turn by hand. As easy as turning things by hand could be when lying on the floor with your head under a toilet that is.

The instructions were clear with nice little drawings illustrating every step, so we got it done in maybe a half hour.

bioBidet Controls

Now for the real fun – learning about how to control this smart bidet.

Side Control Panel

Let’s say for the moment that you want the delight of a bidet, but don’t actually want to use any smart features. The BB-1200 comes with a side control panel that gives you very limited bidet controls. There’s a button for rear wash and a power/stop button. For a lot of people, this might be just enough control. It might also be handy for those without sight to have a quick way to get cleaned up.

This is also where you’ll find the sensor for the remote, and it has a red LED that lights up if you have the seat heater enabled.

If you’re happy with this level of control, you might be able to consider one of the less expensive bidets from Bemis, but let’s keep going to learn about more features before you decide.

Remote Control

Let’s say you want the next level up in control of your bidet. The BB-1200 comes with a physical remote control that’s 6″ x 2.5″ x .75″ which is pretty big in the hand. The remote has no physical buttons but rather has regions of the remote that provide haptic feedback when you simply rest your finger on an area.

Note that you can only use the remote control while seated with bare thighs on the seat. Seems like a good idea since otherwise, the seat might squirt water all over the room!

The grid of four buttons that take up the top half of the remote are for rear wash, turbo wash (that sounds fun), front wash, and dry. In the center of these four square areas is a red square, which allows you to instantly stop whatever function the bidet is currently providing.

There are 5 red LEDs that change from 1 to 5, and these LEDs do a lot of work. They apply to 4 different controls. They indicate the pressure level of the dryer or the washer depending on which is chosen. They also indicated the water or seat temperature and the nozzle position.

You’d think the nozzle position was already defined by front vs. rear wash, but you can fine-tune it to your liking. Oh, and get this, if you double-press the wash level you desire, the nozzle moves forward and aft with a pulsing motion.

As you can see, the bioBidet BB-1200 has a lot of control for your comfort.

Of the options on this device, the dryer is the weakest of them. Think of one of those hand dryers in a public restroom before they started putting in the ones from Dyson. Now cut the air volume in half. Unless your goal is to get some peace and quiet sitting in the bathroom for as long as possible, you’re going to want to dry yourself off from the water wash you just enjoyed.

There’s a button to clean the nozzle, but the user guide says that it automatically cleans the nozzle before each use. On occasion, I’ve witnessed the nozzle coming in and out going through an apparent cleaning cycle for a good minute. Perhaps the manual nozzle cleaning is just for that extra feeling of control. The instructions say the manual cleaning will rinse the nozzle 10 times.

I mentioned the control for seat temperature earlier. If you engage the heated seat with this control, it will always be heated so you can sit down at any time and have a nice warm tushy. If you live in a cold climate, this might be just what you want. If you’re like me living where it’s relatively warm most of the year, or can’t stand the idea of energy waste, there’s an eco mode button that will heat it only when you sit down. Even without eco mode, the user manual says it will decrease temperature settings when not in use.

Let’s say you’ve gotten all the settings just the way you like them – the right pressure, the right water temperature, the seat temperature and even the nozzle position. It would be a big hassle to set this every time you need to use the facilities. Bemis include a button on the remote to store settings for User 1 and User 2. You change the settings to meet your needs, and then hold the appropriate user button for 3 seconds until it beeps. Now you can get your settings back with the push of a button.

Cheat Codes

There are a couple of what I would categorize as cheat codes as well. You have two ways to start the oscillation feature. You can hit the wash button twice, or you can simultaneously press the stop and up button to toggle it on and off.

Another cheat code is that you can press and hold the rear wash button on the remote to extend the nozzle without spraying for 2 minutes. That lets you manually clean the nozzle with a soft cloth or toothbrush. Maybe not your own toothbrush though.

The bioBidet has a built-in nightlight that gives the toilet bowl a nice light blue glow in the middle of the night. You’ll need another cheat code to control it – press the Stop and Turbo Wash buttons for 3 seconds to toggle it on and off. A friend of mine’s teenage daughter was visiting and happened to see our bioBidet. She told her mother she wanted one. When queried why, she said because of the pretty blue nightlight in the bowl!

Connected App

You might already be pretty sold on the features of the bioBidet BB-1200 with the remote control, but to make it truly smart, let’s talk about how you can control it with an app for your phone.

The Bemis Living app lets you use predefined presets and to create your own presets. I had to giggle at the built-in presets they’ve created. My favorites are “chili recovery”, “Jane’s toasty buns” and “Krakatoa”. They clearly had some fun with this.

It’s pretty easy to create your own presets. You can change the seat, water, and dryer temperature, along with water pressure and nozzle position and even toggle on oscillation. I like the app very much but let’s start at the beginning and talk about how to set it up before we get too excited.

After you download and launch the Bemis Living app, you’ll see a screen that says Bluetooth and a picture of someone sitting on a toilet. It tells you to sit with bare thighs on the seat and choose “add device” to connect over Bluetooth.

After about 10 seconds, it will ask to connect to your WiFi network and ask for your WiFi password. It explains that you connect to WiFi to enable data monitoring. Uh, data monitoring? What data monitoring? I’m pretty sure I don’t want to monitor what I do in there.

The other thing it asked for was location access. I said no, but every time I opened the app it nagged me again to allow location services. I looked in the App Store at the Bemis Living app and I was comforted to see that only your contact info was linked to you, and that location, diagnostics, and identifiers were collected but not linked to you.

Let’s set aside these concerns for a moment. After you connect the bidet to Bluetooth and WiFi and have a jolly good time choosing, say, the Krakatoa preset, you’re done with your business and go away.

Now it’s a few hours later and you make another visit. In order to get to your presets, you have to sit down and tap to connect to Bluetooth again, and wait for it to find your WiFi network again. You don’t have to enter your WiFi password or anything but the process takes a full 20 seconds every single time you open the app. I was wondering why it doesn’t maintain the Bluetooth connection between visits and I think I know why. Have you ever tried to share a Bluetooth speaker between two people? It’s a hot mess. Maybe the bioBidet disconnects every time so you and the other people in your home don’t end up with Bluetooth collisions like that.

Now let’s put all of this together about the Bemis Living app:

• It nags you for location services
• It asks for WiFi for data monitoring
• It takes 20 seconds to connect every time you use it
• It has funny preset names
• It lets you create your own presets for different situations

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that I think the Bemis bioBidet BB-1200 is a lovely product that is very reasonably priced for this category. I’ve seen them far more expensive than this with less functionality.

I’m not sure I can justify the possible privacy implications of this app vs. the functionality. But the good news is that it comes with a swell remote for doing all of the same things. You can just imagine that the settings you change are your version of Krakatoa.

I have a confession to make. I wrote this article back in May and only then found out that the BB-1200 was under embargo and not yet released! I was just given permission to release the article now. That’s good though because I can tell you that a full four months later we’re still very happy with the Bemis bioBidet BB-1200 and would definitely recommend it. We don’t use the app because it just takes too long. The fun of the preset names is overcome by the ease and speed of using the remote control, which Steve mounted to the wall right beside the toilet.

You can buy the Bemis bioBidet BB-1200 from from Bemis directly or through Amazon for the same price of $399. Be sure to read the information Bemis provide on which toilets fit which Bidets before you buy.