waterless urinals

Hat tip to my good friend Jeff Vyduna who does me entirely too much justice by claiming that I’m about four to six months ahead of the curve. Well, he does temper that by stating that it’s only for a few certain areas. With that in mind, I wonder in which category today’s post falls.

Wired has an article about the flushless urinal revolution. Read the article for details, but in essence, new urinals have been designed such that the pee just drains into a hole, and there’s no flushing action.

Interestingly, the HP site here in Ft. Collins installed at least two of the Falcon Waterfree Technologies urinals, in building 3 lower about 3 months ago. They appeared one day, and maintenance had thoughtfully printed out the FAQ from Falcon’s site and left them on the entrance shelf for people to read. (The entrance shelf is just a bare countertop right by the door so that hardworking HPers en route to a meeting with a laptop can put them down somewhere without fear of getting them wet in a sink or dropping into a urinal. (There is no fear of dropping a laptop into a toilet because obviously you would bring the laptop into the stall with you while taking a dump and play spider solitaire.))

So there you have it. Once again, I was exposed to futuristic technology about 3 months before it made it into Wired, and probably 4-6 months before it starts appearing in major consulting firms.

The last paragraph of the article is telling:

The cartridges do begin to smell, though, Hill says. They should be changed after a certain number of uses, but so far there’s no way to determine how many hits a waterless urinal has had.

Yes, the one bathroom with these Falcon urinals has taken on a faint urine smell that is immediately detectable upon entrance. However, much UIUC students gradually acclimatize to the smell of manure wafting from the south farms, so do HPers learn to deal with old pee smells.

(ps, entry will be updated on Monday with a pic of these fabled urinals)