Thursday, July 7, 2005 | 9:15 a.m.
Dr. Warren Smith, an unassuming Boulder City physician, wants to help keep bottoms clean.
Almost 30 years ago, he started following that dream by constructing small devices, sort of inverted waterfalls, for people to add to their toilets. The devices, which went through a lot of revisions over the years until a standard, mass-produced version came out a few years ago, were ultimately named the Biffy.
Now Boulder City is home to a Biffy explosion. Smith, a few family members and a half-dozen assembly employees sold about 4,500 Biffys last year. In the first four months of this year, Smith's company sold 1,500 Biffys.
But in May, the company assembled and sold 3,000 of the personal water jets.
Smith credits the surging sales of the devices to certification two weeks ago by plumbing manufacturers of the Biffy with the Universal Plumbing Code. The certification, which depended on proving that there was no water back-flow from the device into the local water system, means that the device meets local plumbing requirements in 49 of 50 states and Canada, he said.
The goal now is to get the self-cleaning Biffys into hotels, nursing homes or other spots where people can see and use them. Smith knows from experience that using the devices is the best advertisement he can buy.
"People tell me, 'Oh my god, I love my Biffy,' " said Smith, who grew up in Las Vegas and is a family practice doctor in Boulder City. He has a series of patents on the device.
Smith follows other Boulder City inventors, including his friend Paul Fisher, who designed a pen that could write upside down and founded the town's Fisher Space Pen Co.
Like the space pen, the Biffy is a significant cut above existing technology, in this case a manually operated, paper-based system that, Smith said, "is not much better than rocks and leaves."
The Biffy's original purpose was to help his patients, many of them with disabilities that made using toilet paper impractical. Other patients with hemorrhoids needed something that could clean without abrasion.
The design is what makes them so popular with those that have tried them, he said. Unlike a bidet, a fixture common in some European bathrooms and sometimes mistaken for a urinal by American men, the Biffy is like a small shower head that is easily directed where it is needed. The Biffy easily attaches to the existing toilet and does not take up any bathroom real estate.
"It completely washes down there in, like, 5 seconds," Smith said.
Word of mouth and a smattering of media attention is having an impact on sales. Smith has found that everyone can come to love the Biffy.
"The overwhelming majority of our customers are people who just like to be clean ... An awful lot of our customers are females," he noted. "They get twice as much benefit as men, if you follow."
Men like them, too. Bill Eddins, a Clark County special eduction teacher at Monaco Middle School in Sunrise Manor, first used a Biffy a couple of years ago at a friend's house.
He was an immediate convert.
"I used his," Eddins said. "I was at his house and I said, 'Wait. It's just amazing.' "
"I am a partial paraplegic," he explained, a situation that means he has a lack of sensation in some body parts, which also means he used a lot of toilet paper in an effort to stay clean.
With the Biffy, "I just know I'm clean. Even more so, the bigger reason I like it, there's not the abrasion from using toilet paper.
"It's just nice to use. That's the beautiful thing about it."
There is one potential drawback, Eddins and other fans admit.
"Once people try it -- I'll drive 200 miles to get home to get to my Biffy. That's the only downside of it. You'll do what it takes to get home."
Another fan of the Biffy works in the small Boulder City assembly plant -- a couple of garage-sized rooms where the mostly made-in-the-U.S. parts come together by hand and are ultimately individually tested.
"We have two at our house," said Jessica Ruiz as she assembled components. "I love 'em. I tell my friends about 'em."
Smith said his customers are ambassadors for the product, and the Biffy has so far sold itself. Eddins agreed.
"People have to not laugh at it. Try it," Eddins said. "Don't be afraid to try it out."
Smith said he is not worried about the success or failure of his invention. He believes that those that need it will find it. Others will discover a Biffy on their own.
And he is a fan of his own work.
"At least I'm going to spend the rest of my life with a clean bottom."
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