To Flush Or Not To Flush

gooman writes "Tired of arguing the same old issues like Linux vs Windows? Choose up sides in the fight over flushing vs non-flushing urinals. The L.A. Times reports on efforts to place the waterless urinal into the Uniform Plumbing Code. To quote: '...the ordinary-looking urinal is at the center of a national debate that has plumbers and water conservationists taking aim at one another.' Amazingly simple, the no-flush urinal uses gravity to force urine through a filter containing a floating layer of oily liquid which then acts as a sealant to prevent sewer odors from escaping. Each no-flush urinal is claimed to save over 24,000 gallons of water a year, but the opposition is concerned about the spread of disease. Although not mentioned in the article this technology is in use around the world. Does anyone have these fixtures installed at their place of employment? Are there any real drawbacks? Is this really a worthwhile debate or just an excuse for toilet humor?"

Re:I prefer flush

[connah0047]

On my next birthday, when my wife asks me what kind of cake I want, it's going to be Urinal Cake.

Technology? I think not!

[Drosophila_R_Us]

Let me say one thing- No Flush Urinals stink to high hell! It's incredible. I work in an ~20 million dollar building on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus (Engineering 2- for those who know UCSC) which was completely 2 years ago, and it has only no flush urinals. They're nasty. Yes they save water, and that's a good thing, but to be lauded as new tech! Give me a break. Imagine that design meeting? "I've got an idea! No water in urinals!! We'll save water and then spin some horse#$%! about how they are odor free!!!" Thanks Guys!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Isn't urine sterile?

[hazem]

It is, for the most part. But it's nutrient rich and a great source of food for the bacteria living in the bathroom environment. By peeing on the floor, for example, you're not really adding bacteria to the environment, but you're feeding the ones that are already there.

Re:Pee in the Sink

[audacity242]

Urine is sterile when it first comes out.

But it makes a really great breeding ground for bacteria (which can colonize it from the air, or the remnants of some guy's puke in the urinal, etc.).

-Jenn

If It's Yellow

[midnightblaze]

If it's yellow let it mellow. If it's brown flush it down.

Yes but that's not the problem

[DarkTempes]

Urine is typically quite sterile (except for the occasional malfunctioning kidney or urinary tract infection letting some bacteria through)

The problem is urine tends to have a composition that fosters the growth of bacteria as they somehow manage to get into it. In fact this is one reason urine smells, typically urine is quite odorless when leaving the body. The 'stale urine' ammonia smell you remember from bathrooms is a biproduct of the decomposition of urea by bacteria.

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[ewhac]

Your loaded question implies there's a serious problem with the current system in the U.S, and that's just not the case. Fresh water is cheap and plentiful in the majority of the U.S. and that's not about to change any time soon.

Incorrect. The situation is already changing. And it is going to get worse soon.

Redwood City, CA, -- smack in the middle of one of the most affluent areas in the nation -- currently has what amounts to a ban on all new construction because there's simply no more fresh water. They have already exceeded their allotment from available supplies. Los Angeles has been living on borrowed time for decades, damming up every fresh water supply in sight and draining it dry. Tulare Lake, once measuring roughly 30 by 60 miles across, is now essentially gone. It took government intervention to keep them from completely draining Mono Lake, but they're still slurping a monsterous percentage of the Colorado River. Other scattered communities throughout the continental US are noticing the rivers and lakes are drying up, and underground fresh water aquifers are also becoming harder to find and maintain.

There is a problem. And as long as the population increases, it's only going to get worse. As I see it, there are only two real long-term solutions:

• Mandatory Conservation
  I don't really give a sh*t if you have a six-figure income and can afford a $500/month water bill; the surrounding community that supports you can't sustain it. So mandatory conservation for everyone. That means 1.8 gallon or less toilets, low-flow shower heads, front-loading clothes washers, underground or drip irrigation for gardens. If you're really snazzy, you'll recapture your waste water and re-use it for the garden or the toilets -- or re-purify it yourself and take pressure off the municipal supply.
• Massive Water Grid Project
  We have a nationwide power grid. Why not a nationwide water grid? Some areas of the country get flooded every year, while others suffer drought. With a national network of large pipes, we can ship water from areas that have too much to areas that don't have enough -- use the flood waters from the Midwest and East to relieve water shortages in the West, and vice-versa when the need arises.

Of course, I'm just an insane computer programmer, so what do I know?

By the way, if you want to talk about the (lack of) need for water conservation and be taken seriously, then viewing this [imdb.com] is a mandatory prerequisite.

Schwab

Low flow toilets caused enough problems.

