Our project is the remodeling of an office space with existing restrooms, which will be equipped with new fixtures and we had to add a restroom with one toilet for ADA compliance. All toilet have the same gpf. The reviewer has asked us to define a separate user group for the ADA restroom. We have no handicapped people in the company. The office workers can use any of the restrooms. They are all right next to each other. The reviewer argue that this restroom would make some man use a toilet 3 times a day instead of once. Does anyone have a somehow reasonable approach on how to estimate/ calculate the number of men, which would use the toilet as an urinal?
I have worked in the property management of office buildings before and from my experience it has to be a very very small amount of people. They usually use this separate restroom to have a long undisturbed session, if anything.
Any thoughts, experience or otherwise would be highly appreciated.
Anthony Brower
Sustainable Design DirectorGensler
47 thumbs up
June 2, 2011 - 9:34 am
This seems to be a frustrating request. If all toilets are the same GPF then in theory you'd be fine. I had one project where we installed an ADA toilet but all others were a different flush rate, we totaled up the quantity of toilets to arrive at a percentage of all on the floor and assigned that percentage of my FTE to that toilet. This method was accepted but I did not have to assume urinal needs attributed to that device. The reviewer seems to be asking for something that you cannot qualify. The EPA standards are estimated uses per device type, not estimated uses per "how I feel like looking at it today based on an unknown delta". You could argue back that all of these users are averse to sitting down on public toilets and hold it until they get home, another group you couldn't qualify. I would agree that one would not utlize that bathroom for urinal needs. I would really re-read the calculation requirements and submit a feedback query, then copy your LEED review team on the feedback request. That is sometimes one way to bring confusing requests to closure with assisted oversight from GBCI for consistency across all projects. Good luck with this one and let us know how it turns out.
Susann Geithner
PrincipalEmerald Built Environments
1297 thumbs up
June 2, 2011 - 11:51 am
I actually did email the reviewer to clarify the request and explained that there are no handicapped people working there and that we feel our approach reflects the actual use/ user behavior. But if the reviewer still wants us to apply a group of people, could they provided percentage of people that we should consider using this toilet. The reply was this:
"The primary issue outlined in the Preliminary Review comment is that 100% of male occupants are counted as using a urinal twice per day and a water closet once per day. This scenario is only applicable if all restrooms in the project include urinals. In this case, the project includes a unisex restroom (114) without a urinal. Therefore, male occupants (FTE and visitors) using the unisex restroom will not be able to use urinals. All male occupants expected to use the unisex restroom must be counted as having three water closet uses per day and zero urinal uses per day. This is why it is suggested that the project creates a separate fixture usage group for occupants who will use the unisex restrooms without urinals, or adjust the total daily (water closet vs. urinal) uses. The project should estimate how many occupants are expected to use the unisex restrooms and adjust the calculations accordingly. A narrative should be provided to describe how each fixture usage group was determined. Most importantly, each male FTE must be attributed three flow fixture uses per day (3 WC, or 2 UR and 1 WC). Note that the sum of occupants in all fixture usage groups must equal the total project occupancy, and occupants may not be counted in more than one fixture usage group."
I very much disagree with the reviewer on this. I made it pretty clear that all men have access to the restrooms with urinals. There is no reason for separating out a group. Besides even if 50% of the men use just the ADA restroom and therefore would be using the toilet as a urinal, we would still get the same points.
Anthony, thanks for the advise. I'll try to get a response from the GBCI directly on this one.
Alicja Bieszyńska
Skanska114 thumbs up
January 24, 2012 - 9:07 am
Susann, I'm having similar problem on my project - we've got one restrooms for handicapped people on each floor and the reviewer asked us to clarify who will be able to use them (we stated that 100% of male restrooms have urinals, while ADA restrooms don't). Even though we haven't submitted any space plan for the Water Efficiency credits, they dig it out from Daylight and Views layouts where we show all the restrooms. I just don't know how to cope with that. Have you already solved it on your project? I would apreciate your advice...
Erin Holdenried
Sustainability Architect125 thumbs up
July 13, 2012 - 9:47 am
I am having a similar problem, our handicap toilets have a different flush rate from the regular. Is there a standard percentage we can use to calculate the number of occupants that will use the handicap toilet?