The sign above these urinals boasts that they use only 16 ounces of water per flush, saving 88% more water than the conventional one gallon flush urinal. How do they come up with 88%? Shouldn’t it be 50%?
Reported for forum change.
Reported for forum change.
Flushed to GQ from ATMB.
16 ounces = 1 Pint
32 ounces = 1 Quart
128 ounces = 1 Gallon
16 ounces out of 128 ounces = 12.5 %.
100 - 12.5 = 87.5 = 88% rounded up.
It’s still a clumsy phrasing, though, because “saves 88% more water than a conventional urinal” makes it sound like a conventional urinal saves some amount of water, and this one saves a bit less than twice that much. A better phrasing would be “saves 88% of the water used by a conventional urinal”.
Who flushes urinals?
d&r
They’re probably comparing it to toilets. A standard urinal uses less watter than a similar toilet. so a HE urinal saves even more.
I’ve seen zillions of urinals with flush valves. some automatic, some manual.
In fact, about a year ago there was an APB/BOLO out for some dink that was stealing them.
Ray was wrong, BTW. The guy actually was selling them for scrap. The insides of them have brass and it’s worth money.
I wondered that as well, but the numbers don’t quite match. Standard toilets now are 1.6 gallons per flush, or about 205 ounces.
If the urinal is saving 88% more than a 1 gpf urinal, the standard they’d need to be using would be 16 + (1 + 1/0.88) * (128-16) = 255 ounces, or 1.99 gpf.
I’m not feeling up to working the numbers, but they could be comparing their 16 ounce rinse* to old urinals that may use up to five gallons per flush.
- Over the Thanskgiving holiday, Zurn “The Pint” 16 ounce flush urinals were installed at my office. I don’t know if the design is lacking, or if there’s a problem with the plumbing, but restroom stinks like an old gas station since then. Sixteen ounces just doesn’t seem to be enough to wash the smell away.
The guy after you who has to smell your recycled coffee.
I do. It’s pretty gross when I go to urinate, and someone else’s is already there, ready to splash back at me.
There are new urinals that don’t flush at all. I’ve wondered how they work. They have a drain pipe out, but seem to have no water pipe in.
I took some classes with one of the guys who designed the waterless urinals.
They use an oil that floats in the trap to prevent urine and urine smell from backing out. I think there may be something different about the glaze used on the porcelain as well.
He did a whole presentation on them and it was more interesting than I thought it would be.
Waterless urinals bring a new “gotcha” - they can eat pipes. More accurately, since the urine is not diluted at all, and it’s left to trickle out through the drain, the life expectancy of a commercial copper drain line goes from nearly forever to three years or so before it corrodes and leaks.
The things building managers go through for LEED certification…
The waterless urinals I saw had some pucks with microbes to decompose the waste.
I am attending college now. One of the classroom building was recently constructed with non-flushing urinals. I can tell you that they STINK, much worse then any out house that I have ever used.
The smell from these urinals has been so bad that the instructor in the classroom next to the gentleman’s loo has moved many of his classes outside to the Quad area. Great fun in the snow!
Yes LEEDS is a good thing, but it should not make a couple of rooms in the building uninhabitable.
These have always stunk. Building Maintenance has poured oil down the drain to no good effect. I saw them doing this with my own eyes. A good cleaning will work for an hour or two. I now do not take any classes held near these urinals. I hope a solution was found over Christmas break!
Hmmm, this building was built in 2009, I wonder now! The smell has grown much worse in the last year.
They had the no-flush urinals in the Colorado Springs Airport for a while and they really did make the Men’s room smell like an outhouse. They removed them after a year or two.
During periods of high use, the restroom featuring low flow urinals in our building makes your eyes water it smells so badly.