If you’re a guy you know the sheer joy of peeing standing up. One of the great evolutionary advantages, in my opinion. Let’s me run from the predators and go about my business at the same time.
Anyway, if you’ve visited older buildings’ mens’ rooms, you’ve no doubt seen the tall urinal that starts about four feet up the wall and drops to the floor where there’s a drain.
I never see them anymore. Instead there’s standard two foot high types stuck to the wall with one always set much shorter, I assume for ADA reasons.
Why is this? It seems impractical. I’m too tall to use the short one but the others are too tall for the little people and kids. If the urinal went to the floor, like the golden olden days, then anybody could use any position.
I’m guessing that the sprinkles on shoes and trouser legs did them in. Plus which, the ‘social’ aspect of standing crammed in elbow-to-elbow is unnerving to some. Separate urinals mitigate both these problems.
I don’t believe they have been done in. I suspect it’s a matter of cost, the hang-on-the-wall types being cheaper. A new clubhouse was built at my golf course just a couple of years ago and it has the big, all-the-way-to-the-floor urinals. And people still miss them quite often.
[url=http://tinyurl.com/y6wtk8Kohler has one for $579. They have the smaller models from $185-424. There are some more expensive – touchless, waterless, and a trough (which would replace several, so is comparable in price)
When you’re equipping a building with 500 urinals, every dollar makes a difference.
That they think girls can’t use a dirty restroom. Any one who has maintained both men’s and women’s bathrooms will tell you the women are always dirtier.
Cost - both manufacturing and transportation. Those tall urinals cost far more to manufacture than a smaller wall-mounded unit. Because they’re heavier, they would cost more to transport. Being long and narrow, they’re also more suceptible to breaking during transport.
Flexibility. Many of the older urinals were recessed into the wall. Replacing them would be very time-consuming compared to a wall-mounted unit. Remodelling the restroom would also cost far more if the urinals need to be removed, and the recessed areas they once occupied filled. It’s easier to remove and replace a wall-mounted urinal, should the restroom be remodelled or converted to a women’s restroom.
Lower ick factor for janitorial staff. Smaller urinals are easier to clean than the taller models. With the bowl higher, it’s easier for users to aim, and thus there’s less drippage on the ground.
Lower ick factor for users. The terminal dribble is less likely to splash on your shoes if the bowl is closer and projected farther from the wall. A split stream can be a disaster if you’re using a floor-mounted urinal, but when the bowl is a foot away, both streams can be more easily captured.
I assume they want to have to do less cleaning between shifts of toilet-goers.
Yes, now that you mention it, I recall my wife explaining how women don’t actually want their backsides to touch the seat, so they tend to pee all over the place. That would seem to defeat the purpose of the no-standing rule. But perhaps Norwegian schoolgirls don’t have that tendency.
I’m getting wonderful images in my head. I picture a man running from a bear while splashing piss around as he runs. Nice.
Here, I picture a split stream with one stream landing in the urinal to my right and one in the urinal to the left, while the urinal in front of me remains dry. In this case, it may be better to have the ones that go to the floor.
In the halcyon days of the floor-mounted urinoir, more people wore leather shoes than is currently the case. Therefore any annoying terminal dribble could easily be wiped off the non-porous surface.
With the advent of sports shoes or trainers, many of which styles feature a porous surface, the splash residue tends to permeate the material, often continuing its relentless descent as far as the socks. Hence the remorseless but necessary progress of the wall-mounted model.
The split stream can be a ‘disaster’ when using either urinal. This is because the angle between the two streams is often unpredictable. Whereas it is normally acute, it can sometimes unexpectedly develop into an obtuse angle and, on rare and spectacular occasions, a reflex one.
Therefore a strict penis control regime is desirable when relieving oneself in either lavatorial environment.