Unisex Toilet

It's important to remember that the water consumption calcs have nothing to do with number of fixtures, just the type (flow rate) of fixtures and the occupancy. In other words it does not matter if some of the toilets are designated unisex, because the calculator assumes a certain amount fixture usage by the FTE occupants, regardless if there is a single restroom or 100 restrooms. Now if the faucets and/or toilets in the unisex facilities have a different flow rate than in the gender specific facilities, it can make a difference, otherwise you don't really need to worry about it.

The calculator automatically assumes that 100% of male occupants will use restrooms that contain urinals so your default Total Daily Uses for water closets and urinals must be adjusted/modified accordingly. Include a narrative and supporting daily use calculations to explain the anticipated urinal usage for your project.

Carlie, I may be reading more into the original question than was there, but I'm assuming each floor of the building has gender specific restrooms, in addition to 1 Unisex restroom. The calculator assume a certain number of uses per occupant, per fixture; for example, (just looking at FTE's), it assumes women will use the toilet 3x and men 1x, per day, in addition to men using urinals 2x per day. Given a 50/50 gender split of FTE, the only possible variance in water usage would be "men who use the Unisex restroom toilet, instead of a urinal". In lieu of any actual data, attempting to assign a number to that usage would have to be a complete guess and really quite meaningless. It would be interesting to have those Unisex restrooms sub-metered to see how how usage compares to the default assumptions, as this will probably be a more common practice on future projects.

Hi Charles, Correct, the only variance would be men who utilize the unisex restroom instead of a urinal; and agree that without actual usage data assigning a number is really just a general guess. However, it will likely be questioned during the review if the use of the unisex toilets are not accounted for in some way.

I agree it is probably a good idea to acknowledge that the unisex restrooms are include in the project, but I still would not assign any additional water usage to them, assuming of course the fixture flow rates are the same as the other toilets/lavs on the project. Though I completely appreciate that the water usage could be significant, 6x more for an efficient urinal vs standard toilet, I still see no fair or accurate way to anticipate that usage. The possible additional water is in the noise, so to speak; you can no more assign a value to it than you can to men who will always opt to use a toilet over a urinal, or men who use a toilet when no urinal is free. I also wonder if the “unisex” toilets are in reality “accessible toilets” and this is how the project is meeting the handicapped access requirements? How the toilets are signed, will also have an impact on who chooses to use them.

My experience has been in not assigning % of male usage to unisex bathroom will result in a reviewer comment.

Just wanted to revisit this question as we have, as predicted by Sheryl, just received a reviewer comment, on a project with unisex toilets, that we must assume a certain percentage of male usage. In our particular case the toilets are actually "accessible"; there is one per floor, in addition to the gender specific restrooms. The flush rate of the toilet in the "accessible" room is identical to the flush rate of the toilets in the gender specific rooms. It just seems to me any "male usage" number we assign would be random and would not increase the accuracy of the estimated water consumption. If we were to create a group specifically for the usage of these toilets, we could base it on a estimated percentage FTE that require an accessible toilet, and tie it to a government statistics of percentage of disable persons in the community as a whole, however we've never been required to do that on projects where the accessible toilets were integrated into the gender specific restrooms. If we take "need" out of the equation and just create a group, "people who prefer private restrooms", that number would be completely fabricated and in my mind, meaningless. I realize the easiest thing to do is throw some number out there and get on with life, but part of me really would like to challenge the reviewer's assumption that making up a number somehow improves the accuracy of the estimate.

Charles, kudos to you for wanting to get to a rational basis for these assumptions. Have been down this road before (i.e. trying to arrive at some reasonable/sensible approach, with the LEED reviewer), and it's like Waiting for Godot. Good luck to you, sir!

Hi Charles, I'm with Deborah on this. You are in a no win situation. We've been through this many times. You need a number of male users that you can "assign" to these restrooms. Come up with something that seems reasonable to take the minor hit for lack of urinal use, gnash your teeth and then move on.

In lieu of USGBC providing guidance on % of occupants to assign to a unisex toilet, you need to provide a number and back it up. In a narrative, acknowledge that there is no USGBC guidance on the matter, so for your calculations you used the following reasoning to justify the % of men possibly using the unisex toilet for the purposes of calculating water usage. If it is a location where it is just office workers, and not a situation where there would be families (dad taking kids into family toilet, as an example) then maybe try using the % of transgender people (per some statistic for your country, or a statistic for another country if that info is not available). This at least gives you SOMETHING to go by, and that you have taken usage of the unisex toilet into consideration.

