I have a bit of a dilemma on my hands with the WE calculations. By owner request, we specified dual flush toilets throughout the building. After a preliminary look at the calculations last year, I realized that we may be able to maximize water savings by specifying dual flush everywhere EXCEPT in male bathrooms with urinals, where we should spec 1.28 gpf toilets. This idea is a bit convoluted, but is based on the calculation philosophy used in the 'Water Use Reduction Additional Guidelines' document.
EXAMPLE (all based on equation 4 from the guidlines: http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=6493):
male & female combined, dual flush, urinals, FTE occupants
weighted flowrate=1.35
female (separate from male), dual flush, FTE occupants
weighted flowrate=1.2666
male (separate from female), dual flush all locations, urinals, FTE occupants
toilet flowrate=1.6, urinal flowrate=.125
male (separate from female), dual flush, 1.28 mix, urinals, FTE occupants
toilet flowrate=????(but should be less than 1.6), urinal flowrate=.125
Now I have a mixture of bathrooms and fixtures (individual with 1.6/1.1 toilets, male group with 1.28 toilets and .125 urinals, and female group with 1.6/1.1 toilets) and no way to differentiate them in the calculations. Its simple enough to separate out the female component, but there is no distinct way to separate the male users based on location in the building.
Has anyone else run into this problem?
I could just average all the male at 1.28gpf since it realistically shouldn't be any higher than that, but then I'm not utilizing the savings from all the pint urinals. I've also thought about using equation 4 as above, but treating the urinals as part of the calc and applying some type of ratio of individual:group bathroom usage. Thoughts?
Karen Blust
Green Building ConsultantThe Cadmus Group
124 thumbs up
September 7, 2011 - 5:15 pm
Paul, assuming this is an NC v2009 project, you can create separate user groups to take into account the mixture of bathrooms and fixtures. It sounds like you might want to break it down in to three groups: individual bathrooms (1.1/1.6 gpf toilets, no urinals, 50% male, 50% female), male group (1.28 gpf toilets, 0.125 gpf urinals, 100% male), and female group (1.1 / 1.6 toilets, 100% female). Estimate the breakdown of occupants for each group. Just be sure that the FTE count of each group adds up to the total FTE count for the project.