Fixture Usage Group

Hi MK,

Give us more details here, what is the type of the project and why you decided to put 3 three types of restrooms(male, female, unisex) to serve who? then this will lead you and us to determine the right daily uses.

You will need to make a reasonable assumption regarding male occupants that will utilize the restrooms without urinals. One approach is to determine the percentage of all males without access to urinals by calculating the total number of male restrooms with urinals vs. without urinals. Adjust your Total Daily Uses for the water closet and urinal fixture uses accordingly. In any case, I would provide a brief narrative explanation with your final documentation.

Hello Carlie, I have finised my documentation for WEp1 but I am not sure if I calculated correctly the number of people who use unisex restrooms and total daily uses of those toilets. May I contact you directly and ask for comments?

Hi Regina and Carlie--

I recently received the same comment regarding unisex bathrooms. I didn't separate them into a fixture group as the unisex bathrooms are spread throughout the facility-- anyone can access them and often a unisex bathroom is between a male restroom and a female restroom.

Here is my comment: "Unisex restrooms have not been accounted for in the calculations. If a percentage of male occupants will not have access to or will be expected to use restrooms without urinals, the default Total Daily Uses for water closets and urinals must be adjusted. Please provide a narrative and/or supporting calculations to explain the anticipated urinal usage."

I don't believe I should adjust Total Daily Uses for unisex bathrooms. However, since this is a prereq-- I am willing. I just don't know how to back out the uses for this.

Any advice will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Katie

Hi Regina, Carlie, MM K, and Katie,

Our project just received the same comment on a similar situation where we have a male restroom, female restroom, and "gender inclusive bathroom" between the two. Do any of you have any follow up advice or experience to share on how you resolved the approach?

Hi all,
We frequently have this situation in our office projects, i.e., core restrooms and unisex restrooms. In my experience, Carlie is right. You have to create a separate fixture group for the unisex bathrooms and reflect 3x the WC usage for both males and females that use that room.

You need a defensible rationale for how you went about deciding how many occupants to assign to those restrooms. I usually determine this based on location, proximity to users and reasonable use pattern. Unisex restrooms next to conference facilities might reflect a percentage of those users. While unisex rooms associated with showers or ADA use might suggest percentages associated with bikes or ADA population respectively, As long as you are thoughtful and reasonably conservative, a Daily Use narrative should do the trick.

Thanks Michelle!