Urinal Etiquette & Hygiene Solutions

Put simply, the perfect urinal visit goes like this:

• Walk in to find all the urinals vacant. That is the positional worry over. I received the main article image on my Facebook feed recently that got me thinking about this very article. It perfectly demonstrates the issue I am talking about. Suffice to say you just have to man up and take the last urinal knowing that you only have to wait for 1 person to finish and then you’re all good.
• After this is sorted you’ll suddenly find yourself VERY interested in hair loss treatments (or car insurance) advertising as this is offering you the perfect opportunity to engage yourself, eyes firmly forward, knowing that everybody else is doing the same. If not it is eyes down for a full house or up in deep contemplation. After all do you want to stand around waving your private parts in front of complete strangers? Rhetorical boys and girls, rhetorical!
• Nobody is talking. This is perfectly normal in a service station, for example (unless there is a traffic jam then this WILL be mentioned), but in a pub or club there is a strong chance somebody will try to be your new wee-friend. Best to remain non-committal and consider whether a half-wee is enough.
• Going back to the beginning and we’ve been lucky enough to find ourselves in the perfect urinal situation with nobody else and we can make sure every single drip is out. Otherwise it is going to be 3 good shakes (or tugs) and back into your trousers (drips or not!). Think how it looks otherwise.
• Finally you need to put your head down, back out, aim for the sink and try not to collide with the incoming urinal user who is more desperate than you are now.
• All this is utterly irrelevant if you are desperate when you will stand anywhere, make satisfied noises and shake with vigour as the feeling of complete success fills you. You’ll walk away with your head held high….mission accomplished.

So, back to looking down. What do we think of? Funnily enough it is probably one of the most likely times for a man to think about cleaning and hygiene. See we are waving our most valued member inches (or less depending on a number of factors) from this porcelain receptacle and we are worrying about cleanliness (unless we’ve been drinking, in which case we’re thinking about getting back to the bar to try another fine beverage to then bring back to the toilet thus completing the cycle (in the case of cheap lagers anyway)). If they are clean we do start to think about the environment. I remember urinals from when I was a kid. Many of them didn’t have a flushing system as timed flushers were rare then. Instead they opted for a gentle constant trickle. What a waste of water! Now there are urinals where you don’t even see any water at all. Then there is the smell. See urinal hygiene is responsible for the suppression of a very strong smell. Humans are mammals and mammals use their urine for a many purposes. Urine smells in many cases and as it dries it smells more. This probably goes some way to understanding why the urinal wall is a stressful environment. We are not just cheek to jowl with another man holding his member we’re also smelling other people’s urine. Urine stinks and gets worse as it dries. Odour reduction is vital to effective urinal sanitisation. Air freshening goes some way to dealing with this but, unfortunately for us, we are meant to be able to discern this particular scent. Nature has dealt us this blow. We’re just not meant to share this kind of experience. So, how do we clean this up?

As alluded to before we have had quite a varied history as far as urinal hygiene goes. The standard for many decades (and still visible in some, obviously, retro urinals) we had the urinal cake. This isn’t something you’d have on a plate with your tea. Mostly blue, though sometimes white, these inch deep by 2 inches across discs offered up a “moderate” scent but mostly just a target for us men to pursue to pass the time. Then came the auto-sanitisers that had none of the entertainment value but at least they were doing a better job of cleaning and covering up the scent. Nonetheless there is a view of wastage with these systems. Finally has come the waterless flush systems and bio/eco-friendly urinal systems that seem to be the perfect solution to the wastage/effectiveness issue that has always been at the centre of urinal management. Coupled with flush timing systems this allows for low maintenance, environmentally and user-friendly urinal sanitisation. After all who wants to touch a flush-handle in that kind of environment?

Bio-P is simply the best we’ve come across. Low cost & simple, generic, implementation make this option an easy choice for the discerning facilities manager looking to effect change whilst keeping the accounts department content with their ongoing budget requirements. Using environmentally-friendly bacteria that continually work on breaking-down urine crystals and calcium deposits this, simple to install, system allows your urinal flushing frequency be reduced to 3 times a day whilst providing continual removal of urinal waste. Yes, that low. Rather than covering up the smells it actually works to remove them by ensuring that all traces are removed not just from the urinal but also from the outflow pipes too removing the need for drain cleaner in your urinals. This provides a complete removal of the odours that make the urinal experience stressful and allows your business to realise immediate savings on water-costs. Best of all this will cost you no more than your existing shield solution and can be installed by a hygiene operative quickly and safely in a couple of minutes allowing this urinal sanitisation solution to be offered without an urinal installation fee. Combined with a timed urinal flush control valve like the ES50 you can increase your urinal maintenance windows and reduce your water cost.

Zenith Washroom Solutions is a key partner of Bio-Productions and has extensive experience in installing and supporting Bio-P alongside the ES50 urinal auto-flushing timer. Call us today to get saving as quickly as possible. All whilst helping the environment and reducing the stress of urinal etiquette. Sadly we can’t do much to remove ingrained school-boy issues but on the plus side the Bio-P does give us men a target….so we’ll be fine.