Thanks for the replies; good to know I'm not alone in this! I guess I feel because the USGBC doesn't offer guidance, and reviewers have essentially been asking projects to make something up, it actually somewhat damages the LEED brand. The simple reality is that I have considered the possible male usage and have reasoned that, in a system which is already making very broad assumptions about people's bathroom habits, adding more random data isn't helpful....not sure if that would make a winning narrative though. )

I totally agree with Charles! Reviewers - please remember we are trying to benchmark consumption, not predict actual consumption.

Hi everyone,
I'm very interested to know if there is a definitive solution to this inquiry? esp. when creating a separate group for people who prefer private restrooms.

The latest version of the water use calculator includes a note stating that projects with M/F and separate unisex restrooms should use 95% males expected to use urinals as a default OR a project-specific estimate based on the project's layout, expected usage, or weighted fixture counts.  I read this as, use 95% if you have a typical plumbing layout of separate M/F restrooms with one single-occupancy [family/accessible/gender-neutral] restroom. And then adjust that % down if you have a high number of unisex restrooms. Of course, it sounds like the second option there is "make your best educated guess" and that doesn't solve the issue of reviewers asking for backup or not agreeing with your educated guess.  I would not create a separate user group for private restrooms unless the flush/flow rates are different. ADjusting the % of males expected to use urinals number will be enough in most cases. 

I should provide an update to my earlier somewhat snarky remark. For some types of complex occupancies (e.g. courthouses - judges, jurors, holding cells, public, marshals, etc., etc. all with different operational/occupancy times) we created separate user groups and gave estimated %age use of urinals for each. It is a tedious but not difficult process, and gave us a bit more rationale than just "educated guess"; often times we find that we can then use the 95% default for many of the user groups. We have been successful with this approach. A side benefit is that - if you do this early enough - you have data to inform the energy model as well.

I have have a LEED review comment regarding the revision of male occupancy % for urinals based on toilet rooms that have urinals and those without.  The reviewer wants me to provide a separate calculation to explain the urinal usage by male occupants.  Has anyone done that before?

Emily, Where in the latest version of the water use calculator is that note stating that projects with M/F and separate unisex restrooms should use 95% males expected to use urinals as a default OR a project-specific estimate?  I looked at recent versions of the calculator and I couldn't find anything. I'm trying to find that cause i'm facing a similar comment from LEED reviewer and my partner and I are stumped.

Hi Edgar,  I am finding this on the Group tab, in a comment attached to the "percent of males..." box.    For this calculation the reviewer is looking for...hard to say what you should provide exactly without knowing why your percentage is different from the default. If all occupants will have access to all fixtures but you have a high share of single-occupant, WC-only restrooms, you could do a proportional calculation based on the fixture counts. Or if your project layout has one area without urinals in the restrooms you could divide the number of males occupying that part of the building by the total male population.  It sounds a little excessive to actually ask for a calculation rather than trust your estimate, but if that percentage will help you get to the next point threshold hopefully it's worth showing your work!

Hi Emily, Thanks, i see the "percent of males..." box but I do not have a comment that goes with it.  The only comment I see is for "Gender Ratio %".  What version of the calculator are you using? I really prefer not to show calculations for this because I don't know if that will open up further comments or deny us the prerequisite, but since they asked I have to come up with something.  I tried both proportional fixture counts and tried the layout with dividing male occupants from either side of the building.  The percentage will deny us 2 points, that we need to maintain our goal for LEED Silver. Furthermore, if we have to change only the % in the "percent of males..." box, does that mean we can keep the percent of occupants for the urinals in the Flush Fixtures Table as 100%?

Hi Edgar, I just realized this is the v2009 forum and I was looking at the v4 water calculator. Apologies for the mix-up. It still seems like reasonable guidance, given the absence of any v2009-specific guidance.  Correct that if you adjust the % of males box, you can leave the percent in the Flush Fixtures Table as 100%.  Yeah, this can really swing the points one way or another. Pretty disappointing to lose so much water performance in exchange for more privacy and better accessibility in restrooms. I hope you can figure out a calc that is accurate to your project but doesn't hurt your achievement!

Hi Emily, OHH, ok.  You have like the recently revised v4 calculator, which can also be used for v4.1.  I finally see that comment. Do you think we can apply that rule to my project's water use reduction calculation, which is under LEED v2009?

I think it's safe to follow as general guidance, but it may be different from what your reviewer is specifically looking for in their comment.