[Murphy Murph]

This is just going to add to the problems the sewer systems face in heavily commercial districts due to the use of low-flow toilets.

In residential areas there are not as many problems with clogged sewer lines. Laundry machines, showers, dishwashers - these all add lots of water to the sanitary sewer system and keep the percentage of solids low.

Commercial districts, OTOH, are having increasingly large problems with plugged sewer lines. Low-flow toilets are pushing (or failing to push as the case may be) sanitary lines over the edge. The point is being reached where there just isn't enough water introduced into the lines to move the, um, solids.

The only solution is either decreasing the solids percentage in the system by increasing water use, or increasing the pitch at which sanitary lines are laid. You can only increase the pitch so much, though, before you run out of drop and need to install lift stations (bringing their own set of environmental costs.)

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[frdmfghtr]

Why is it that the US, one of the most advanced countries in the world cannot get their $#!^ together, pun intended :-) when it comes to plumbing issues that most of the rest of the world seems to have solved years ago?

Because it seems like if it doesn't (a) get somebody re-elected and/or (b) make somebody a profit, it usually won't get done.

During WWII, Winston Churchill put it best. To paraphrase: The Americans, when all other options have been exhausted, will do the right thing.

Re:uh, low flush toilets are often REQUIRED...

[Lehk228]

IIRC the high pressure public toilets use less water but are not used in homes because they require higher capacity source pipes for a powerful burst and because they are noisy.

I am not a nephrologist

[cbnewman]

but I once had dinner with one.

actually, the real reason that urine sterile is because, under normal circumstances, the kidneys are filtering a sterile fluid (blood).

there are five normally sterile fluids in the body: blood, urine, cerebrospinal fluid, pleural fluid (on the outside of the lungs) and peritoneal fluid (on the outside of your intestines). your mouth and gut are full of bacteria which makes fluid that comes out of them (spit, sputum, mucous, feces) contaminated.

<speculation> i would think that urine is an extremely poor vector for disease transmission. for one thing, it's pH is low enough that it is an unfavorable environment for bacterial or viral growth. it's relatively acellular and is loaded with osmotically active molecules (urea). certian viruses and bacteria could i suppose slip through the glomeruli or more likely catch a ride on the end of the urethra as the pee squirts by, but i doubt that it could concentrate into a fluid with a clinically significant viral load.</speculation>

the idea of urine accumulating on porcelain posing a disease risk doesn't ring true to me. are the plumbers going to lose money on this by having fewer moving parts to maintain?

Re:We have them at University of North Texas

[KWSN-MajorKong]

I know the men's room you mention. I am a student at UNT myself (physics major), and this semester have two classes in the EESAT building. Those waterless urinals are all well and good... until the filters clog. Then, you get the "lake 'o pee" that someone else mentioned above. The janitorial staff usually tape up a trashbag over the urinal until they get around to replacing the filter, and I have sometimes seen that take a few days. Once, I saw all THREE of them 'down' at the same time. It was more than a little ripe in there then, but normally, like you said, there is very little odor. They really do need to work on the reliability of the waterless urinals, because about half the time I use that restroom, at least one of the three is out of order.

I do find it interesting, however, that the waterless urinals are only used in the 1st floor men's room. The men's rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors use reqular flush-type urinals. Is it that those waterless urinals were just a 'demo' project of the company that made them (getting free adverts from the plaques mounted above EACH one of the three -- at nearly eye level... you can't miss reading them while you are taking a leak), or is there just some reason they can only be used at ground level?

Ecological Sanitation - way of the future

[iamnot]

Ecological sanitation [ecosanres.org] will be the only choice available to countries like India and China who are water-scarce. There is no way that all 2.5 billion+ people will be able to use water-based flush sanitation. Yet sanitation must be safe, clean, and easy to use. Ecological sanitation (or ecosan) is based on dry, urine-seperating toilets. No water is required, no major infrastructure, and all urine and faeces is safely composted without any need for electricity. The composted urine and faeces can be safely used on cropland for fertilizer. Currently, over two million Chinese use urine-seperating toilets in the south of China, and there is a major urban pilot project in Inner Mongolia. Additionally, some African countries are committing to 100% use of ecosan. No water, low-tech, no smell and no flies - plus fertilizer? No question of why, merely when and how!

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[CaptainCarrot]

Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. The only place you'll see the old, high-flow toilets are in older houses. You can't even buy the things anymore, not since 1992. 1.6 gpf toilets are now standard everywhere in the US. There was early resistance to them because, as another poster pointed out, early models did not work well, and in reaction some people went so far as to import high-flush models from Canada. No one bothers anymore unless they're atavistic; new low-flush toilets work just fine.

