[box type=”shadow” ]When it comes to waterless urinals, there are a series of questions that cloud the mind of most facility professionals in India. Aishwarya Chaturvedi, an Engineer, Social Scientist, Businessman and Writer attempts to answer those questions and some more, and help you take a step further in associating with a concept which yet to catch up in India.[/box]
The definitive guide to selecting, installing and using waterless urinals successfully
I reached out to Clean India Journal last month, to understand the value that I could offer to the readers of India’s premier magazine on cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation. Mohana, the editor at Clean India Journal, and I discussed a series of questions on waterless urinals that are top of the mind of most facility professionals in India. I hope this post answers those questions and some more, and helps you take a step further in realizing the Clean India vision set forth by Prime Minister Modi!
Why are waterless urinals failing in India? Where are we going wrong?
Search for “waterless urinals India” and the first link that pops up tells you that they are a flop. Our experience in more than 200 workplaces around India, however, suggested otherwise. I could not resist diving in deeper and figuring out why the article declares waterless urinals as a flop. As they say, “the devil is in the detail”.
I discovered that the waterless urinals in question used cartridge-based technologies. Urinals installed in public places are used extremely often and need frequent replacement of cartridges. Also, cartridge-based waterless urinals are not your best bet in public places where people might use them to throw solid waste, like pan peeks and cigarette butts in the urinals itself.
It is no surprise that the agencies tasked with the maintenance of these urinals found their job extremely hard, and gave up after a while. What’s surprising though, is that these were not sanitation companies themselves. Both companies were “concessionaires”, ad agencies which entered into a barter with the government, to maintain these urinals in exchange of the ad revenues they’d make off of these facilities. It is very possible that the agencies lacked the technical knowledge to maintain the urinals in the first place.
While this is a singular case of public urinals, there are a few other reasons why waterless urinals haven’t gained popularity.
So, what can you do to make sure that waterless urinals work?
There are a handful of checks that you ought to run, before deciding to install waterless urinals in your facility.
Before that, I’d like to mention a few ground rules. These hold true whether you use conventional urinals, or waterless ones. One, much of the smell in the restroom is because of the urine splashed around the urinals. It’s important to maintain a regular housekeeping schedule. Second, ensure that you have a positive ventilation of about 8–10 air changes per hour for the rest room. What I mean by that is, for a restroom that is 10′ by 10′ by 10′ in size, you need exhaust fans with power rating of 150 CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute) or more.
- Maintain the urinals regularly
I’d omit this point if it weren’t overlooked as often. It is absolutely essential that you maintain the regular housekeeping schedule. We also recommend deep cleaning twice a week, which adds half an hour to the daily housekeeping work - Check that you don’t use drainpipes made of CPVC or Galvanized iron
Such pipes corrode easily. In conventional urinals, water can flush away the urine and hence do not cause a problem. In case of waterless urinals, however, the corrosion can cause the scale to build up in the wall, causing a stinky situation. We recommend installing UPVC pipes, instead. - Ensure that pipes leading from the urinals to the sewer line have a minimum slope of 1/4″ per foot.
The slope is needed to drain the waste easily, without using water for the purpose. If the line is not sloped already, consider modifying the line to replace the few feet of pipe that connects the bottom of the urinal to the sewer line. - Keep a water fixture, like a water closet, upstream.
By upstream, I mean that water from this water fixture should go into the sewer line after passing through the drainpipe from the waterless urinals. This way, you reduce the chances of scale building up in the drainpipe and the consequent odor.
How exactly does a waterless urinal work?
Well, urine by itself is 85% water. It doesn’t need water to be flushed. In fact, when urine combines with water, ammonia is formed which is responsible for the odour you feel in restrooms that are not maintained well. Having said that, water is used only to prevent the urine from pooling up in the bowl, and drain it away quickly to keep the odour away.
Waterless Urinals in Action
A waterless urinal system tackles the problem differently. The urinal bowls are designed with steep enough slope so that all urine flows directly into the drainpipe without pooling in the bowl. In order to ensure the free flow, we often replace the trap or u-bend below the urinal with a right-angled pipe. Lastly, the ball valve used in Zerodour, traps the gases coming from the closet and make them drain out to gas release pipes or dissolve back into the sludge.
Are these successful anywhere?
We pride ourselves in more than 10,000 successful installations of waterless urinals over the last three years. Zerodour has been successfully adopted by companies of all sizes in a variety of industries. Particularly notable are McDonald’s, Mastek and Tata Motors.
Mastek, a global software company, employs about 180 people in its facility in Navi Mumbai. The employees complained of rampant odour in the restrooms, which the administration found hard to remove.
We recommended reconsidering their drainage lines and installed Zerodour at the facility. The maintenance team almost immediately reported less odour. In fact, the younger members in the housekeeping team also loved the deep cleaning schedule that allowed them to tinker with moving parts in the urinal, which is not available with the conventional urinals. The company administration went on to demonstrate improvements towards their Green Building Certification and is now considering expanding it to three other locations within five months of the first installation.
Tata Sons also had outdated infrastructure with their sanitation lines running since last 80 years. The lines were choked because of algal formation. Before adopting the waterless urinals, they used a bacterial culture, UREE, that cleared the drainage line and allowed for smooth flow of urine from the urinals.
McDonald’s realized the return on their investment with Zerodour in terms of water savings. Ranjit Paliath, Vice President of McDonald’s India’s business operations mentioned, “We found that water used in our washrooms was the biggest contributor to waste in our restaurants. An average toilet used between four and ten litres of water for every flush, while a stuck flush valve could waste around 64,000 litres of water per year. Just one small steady leak in a pipe could waste up to 227,125 litres of water every year. By replacing the water-based waste disposal system with a waterless urinal, we found that we could save over 1,51,000 litres of water per urinal every year,”
A waterless urinal is particularly useful for you, if you are in an industrial area and you receive hard water in your regular water supply, or if the area is a poor water catchment areas like part of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra. We have installed waterless urinals in public places, educational institutions, residential projects, office facilities and airports. All of these facilities use water that can easily be saved and utilized elsewhere, more productively.
Take action. Water is dripping fast!
Aishwarya Chaturvedi, an Engineer, Social Scientist, Businessman and Writer