Friday, February 29, 2008

Water-Free Potties

This is pretty cool.  The office building I'm in has installed urinals in the men's bathrooms which do not use water.  It has taken some getting used to...

The urinals are made by Sloan, using Falcon Waterfree technology, and the ones installed in this building look like this:

DSC00004

Notice anything different?  For one, there are no water pipes!  If any women readers of this blog picked that out, then I'll question how you knew!  :-)

DSC00007 If you'll look closely, you'll notice a small spec above the ring at the bottom.  A close-up view is to the right.  Yes, it is a bee.

My first day here, I was instructed that I was supposed to "aim for the bee", to which I replied (though only to myself), "Poor bee!"

Like I said, it has taken some getting used to.  I'm fairly accustomed to the sound or rushing water when I step away from a urinal, assuming, of course, that it is equipped with an automatic flusher.  The silence after stepping away from one of these is, well, a little foreign to me.

I have no clue what the return on an investment like this would be.  Granted, a lot less water is used each day in this building, which is cool, so there is the main cost savings.  I don't know what the maintenance cost is like on one of these, but I'll assume that it is less than the cost of flushing water down the drain...

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