Re:Gravity doesn't stop odors

[adrianmonk]

I work as a government electronics contractor onboard U.S. Navy ships....some of the smaller ones have a similar urinal installed. It just collects urine until a certain amount has been collected (about 2 pisses or one really long one) and a level switch trips a vacuum suction device that sucks it away.

Well then, it's not all that similar then, because the one described in the summary has a "floating layer of oily liquid". It sounds like the US Navy ships' urinals that you're describing let the urine sit there in contact with the open air for indefinite period of time, whereas in these toilets, the oily liquid serves as a barrier between the urine and the air. Presumably this prevents certain volatile (meaning prone to evaporation, as opposed to unpredictable) chemicals from evaporating and smelling up the place.

The point being, although they may be similar, it seems like the oily liquid is a key difference.

Re:magnitude?

[trout0mask]

It depends on where you live. I recall reading that in the midwest, something like 60-70% of water usage is on lawn watering. In wetter climates I believe it's more like 40%. [pdf]http://www.energyrating.gov.au/library/pubs/w a-wateruse.pdf [energyrating.gov.au] is a relevant study done in western Australia; page 32 has a nice pie chart that shows 51% of water is used on lawns, and 8% on toilets. In non-pdf land, Concord, California says their breakdown is 40% grass / 7% toilets (http://www.ci.concord.ca.us/living/recycle/env-wa ter-use.htm [concord.ca.us] These are both from reasonably rainy areas. So yes, your gut feeling is very right.

we have those

[Anonymous Coward]

We have those at UQAM and they _do_ smell a lot. Sure its nice to save water but to say that there is no smell is a blatant lie.

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[BlueHands]

uhm, if you think redwood city is a desert, it shows how much you know about...well, reading.

HINT: Redwoods need alot of water.......guess what they have alot of in REDWOOD city?

Re:I have one!

[Shadow Wrought]

I have one, too, just out the back door. It's called the neighbor's tree.

Desert Golf or not?

[dogbreathcanada]

Visit Palm Springs or Las Vegas if you want to witness the ultimate in water waste. Hundreds of golf courses being watered daily in the hottest and driest climate in the United States. Perhaps just banning desert golf courses would solve a lot of the problems.

Good or Bad?

[JDStone]

These waterless urinals were installed about a year ago in my community college here in Southern California and I hate them. Yes, they do conserve a lot of water, but that oily liqued does not seem to keep the odor out, it still stinks!

Re:Low Flush *wastes* water, Oil based don't work

[Stephan Schulz]

I don't know about your experience, but are you aware that while urine is considered "icky", it is, indeed sterile, and even mildly sterilizing? The smell is ammonia, which is what the body gets rid of with urine. It's a different thing about feces - they can indeed cause the spread of disease, and they are the hygenical reason for plumbing.

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[shawb]

There is one problem with making water consumption plans municipality only, and that is basically rivers and lakes which are shared by municipalities. A city upstream can use so much water as to make it unusable or even unavailable downstream (notably the Colorado River which basically leaves the Baja Peninsula a trickle of brine after LA and Vegas take the lion's share. Baja communities which relied on the Colorado for water, fishing, etc have become devastated. The Sea of Cortez has been ecologically damaged by the increase of salt concentrations in the Colorado.) Although federal regulation does not really make sense either; water usage plans should be designed per watershed [wikipedia.org], although this is probably too big in some cases. A watershed as big as the Mississippi river basin or great lakes catchment would be too big to fairly manage; watershed management plans would often have to be broken down into sub-sheds for adequate planning.

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no name-calling, no berating, no insults. Just a reasoned argument.

You've been on Slashdot too long. I know plenty of Californians who don't think the world revolves around them. Great way to start a post. If I had a mod point, I'd give the GP just what he deserves, despite the fact that I agree with dealing with the problem locally, where possible.

As for California not being humanly habitable, that's yet another distortion of reality. That's a bad habit for such a "reasonable" guy. I can't and won't defend the abomination that L.A. has become, but it would have been able to sustain some habitation, just not droves of people from out of state who decided to move there. I won't complain too much though. Future generations will have to deal with much more overpopulation hell than I'll ever see. Is your metropolitan area not dependant on water and food beyond the immediately outlying area? Good for you. Time to get high and mighty I suppose.

Enough MOD instructions, OK? When you have points, spend them however you think is best. That's how it works.

If your toilet ever overflows (was Re:Get your $#!

