LEED + Gender Neutral Toilet Rooms

This has come up on all of our recent projects. We have been considering adding urinals to some of the all-gendered rooms (the single user room would have a WC and a urinal). But who is to say that the urinal actually gets used. The actual building operation could be three times as much water use if they don’t get used. Not to mention the embodied carbon of all the extra fixtures, especially in a high rise. Many of our projects do collect rainwater reuse for flushing because local regulations do not allow us to discharge to stormwater and infiltration is often difficult in urban settings. So then obviously we can earn LEED points that way. _______________________________________ Katherine Bubriski, AIA CPHC, LEED AP BD+C, Fitwel Ambassador Director of Sustainability & Building Performance 617.666.7006 Direct Arrowstreet 10 Post Office Square Suite 700N Boston MA 02109 _______________________________________ arrowstreet.com Follow us on LinkedIn | Instagram F

Hi Kjell: We have two projects in design struggling with this. In one, the users were insistent that NO urinals be included in the building. On that one, we are taking the hit and barely meeting the Indoor Water Use Reduction prerequisite. On the other project, we are including some urinals. About 1 out of 10 all-gender compartments will have a urinal and appropriate signage. I got response from a LEED Coach that as long as one or some urinals were available in each toilet area, we could use the regular calculation for water savings. The way the calculator is set up is to calculate flushes per occupant, so it’s not dependent on the exact number or ratio of urinals to toilets. The language says, as long as male occupants have access to a urinal, the standard ratio of flushes can be used. The rationale I used in laying this out was: for a 5-fixture toilet room for males, code allows you to have 3 urinals and 2 toilets. But you could install 2 urinals and 3 toilets. The LEED calculation would obviously not be affected either way- you assume 100% of males are going to use the urinal twice a day and the toilet once. So if the ratio is 1 urinal and 4 toilets, does the percentage of males using the urinal twice a day suddenly change? No. So that’s the approach we’re taking. We have 10-fixture all-gender toilet areas, with 5 fixtures needed for female count and 5 for males, and we’re making one fixture a urinal. We’re still in design and don’t have the credit awarded yet, but with the blessing of the LEED coach I feel we’re in good shape. -Kristian From: Kjell A

It's not just LEED points, it's also a lot of water flushed. We haven't been able to find dual flush toilets that go down lower than 0.8 gpf, and that's nearly 7 times more water. And the more common flush values only go down to 1.0 gpf. On a recent project with a gender inclusive toilet room, we included urinals in private stalls. I do understand the purity of design, and strive to find equitable solutions that balance resource conservation and human health/hygiene. If an individual goes into a stall with a urinal, yes others will know this individual is likely a cis male. If the same individual goes into a stall with a toilet to urinate, he likely will not sit on the toilet and the noise will reveal he is a cis male. Also there are hygiene issues with having cis men use toilets to urinate. I've been advocating for an approach that includes 1-2 urinals in stalls in gender inclusive toilet rooms. I'd like to better understand the concerns from an equity perspective, if any. I feel like this approach maintains equity, conserves significantly more water, and is more hygienic. But I'm here to learn more! GREG MELLA FAIA, LEED AP BD&C Vice President | Director of Sustainable Design _________________________________ T 202.974.5187 C 202.375.3395

We’ve been grappling with these questions of water use and equity recently on a project, as we also saw a big drop in the LEED indoor water reduction points. If you need wall-hung toilets, there are only a couple of dual flush options, which are 1.6/1.1 or 1.6/ 0.8 gpf. I believe. The higher one averages around 1.28 gpf, and the lower comes out as 1.07 gpf. In that situation it might make more sense to use a 1.1 or 1.0 gpf flush valve. A plumbing engineer spoke well of a Toto 1.0 gpf flush valve. This does help reduce the total water consumption, but not as much as with urinals. With floor mounted toilets, there are some with lower average consumption, but we haven’t tested any of those yet. For the LBC Core Imperative 5, Responsible Water Use, you need to reduce annual consumption from a baseline of 1.6 gallons per person per day (for an office). New buildings need to reduce that by 50%, existing buildings and TI’s need to reduce by 30%. Interestingly, ILFI advised they would allow increasing the baseline water use from 1.6 gppd for private, single-user non-gendered restrooms, in the name of equity, since the standard baseline comes from buildings with common gender-specific restrooms and access to urinals. In our discussions about equity, there was a high priority for providing a private restroom so any person could conduct their business without concern of being observed or heard. Adding urinals to a single user restroom was not desirable as it imposes the view and odor of a urinal on many people who wouldn’t use one. One perspective was that it is more equitable to provide the same fixtures and room arrangement to all people, so any person can use any open restroom and have privacy and fixtures appropriate for their needs. Another perspective questioned the equity of consuming significantly more of a scare resource to provide that experience. Others raised the question whether it could be more equitable to provide people with a choice of what fixtures they wanted to use, but still have privacy in doing so. It was also pointed out that there could be longer wait times with all private restrooms, especially if people had miniature super computers in their pockets. Another voice suggested that having access to private restrooms was a privilege not available to many. One option we considered is having mostly private restrooms that don’t have urinals and one “standing room only” restroom with just urinals and sinks. One point that helped our discussion was we should separate our notions of gender from biological function, and consider that equity can address both notions but in different ways. As someone said, “it’s just equipment in rooms!” That comment inspired the idea for non-gendered signage that describes the fixtures available in each restroom, and not dictate which gender should use them. This approach gained traction as a creative way to provide equitable access, an appropriate experience, freedom to choose a private room, and reduced consumption of water resources. There’s one critical question we are still waiting for an answer: will the AHJ allow this? The all private, no urinal design had gotten an initial nod of approval, but we aren’t sure adding a urinal/ sink room will pass muster. Stay tuned for more! From: Greg Mella

