subject: The Story of the Waterless Urinal- Positive Developments [print this page] Falcon's waterless urinal was facing unprecedented hostility from plumbers. But James Krug was not a man to get bogged down by pressure. He decided to pursue a different strategy. He hired government affairs specialist Daniel Gleiberman to convince authorities on the safety of waterless urinals. Gleiberman was successful in persuading Pennsylvania's Allegheny County officials to grant Falcon the authority to install their urinals, in a one off exception to the local plumbing code. Falcon fixed their urinals in Pittsburgh's St Clair Hospital in 2004. As of today, the hospital continues using them, with no problems or resultant health issues reported.
If St. Clair Hospital was Falcon's first win - there were more to follow. The urinals were tested at Fort Huachucha military base in southern Arizona, which was reeling under a water scarcity. Energy engineering technician at the base, Craig Hansen, fitted 740 urinals, despite objections from local plumbers. Hansen figured that plumbers were insecure about the product as they felt it would affect their livelihood. He also realized that plumbers weren't very receptive to this change.
But the soldiers weren't very receptive to change either - with complaints that the urinals were dirty, they stank and what happened to the flush handle?' becoming a common affair. One building in particular was vocal about how the urinals stank badly. Hansen decided to investigate the problem. There was indeed a stench in the bathrooms but the urinals looked clean. He tried an experiment to determine the cause of the stink. A lit smoke bomb was dropped into the main sewer, following which smoke filled the building. Ideally, this shouldn't have occurred as plumbers had fixed suitable drains in each toilet, sink, bath and shower so that the pooled water in the drain traps sewer gases and prevents them from escaping. There was something else going on.
Upon further observation, Hansen found that the building's sewer vent was located exactly in front of the building's air intake. All the smoke coming out of the vent was being directed right back into the building. Another revelation was that a broken toilet in the women's bathroom was giving off smoke. Hansen made the necessary repair and changed the placement of the sewer vent. There were no further complaints on bathroom stench. Hansen realized that the stink had been there before the urinals had been installed, but soldiers had been unable to figure out where it was coming from and blamed it on the urinals.
The waterless urinals were a big hit at the base, cutting down water consumption drastically, which Hansen reckons is close to millions of gallons. In some good news for Falcon, the US Army Corp of Engineers announced that starting 2010, only waterless urinals would be installed at army bases.
The Story of the Waterless Urinal- Positive Developments