[Laebshade]

If your toilet is ever in danger of overflowing and you're quick enough, turn the water supply to the toilet off. The reason it's overflowing is because water is still flowing to the toilet bowl but isn't being allowed to exit. Cut off the water supply (via the turn knob) and it won't overflow, then you can use a plunger at your leisure instead of frantically trying to catch it before it becomes a big mess. I can't tell you how many times this has saved me.

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[sribe]

If you're really snazzy, you'll recapture your waste water and re-use it for the garden or the toilets -- or re-purify it yourself and take pressure off the municipal supply.

No you won't. At least not if you live in a place where you really need to ;-( Those arcane 19th century water rights laws we have in the West forbid users of water sources from retaining once-used water for reuse, because the original idea was that what drained off your fields was supposed to find its way back into the stream for the next downstream user.

Now you might say that the law needs to be changed, and I would agree. But the water laws are very complex, and under near-constant litigation and negotiation both intra- and inter-state. Changing anything at all about them tends to be a non-trivial political process, to put it mildly.

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[sribe]

That place had the most lo-flo toilet from hell I ever saw.

The symptoms you described, especially the blowback of several gallons of waste water, cannot be caused by a defective low-flow toilet. Your building's plumbing had a serious problem, which needed to be diagnosed and fixed.

Re:this has nothing to do with whats better

[sjames]

A contractor will look at it and go " what the heeelll is that I can install ya ten american standards that I gots sitt'n in back it will save you $$$$$$$$$$$$"

That's one advantage of a no flush urinal. Since it doesn't require a water hookup, there's no excuse for the installation NOT being cheaper than for water flush versions. One less hole in the tile, less pipes to connect, and no joints under pressure that have to be solid.

Re:Low Flush *wastes* water, Oil based don't work

[BeeRockxs]

The no-flush urinals we have in the department of Geography at the University in Cologne don't smell at all.

Re:I am not a doctor

[agentkhaki]

It's not urban legend at all. I have, sitting right next to me, an official survial manual from the Department of the Army (FM 21-76 -- dated March, 1986) which states the following regarding open wounds:

Rinse (do not scrub) the wound with large amounts of the cleanest water available. You can use fresh urine if water is in short supply. Fresh urine is sterile.

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[Mad_Rain]

That's what you get for living in the desert. You countered the parent post, who said that freshwater is plentiful in most of the US by saying that in a couple places in California, there is need for conservation.

Except for one thing: Redwood City, CA [google.com] isn't in the middle of the desert, it's in the middle of the BAY AREA, and has a natural body of water within walking distance.

I wouldn't want to drink that water for all the tea in China, though. Water might be available, in most places in the US (which I think the grandparent poster was saying), but it certainly isn't all potable.

waterless urinals smell

[plbg32]

i am a plumber here in seattle, some comrades in the trade installed these waterless urinals in the Smith tower here, all though the bldg. well it was not long after that the complaints of the smellls started coming. so i guess if you want to save water you can live with the smell. from a professional point of view i think that they are unsanitary. that flush of water rinses the porcilen of the urine. i know that 99% of the readers here have never had to remove the drain piping from a urinal from behind a wall but its amazing how much scale buils up inside the pipes from a urinal(really one of my least favorite jobs best left to the apptrentice). without water this scale will become even thicker faster causing a failer of the drain. so it ends up costing the customer more in the long run. and finally for those who think i am overpaid , whats it worth to you to stick your hands in a bucket of sh#&....

Re:Low Flush *wastes* water, Oil based don't work

[rthille]

It seems to me that most of the smell of urine is from the piss all over the walls and floor because men in a public bathroom can't seem to aim to save their life. Either that or the urinial design is such that 90% of the stream splatters back all over the floor and your light-tan slacks so you walk out of the bathroom looking like you've been in a rainstorm.
At home I always sit down to pee because I'd rather take an extra few seconds to sit than spend my time wiping up the urine spray all over the place.

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[my_breath_smells]

I'm amazed you've been modded so positively. The parent was not making a cut on New Orleans - I believe the rhetorical device being employed is known by some as satire. New Orleans was a tragedy, and yes, Californians can do more. But problems concerning water span governmental boundaries - municipally, federally, internationally.

California should do more to dig itself out of its own mess, but that doesn't mean that waterless urinals won't help - and that's the point of the discussion, is it not?

Re:Get your $#!^ together

[j79zlr]

Actually you're wrong, I am a mechanical engineer and design plumbing systems, the larger the pipe, the better, sanitary pipes are not under pressure, they are gravity. Code minimum is 3" for all water closets in every town I've worked for, older water closet installations usually have 4", which is what I always call for.