Waterless urinals, Yes or No?
Waterless urinals don’t work and nobody really wants to talk about it. The manufacturers can prove to us that the units work in their laboratories. The water utilities say they want to save water and these units save water. However, the contractor knows either firsthand or from the technician in the field that they don’t work. Unfortunately, it is hard to convince other parties that this is true.
You see the problem that the plumber knows, but no one else knows is how the customer reacts to the unit. It doesn’t matter if it works in the lab, or if it saves tons of water. If the customer is not satisfied, the customer calls the plumber and tells him to take it out or fix it. So all the ills created by politicians, manufacturers and others trying to do the right thing fall on the plumber.
I will use waterless urinals as proof. We put in a waterless urinal at PHCC about six months ago. Just recently it stopped up and started to smell. Because I am aware of this, I went to the basement, took out the instruction manual and asked the maintenance person to properly maintain the waterless urinal. He had to take out a drain, run 2 gallons of water down the urinal, then add the special liquid to the bowl and replace the drain. If I was not as aware as I am about the importance of this maintenance, I would have said, “Call the plumber and tell him this thing is stopped up.” After I had called him a few times, I would get frustrated and tell him to take it out and replace it with one that works.
You see, it does work, it is just not properly maintained. I did everything right when we had it installed. I put one person in charge of informing the maintenance people of the proper maintenance of the waterless urinal. But no one really takes responsibility of a urinal – we just expect them to work. If it does not work, then we call the plumber. If he put it in six months ago, we expect it to be fixed for no charge. The plumbing contractor loses, but the politician and the manufacturer do not suffer one bit.
That is why waterless urinals do not work. It is not the unit that does not work – so the manufacturer has done the right thing. It does save water, so the utility is doing the right thing. It is just that the customer does not really expect to have to maintain something as common as a urinal, so the customer is going to be upset. She is not upset at the manufacturer or the utility or even the politician – the customer is upset with the plumber. Why did you put something in my house that does not work properly?