Waterless Urinals
Do Waterless Urinals Face a Bleak Future?
Source: green-buildings.com
Question:
"Please help me. I have been offered an opportunity to sell a top brand waterless urinal in California with a nice rebate from the department of water and power per urinal. My research of the industry is largely on things that happened a few years ago. Essentially my question is do you truly feel that waterless urinals are destined for significant growth and are their major obstacles in trying to market this product. Seems the plumbing unions are fighting this pretty hard, at least as of 2008."
Advice provided by: David M. Pratt, P.E., CEM, LEED AP, MWH
"Unfortunately, I think the outlook for waterless urinals is pretty bleak...."
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We installed waterless urinals earlier this year in the commercial office building I manage. Although I believe they are the wave of the future, there are some issues that have to be resolved, i.e. odors, cartridges costs, clogging, etc. We have been finding hair under the cartridges, which creates worse odors than expected. Although we increased the frequency of changing the cartridges, the odors still exist. As for the cost, the cartridges are very expenses so we may be saving on water usage but are spending more on maintenance of the urinals. Unless some of these issues can be resolved, waterless urinals may not last.
Waterless urinals are here to stay - they are the wave of the future. They were used in the building of the new NAR DC headquarters [first LEED certified office building in DC] and to my knowledge they are performed beautifully.
- Harold Huggins | Flag this comment for review