Gender Neutral Restrooms

Hi Hannah, I remember this language in the calculator coming about due to the common layout of two gendered multi-stall restrooms and one single-user WC-only restroom. Project teams tended to ignore the single-user restroom and over a large building that could add up, especially if the WC or sink were a different flow rate, so that language got added as a nudge to account for those fixtures. So I tend to think of 95% as that layout, and decrease the number if the gender-neutral restrooms are more of the default option for building users. It's definitely rough on the water performance...while I have encountered gender-neutral restrooms with WCs AND water-saving urinals out in the world, they have unfortunately not shown up in my LEED work!    To your bigger point, yes, I've often looked at the calculator and thought "surely there's a better way to count 'occupants who would use a urinal if the restroom has one' than by assuming a count of 'males/females.'" But I guess the whole form is about simplifying something complicated (even if any glance at this forum tells you it's not actually simple!!). Still, as USGBC is incentivizing all-gender restrooms via pilot credits, I'm curious if any thought has been given to helping project teams recoup the point(s) they'll lose here, or if the answer is just that not every LEED credit fits every project. 

Great response Emily! spot on!! I am seeing gender-neutral restrooms show up on my smaller retail projects with one 'back of house' unisex restroom. It is not really a result of the pilot credit language, but rather planned due to the occupancy/use/size of the project - but we plan to pick up this pilot credit. I call this "accidenta-LEED" :) 

Are you using the v4.1 calculator? Why would you not have 0% of males using urinals because there are no urinals? Just curious or maybe I am not understanding your predicament. In many projects I am now seeing All Gender restrooms as a design requirement. The City and County of Denver has made them mandatory for every project. Makes my job easier. If your project team isn't specifying 1.0 gpf toilets then yes your savings and your points will suffer.

Adam, what products/brands are you specifying for 1gpf toilets? Are those going into public or private projects? The public school facilities people on my projects are reluctant to embrace anything beyond the 1.25gpf in their standards, so I'm always on the lookout for better performing products to have them evaluate. Thanks.

Hi Kristian, they are all commercial public projects. The biggest public project is the DEN International Airport where they put in 1.0 toilets in the new Terminal B. There are two sources of information I use. Especially because the water closets need to be WaterSense labeled. The EPA product search is the first. https://lookforwatersense.epa.gov/products/Product-Search-Results-Toilets.html Look at Sloan and Toto. The other is a a PERC study that discusses how to design low flow successfully. https://www.map-testing.com/assets/reports/PERC-Report_FINAL_Phase-One_Nov-2012.pdf