Private versus public lavs

I would still consider these public restrooms. The use of the restrooms is not restricted to the benefits of one patient but are benefiting all patients that day who need them.

Now if you wanted to have a conversation about them being process versus domestic...

My thought was that these single occupant toilet rooms off X-ray, ultrasound and other similar rooms are there because of the medical process and they are more alike Exam room sinks than your single occupant toilet somewhere else in the facility. It seems logical from my point of view that the sinks and toilets would be considered process like Exam room sinks.

What do think? Is the client requesting a higher gpm on the sinks?

I'll play devil's advocate here - I don't see how we can justify any restroom sink as process given that it's primary function is for someone to wash their hands after using the toilet. I can imagine a few stretch scenarios, e.g. restrooms that are exclusively for specimen collection, but that will be quite rare. (That restroom would need to be named "specimen collection" on the floor plans for the purposes of the LEED review.) You should otherwise never see a doctor or nurse using a restroom sink for a true process function - at least I hope not, since that would indicate an inadequacy in sink location/design elsewhere.

I definitely agree that we face challenges between the "need" to use more water in hospitals and the desire to reduce flow rates. For the condition you mentioned, I remind staff that nearly everywhere else in the world where they wash hands in restrooms they are using the same "puny" flow rates.

One issue we have is that locations that are not used regularly take "too long" for hot water to get hot (coming from a loop), so people have to run faucets for longer when they want/need the water to be hot - that often spurs the desire/need to have a higher flow rate. I generally don't go down that road for restrooms, though.

IMHO one big issue is that LEED HC uses exactly the same thresholds as LEED NC (but the 30% savings actually gets fewer points), even though it's clearly harder to achieve the same level of savings in many cases. (This is not the same, for example, as EAc1, which has all different thresholds.)

Perhaps you have further insight into this, given that you were a member of the committee that wrote the rating system?

That makes sense about the v2.2 thresholds. It's too bad that the timing worked out that way.

I suspect that changing thresholds is out of the hands of even the WE TAG at this point, but you may know something that I don't. Addressing smaller things, like fixture classification, may be possible (?).

I'm laughing at Kim's suggestion for L St. But perhaps pipe wrenches would be easier?

We're finding WEc3 a very difficult credit to achieve due to the items Kim outlines above. Existing fixtures inside the project boundary cause me to sweat out the pre-req. I'm not sure if extra points would motivate clients more or if a technology improvement is necessary. It would make more sense to collect data from HC teams and see what the water savings are and consider a threshold change.

But we're having fun in healthcare, right?

To your point about motivation, Susan, I agree that a LEED point is not motivation for clients to change fixtures in a way that they believe (real or perceived) would limit their ability to provide a certain standard of medical care and/or quality of work place for physicians and other staff.

I've found that the other key challenge is that many/most of the restrooms are single seaters and don't have urinals. I'm not suggesting either that this is bad practice or that LEED shouldn't dock us for it - but it adds to the overall challenge.