To Flush Or Not To Flush 746
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?"
I have one! (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a no-flush urinal in the bathroom where I live [myspace.com]
The disadvantages are that you have to change the filter every, like 3,000, "non flushes". The filters are expensive and I'm sure they're slightly wasteful. If you don't have a new one, the entire urinal stops working and lovely pee just accumulates inside the urinal. And that stinks.
What would be nice would be a hybrid - it's a no-water system until the filter, "craps" out, and then you have the regular way of doing things, as a backup.
Saying all that, it's proven to save us lots of water and keep our incredibly delicate plumbing working well.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah (Score:2, Insightful)
this has nothing to do with whats better (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to break it to you bro, but this has nothing to do with what is available. The only thing that will mandate new methodology is political mandates. The only problem is no politition is going to back a bill that will raise contruction prices and help them lose all there campaign dollors from big developers. I'm an architect and I've seen it over and over again where a product will come out that will help either the environment or energy conservation. 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 $$$$$$$$$$$$" ofcourse the developer doesn't care these are being sold to deseperate homeowners no.349835439
Re:Spreading diseases? (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to have one where I worked and some of the people there went to some interesting lengths to try to control the smell when the jatintorial staff wasn't quick enough with the filter replacements.
Before I would say it is an efficient water design, I'd have to see the figures on how many gallons of water get used to produce each filter. And also how much pollution is created for each one. It might end up as a wash, or even a loss when you actually consider all of the process.
uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Einstein, you might have noticed that the article appeared in the Los Angeles Times. There is a huge water problem throughout pretty much the entire state of California. The San Joaquin and its tributaries have been totally tapped out by Northern California, the excess of which is sent down a concrete-lined artificial river hundreds of miles long to Los Angeles and the rest of southern California.
There is basically no more water available in California, yet water use continues to grow. San Francisco is seriously considering building a desalination plant for its water system, which supplies the peninsula and much of the south and east bay including parts of San Jose. SoCal is already way beyond sustainable water usage.
The only way to mitigate water usage growth is through conservation.
Re:Spreading diseases? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. you have an STD that causes urine to become a transmission point (very rare)
2. you have an infection (usually indicated by a strong odor, or pus color) (somewhat rate)
3. you're sick with a virus (common)
4. you're bleeding when you pee, and your blood contains a contagious pathogen/HIV. (normally blood is 'sterile' too, and normally HIV will 'break down' without continuous blood exposure within minutes) (rare)
now, 2 things to note
1. running water alone does not make a urinal sterile in the case of 1 or 2, and may be insufficent in the case of 3.
2. even an 'infected' urnial cannot transmit it's infection unless you come into physical contact with it. No, a urine stream does not count, as 'gravity' and 'fluid dynamics' make it physiologically impossible for one to become infected from one's own urine stream.
the Only downside of this technology is replacing the odor filter, and even a 'normal' urinal becomes pretty rank without a 'deoderizer' tablet.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:5, Insightful)
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. I hate to burst your bubble, but California is not "most" of the US. Come to the Mississippi river area and tell me there's not enough water.
A RADICAL proposal (Score:3, Insightful)
Self-solving problems (Score:3, Insightful)
If you take a long enough view, you will see these problems work themselves out. Your goal is not to find the solution. It's to survive it. If you are in an area that's resource poor, move.
The fact that so many otherwise smart people have trouble with this simple answer defies reason.
If you live in a country with a repressive regime, escape. If the drought has been going on for more than five years, it's a climate change. Move. If your city is below sea level, you should not live there. Move. If your climate is inhospitable to human life, leave it for the creatures that like it and move. Is your region so crowded with other people that life there is unsustainable? Get OUT.
This is not so complicated. You are blessed with the power of locomotion. Use it.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:2, Insightful)
You just raise the cost of the water as the use increases. As their water use grows their cost increases geometricly. Suddenly people conserver water not because they have to but because they choose to.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event, this seems like an issue that should be dealt with on the local municipal level, and certainly not on a Federal one. There are no water shortages in my area, and I have no desire to switch to a different design of toilet that wouldn't have any advantage to me and would just mean a lot of additional complexity, and I would take a very dim view of any legislation that tried to force this. If people who choose to live in places essentially unsuited to human habitation have problems with their water supply, obviously their governments should address these issues. But it's not a universal problem, and it does no good to make it one artificially.
There are enough problems which affect the entire country that need to be dealt with; we should leave those that only affect certain regions to the levels of government closest to the problems to fix as they see fit.
Re:Spreading diseases? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ways to get a disease from a urinal:
1) Direct contact (i.e. playing in pee, licking, etc)
2) Splash, which all urinals have by nature.