We've been working through the equity and water usage issues lately as well. Our client was already thinking through the equity considerations of toilet rooms and wanted all single occupancy/gender neutral toilet rooms with toilet and sink. The same client also wanted to hit a 35% indoor water use reduction via LEED. We started with dual-flush toilets, but that wasn't near enough. We ended up adding 0.25 gpf urinals in each of the single occupancy/gender neutral toilet rooms, so each room has a 1.28/1.0 dual flush toilet, a 0.25 urinal, and a sink. We considered putting the urinals in only enough toilet rooms to hit the 35%, but the client was concerned we were inadvertently genderizing then, which I could appreciate. As our client considered whether or not to add the urinals, they also did some informal research among other facilities staff, and reported that single occupancy toilet rooms with urinals tend to stay cleaner.  So the urinal is not a perfect solution, it is an "extra" fixture in the room with additional embodied carbon, cost, space usage, etc that doesn't count toward plumbing calcs. And I really struggle with what to do with toilet rooms of other configurations, ones that aren't self-contained with everything one needs to do their business. It feels like there must be a better answer somewhere in gray water using or composting toilets, but those solutions seem too far ahead for the clients and jurisdictions where we work for thus far.  On a personal note, as a cis-gender female, I actually kind of like having a urinal in the gender neutral/single occupancy stall. I haven't experienced it being smelly or anything.     

Hi Kjell -

You might already know there is a LEED Pilot Credit 147 - All-Gender Restrooms. Not that this 1 innonvation/pilot credit point will offset the points dropped in the interior water reduction credit, and we experienced similar 3 points down on a recent community building with all-gender restrooms, but something to consider if you are still looking for something in the Innovation/Pilot/Exemplary section. It's a great way to get a credit point for doing all-gender restrooms.

This might be a stretch, but how you grapple with the equity issues, communication with stakeholders, and the solution determined as appropriate for the project could be documented for consideration as an Innovation credit as well.

Thanks,
Mike

For a Bay Area school, I've been converting multi-occupancy toilet rooms into a series of small gender neutral toilet rooms. To comply with accessibility, we end up with one larger accessible toilet room and a series of micro-toilet rooms in the former multi-occupancy toilet room space.  The micro-toilet rooms are toilet and sink only.  Kind of like an airplane toilet. In the accessible toilet rooms we put a toilet and a urinal in addition to the sink.  There's usually plenty of space for a urinal in a code minimum accessible toilet, so there's no space issue there.   Cleaning protocols pretty much determine if toilets or urinals smell, so its not so much the presence of a urinal that creates a smell.  Urinals with a super-low flush valve are a way of keeping the urinals more clean and less smelly with very little water (assuming the cleaning protocol is not as frequent as it could be).   This school's approach with gender neutral facilities is to give students and teachers freedom of choice without calling out their choice based on which facility they choose.  What happens inside the room is up to the individual and not anyone else's business. They  prioritize freedom of choice over someone being offended with the presence of a urinal. From the facilities manager's perspective, teens and younger kids have a better chance of hitting the target standing up using a urinal than standing up using a toilet.  Speed seems to matter to these kids.  The less time in the toilet room, the more time to play outside.  Therefore, the toilet room stays much cleaner and less smelly when there is the choice of a urinal.   From a UPC perspective, we are able to maintain the minimum plumbing facilities, including urinals, with this conversion strategy.  If we had done a LEED calculation, we would likely use the same use ratios.  Without entering gender into the calculation, and if the choice of urinal is there, we would estimate how often the toilet would be used and how often a urinal would be used. I would probably use a similar ratio today than I would have used 10 years ago.  Just because someone enters a gender neutral toilet doesn't mean that they will always choose to use a toilet over a urinal. Maybe its time to market a stand-up urinal designed to support the functional requirements of multiple genders?  I remember seeing an Italian manufacturer promoting this 15 years back, but the timing wasn't quite right. Brian  

Late to this conversation, but this is a conversation I have been pushing for a while. Every time we have plumbing manufacturers do lunch n learns, or in the before times whenever I saw them at conferences etc, I push them to get their designs in line so that they have dual flush toilets that at least are better than just installing a regular 1.1gpf toilet that I would ask for anyway. In the grand tradition of things like materials, if enough people ask for it maybe it will happen. In the meantime we are all in trouble as far as I have seen, but we are trying to do research into some of the options above about multiple fixture types in non-gendered toilets etc. As Greg said, more worried about the water use than the LEED points, especially with half the country in drought. But the LEED points hurt too. I have used the pilot point mentioned by someone but still waiting for the return.  This is an incredibly important topic, pressure the suppliers Thanks! Penny

An aditional thought on gender neutral toilet rooms and LEED points. On our community building example, it was still possible to get 3 points or more for water reduction. On that building we ended up at at 22% and no LEED points with the 1.28 gpm toilets the client wanted. We proposed toilet options with MaP scores at 800 with 1.1 gpm which would have pushed us to 31% reduction and 2 points (my memory last night was 36% and 3 points) and 0.8 gpm would have pushed us to 47% reduction and 5 points (and a regional priority credit). Our client, on advice from the plumbing engineer and plumbing sub, chose to stay with the 1.28 gpm toilets they have used in the past.

Team here has specified and installed 0.8 gpm toilets on several multifamily projects with great results. More POE data to still come in from more recent projects. We have found the MaP database to be a great resource. https://www.map-testing.com/toilets-plumbing-professionals.html  On another project, this 3 minute video from Niagara (with 0.8 gpm toilet line) helped get the clients facilites team to say yes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34BkvnnSRZw  Thanks,
Mike