Gender Neutral Restrooms and Commercial Food Service Sinks

Are the gender-neutral toilets the same fixture as the M/F restrooms? If so, you can just adjust the "% of males expected to use urinals" field from 100% to, say, 90%, and the form will automatically adjust the rest of the calcs. If they're a different fixture with a different flow rate, it's a little more complicated. 

Commercial kitchen sinks are considered process water, unless they are for hand washing by kitchen employees. For a handwash sink, you could add another kitchen sink and break down the percent of occupants between the FTE using the pantry sink and the kitchen staff using the kitchen handwash sink. You'd probably also want to adjust the daily uses manually to reflect multiple hand washes. But anything for food prep, dish washing, pot filling, etc is process water and excluded from the calcs. 

Hi Michael, 

The field at the top that's outside of the table is where the % of males expected to use a urinal should read 90% rather than 100% (or whatever % is appropriate for your project). The table a little lower down is where all flush fixtures are listed together should remain at 100% for both male and female toilets--two separate line items. The urinals should be listed there, but be 100%. That number is saying that 100% of the males in the project have access to the urinals and toilets. The independent line at the top is where you tell the calculator what % you actually expect to use the fixtures is. No need to adjust in both places, as the built-in calculations already make the adjustment for you.

The only time the % values in the tables should tally less than 100% per fixture type is if you truly have a percentage of the population that does not have access to a certain fixture. Usually when that's the case, they'd be defined as a separate user group and have their own tab. If you have any fixture types that tally less than 100%, you should provide a little narrative explaining why.

That make sense? It's not a particularly intuitive calculator, and it took me actually having conversations with reviewers to understand what they expect to see and why.

Hello,

I have a similar situation, but in my case the male restrooms with urinals (part of the core building) have different tilets flush rate than the gender neutral restrooms with no urinals (tenant space). How would I account for this?

Thank you,

Blanca

Hi Blanca, sorry for not seeing this follow-up question sooner.

You could account for the toilets in two ways, depending on what's most appropriate for your project:

1. If the users of both the core and tenant fixtures are expected to be the same people (they have access and are expected to use both the core restrooms and the ones in the tenant space), you should be able to have more than one toilet listed in that table area. Just list the core ones first with their flush rate (one line for male, separate line for female), and then do it again with the tenant flush rate this time (also one line for male, separate line for female). This is where your % of users per fixture would be something different than 100% (the typically assumed % of users expected to have access). Allocate those %'s accordingly for your project.
2. If the user groups / patterns for those restrooms may be different, you can create a new user group tab in the instructions tab of the worksheet and list those tenant fixtures there, separately from those in the core. 

In both cases, just be careful to allocate the user %'s appropriately. If you feel there's anything that may need explaining for the reviewers, simply include a little narrative as part of your submission.