So, either way it is there, but hard to catch, unless people pee on the flush handle within 15 minutes of your use.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:4, Insightful)
What does need to happen is that we need to have water rates that:
1. Accurately represent the entire cost of what is being used; perhaps including sewage treatment and water recycling, dam construction and maintenance, and other high-level infrastructure, either in the overhead/distribution flat fee, or the unit price per gallon,
2. Fluctuate depending on supply and demand: some water companies only bill bi-monthly, with pricing to match, and this means that customers aren't encouraged to tailor their usage to match supply, and
3. Equal rates for equal product delivered: business and industrial consumers shouldn't receive a discount on their consumption, except on the distribution/overhead charges (because it's a lot less piping to run one 4" line to a factory that consumes 1,000,000 gal/day than 1,000 small lines to homes that each consume 1,000 gal/day, the large users can fairly demand and should receive less of an overhead or "distribution surcharge," but the cost per gallon of water ought to be the same). This is probably the biggest issue, since I'd bet many major consumers are paying essentially subsidized rates for their water because of old agreements with utility companies.
The short-term effect of this might be to drive some water-dependent industries out of some areas, but this is really only a correction of behavior that shouldn't have existed if the market had been operating correctly. In the long run, water conservation will be encouraged in the same way that's most encouraged energy conservation: increasingly high utilities costs make the upfront investment in 'greener' facilities justifiable. It's just that for historical reasons, water supplies have always been insulated from having prices that represent the true cost of what's being delivered, especially in arid regions, and now we're seeing the consequences of that.
Re:Get your $#!^ together, (Score:3, Insightful)
Fresh cheap water _IS_ Plentiful in most of the United States, You decided to use for your example the reason why parent poster used the word "Most" and not "All"
"waters from the Midwest and East to relieve water shortages in the West, and vice-versa when the need arises."
To this I say, Fuck You. There never will be a Visa-Versa, You would just leech off of it entirely and never find a solution to your own damn problem. it was entirely the prerogative of the population in west to build a paradise in a desert, it was entirely their decision to drain the Colorado for water intensive farming, to put a swimming pool in every backyard of vast stretches of Arizona suburb complete with matching green grass. status symbol accessory.
I live next to the great lakes, cheap water is more than plentiful, and you almost never see farmers ever have to use (let alone own) irrigation equipment, our farmers farm In an area perfectly suited for it, and our population drinks the same plentiful waters.
Oh dear, California cannot provide for its population, Boo Hoo, do yourself a favor an cry a friggin river.
I'm not saying water conservation isn't important, Though I would say water pollution is a bigger problem that needs immediate attention. California is not the rule. California and the surrounding states are the exception, You built a metropolis in a desert, and you reap what you sow, Enjoy!
-Sincerely, Your friendly pessimist to the north.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:3, Insightful)
The water companies are subsidised even more, but water is not a commodity like Oil. Not yet anyway.
There is also the Law and Order aspect to think about. If Joe Twelvepack down the road can afford to drive a hummer, the Joe Sixpack just thinks, "Ah well, maybe I need a better job". If Joe Twelvepack can afford to water his lawn while Joe Sixpack can only afford to wash once a week, I think his reaction might be a little stronger.
Fundamentally, you need water to live. Oil is convenient, but you don't need it to survive.
We have them at UNC Chapel Hill (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps if they can solve the splatter problem...
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:5, Insightful)
Y'know, posts like the parent up there are exactly the kind of debating we need more of here. There was no name-calling, no berating, no insults. Just a reasoned argument. If ya don't agree with it, that's fine, but it's not the job of modders to bury opinions they don't like -- that's actually very poor modding, and should be condemned.
I'd call out whoever did that but I'm sure they don't have the stones to show themselves. Hey mods -- all you reasonable ones anyway -- throw the parent a bone here, eh?
Ok, back on topic. I live in a rural central-Pennsylvania area, and here we seem to go from one extreme to the other: We're low on water one day, then uh-oh it's raining, crap now we have flooding! Drought! Flood! Drought! It gets a little ridiculous sometimes, really. But, I rarely here anyone complaining, in any kind of long-term fashion, that there's not enough water here. Overall it seems to balance out pretty well here, in spite of people on one side or the other panicking a bit too quickly. Granted I have little technical knowledge on the subject, but I've yet to see any local laws or ordinances passed that require the rationing of water.
Again, I can speak only from the experience of my local area, YMMV.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmm... this really seems like there may have been TMI, but hey: it's on-topic, fresh on everyone's mind after the thanksgiving feast, and honestly it's sorta funny and maybe even informative (although my position may be wrong, I suppose there would have to be a controlled study on this... anybody working on dual degrees as a civil engineer and dietician need a research project or even thesis paper?) I'll still post this, just go AC.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Despite the opinions of many New Orleaners I've met, the universe does not revolve solely around them, or their city. Hurricanes are rarely an issue in the U.S.., outside of the gulf states -- the only exception being the odd seasonal hurricane that comes up and the atlantic and strikes a northern state.
In any event, this seems like an issue that should be dealt with on the local municipal level, and certainly not on a Federal one. There are no hurricanes in my area, and I have no desire to subsidize the south when it wouldn't have any advantage to me and would just mean a lot of additional tax burden, and I would take a very dim view of any legislation that tried to force this. If people who choose to live in hurricane-prone places essentially unsuited to human habitation have problems with their weather, obviously their governments should address these issues. But it's not a universal problem, and it does no good to make it one artificially.
