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Common Features of Waterless Urinals

All waterless urinal designs will save you the same amount of water. Obviously, they are all equal in this respect. Claims about water savings at other sites are of little consequence. What matters is the assessment of potential savings at your site, not a claimed "average" or a case study at another site.  The amount of water used to flush a urinal can vary from 29m3 per year to 235m3.  So, if your water charge is £2:00 per cubic metre (including the sewerage charge), that equates to the difference between £58 and £470 per year, which is very significant when assessing the benefits of waterless urinals.  
All waterless urinals require consumables particular to the design of the waterless system. The cost of the consumables varies enormously, as does the frequency with which they need to be purchased and the ease of deployment. (Click here for projections of consumable costs for the waterless urinal solutions offered by Gentworks.)  

All waterless urinals need care and attention, just like flushed urinals. Some require regular maintenance that can be carried out by onsite staff. Others may require, or work best with, specialist maintenance by external resources.  Sellers may not always volunteer full details about the maintenance required for fear of losing a sale. It is important to evaluate time and costs, both in-house and contracted out, for:

  • new cleaning practices and products
  • replacement of components/cartridges and related servicing procedures as part of planned (regular) or reactive (irregular) maintenance
  
No urinal is perfect, waterless or not. Many waterless urinal designs will reduce the occurrence of blockages in the waste pipes and solve odour problems, but only if they are correctly fitted and maintained.  This does not mean, however, that the urinals will never suffer from problems again.  Some preventative maintenance is usually required. A waterless urinal will only perform correctly if cleaning and maintenance regimes can be made compatible. As is so often the case, even a well designed product can fail because it relies on reasonable behaviour by both users and maintainers. Poor products will fail in more situations than good products, but good products will fail too if reasonable care is not taken.  
Short product trials prove little. Unless there is a fundamental flaw in the design, implementation or on-site care of a waterless urinal system, it will usually take several months for any blockage or odour problems to become apparent. When a waterless urinal system is installed, it is normal practice to ensure that the urinals waste pipes are thoroughly cleaned/de-scaled.  After the pipes have been cleaned, it will typically take 3 to 9 months for a blockage to develop if a system is failing, whether waterless or not.