I hope you get the point I'm trying to make. California is responsible for a lot more than its share of America's industry, technology, agriculture, and GDP. Just like a major disaster striking a major port is going to cause damage to the entire nation, so would any change in the way the agriculture and industry operates in California. I don't think the stock market would fair too well if California became unproductive due to drought. This problem is also not limited to California (see Nevada), and could end up causing problems elsewhere as well. California doesn't ask for federal help all that often, and usually ends up getting turned down or completely fucked over (see the energy crisis and rolling blackouts in 2001-2002) by the rest of the country. Their tax burden is among the highest, and every year California is subsidizing the states that are hit by hurricanes, helping rebuild the rest of the country, and chugging along. Eventually this is going to become a disaster. We know that. We knew it would happen in New Orleans, but nobody wanted to move and nobody wanted to improve the levees. Now the rest of the country is footing the bill, bitching and moaning about nobody doing anything sooner. This mandatory water conservation is somebody seeing a huge future disaster, KNOWING it's coming, and offering a solution that will help avoid it. Now everyone is whining because it doesn't affect them [yet] and blaming California?
That being said I had these waterless urinals at my job for a couple of years and I really liked them. They didn't smell at all, and I didn't even feel the need to wash my hands afterwards since I didn't have to touch the door handle, the urinal, or anything other than my zipper and boxer shorts. A couple of times they did get backed up for some reason and when you peed into them the blue oily stuff would come up out of the hole. But it never overflowed, and it just drained back down after a minute or less. But these were heavily used urinals, with hundreds of people using three of them, and I only saw that happen a few times. I'm sure it saved thousands of gallons of water, and I wouldn't mind using them again.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:this has nothing to do with whats better (Score:3, Insightful)
The most effective way to encourage people to conserve water is to increase the price of water. You have to turn it into an economics structure.
Now the more socialist minded will balk at the idea of water prices going up for everyone. So you could take some queue's from California, add some creativity and end up with something like this: You get a tiered price structure per person in the household. No exceptions of any kind, period.
In California, according to relatives who live there, they had to conserve water they they fined people who used "too much" water. Those who continued to use too much found there water shut off at the street, no exceptions.
It might sound draconian, but it isn't really. You have a reasonable limit and a known set of parameters. If people know their limits ahead of time, then they become responsible for management of their own behaviour. And yes, the limit should be such that almost everyone pays a higher than the minimum price so that everyone has a greater incentive/reward to make conservation work more for them than it does today. That is to say, everyone would sit somewhere above that flat part of the curve.
Re:Get your $#!^ together (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Pee in the Sink (Score:3, Insightful)
It is sterile. So is beef broth.
Go watch Mythbusters for the "3 second rule" test when they used beef broth uniformly contaminate a surface.
It doesn't matter if it is sterile. It is only sterile if you are doing golden showers or other piss-porn. Once it hits something, bacteria quickly breed in it. Ever hear of pungi-sticks? That was piss they used to fill them with bacteria.
Go piss in a bucket and leave it in your bedroom for a night and you will realize that "fact" is useless nerd-wanking.
Piss is biologically active about
Seriously, piss in a bucket and leave it in your room over night. I dare you.
Economic pressure does not always work (Score:3, Insightful)
When it gets this bad, you don't want any new high rises in your neighbourhood because in a single high rise there could be 50+ families sucking the little water that is remaining at such speeds that entire neighbourhoods go dry. The situation is so bad in some parts around here that there is ABSOLUTELY NO water even at depths of 300 ft or more.
When it gets this bad, you also don't want your rich neighbours to suck out all the water leaving the rest of the community completely dry.
There are people rich enough in these parts to have swimming pools even as people on the same street have to lug water from miles away.
Please don't live in this utopia where economic pressures somehow lead to a just and fair sharing of natural resources. It has never happenned and it may never will.
We have legislation now which prevents to a small extent the complete wastage of water. But the situation may deteriorate to the point where the state may have to ration out the water for each family. Sometimes desperate measures are needed to prevent total collapse of the system - sometimes the state just has to step in to ensure that all citizens have enough; socialism is not all bad sometimes.
Re:uh... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, Pinky, you might also notice that Kalifornia != all of north america.
Perhaps they don't teach geography in your schools anymore, I understand Cal. schools rank near the bottom.
Anyway, Kalifornia's problem is not water.
It's people. Too many mostly useless people.
Actors, for example.
Get rid of 2/3 of the population, it would be a nice place to visit. And there would be enough water.
Re:A RADICAL proposal (Score:3, Insightful)
The long and short of it is water is cheap - the first 20 minutes I work each month pays for water, easily... compared to rent, electricity, etc... its a piss in the lake. Its really not a concern. This globe is 70% water by surface area: desalinization is not that expensive a process energy-wise (I am an engineer) this is a moot point.
-everphilski-