Nicolas Carter Matthew Hargadon Jesse Casas. SSU Toilet Report. Introduction

Transcription

1 Nicolas Carter Matthew Hargadon Jesse Casas SSU Toilet Report Introduction Water usage is a topic that comes up frequently in the news in California, the United States, and all over the world. As a global society we are increasing the amount of water we draw from our aquifers faster than they can replenish themselves. Nearly all of the supply side that can be tapped has been tapped; it is time to focus our efforts on reducing demand to reach a sustainable level of usage. Toilet flushes account for a little over 3 percent of America s freshwater withdrawals. Though the fraction makes it appear small the potential savings are still significant, especially considering we use high-quality water for disposal of waste when it could be used for drinking. One flush of the average American toilet uses 1.6 gallons of potable water. That s more than we drink in three days, and we certainly flush toilets more than once per day. As students and residents of Sonoma State University, our interest is to determine how many toilets are installed on campus, and whether they are traditional, low flow, or no flow models. With this data we can determine the potential water savings currently realized or available from the three different designs. Research Methods To answer our questions we first wanted to find out how much water is used from toilets in student housing. We estimated that students on campus use their toilets about 3.5 times per day. Once we determined how many times toilets are used per day, we found out how many total toilets there are in student housing. To obtain the necessary information, we contacted the housing office where we received the number of residents on campus along with each type of roaom available. In determining how many toilets there are in each dorm we looked up the floor plans of each village which gave us the amount of bathrooms per room and used that alongside the resident data from the housing office. After calculating the amount of gallons used per day in each village we can add them up and get the total usage of water for all of student housing. The value we calculated was that 16,122.4 gallons per day are used from toilets in the dorms. We can say that the student housing is a big part of the total amount of water used on campus. Assuming there are roughly 210 school days per year, (16,122.4 gallons per day x 210 days per year) gives us 3,385,704 gallons used per school year. After calculating the number of toilets in student housing we divided the remaining 25 buildings on campus between four volunteers who went to each building and counted the number of toilets and urinals in each. We found that there are 272 toilets and 116 urinals among the campus buildings. To calculate the water usage for these buildings we assumed that residents would be using the resident building bathrooms, therefore non-residents and employees would use the campus building bathrooms. Even though residents surely use both housing restrooms and the

2 restrooms in other buildings, by multiplying every student by 3.5 we spread the average use between all campus toilets, resident life and others. To get the amount of people using these bathrooms we subtracted the total amount of resident students from the total amount enrolled and added that to the number of employees which was obtained at SSU s website. (9120 total students resident students) employees = 7225 people. We assumed that the number of flushes per person was 1.5 for toilets and.5 for urinals to give a total of 2 flushes. Since only males are using urinals we assumed that a third of the total amount of people are males. (7225/3) = As shown on the table below, we calculated that the total gal per year from toilets was 2,601,000 and 90,300 from urinals. The total amount of gallons per year used from the campus buildings is 2,691,300 gal/year. By adding the total amount of gallons per year from the residential side and the campus side we get a total of about 6,000,000 gallons per year from SSU. Data Collection and Table Total toilets: 2,032 Total residents: 3,173 Total water usage: 16,122.4 gallons/day 1. Zinfandel toilets, 412 people = 1,442 full flushes = 2,307.2 gallons/day a. 2bedroom unit, 1 toilet i. 16 units b. 4 bedrooms, 2 toilets. 55 units c. 5bedrooms, 2 toilets. 16 units d. CSA rooms, 1 toilet. 8 units 2. Verdot toilets, 294 people = 1,029 full flushes = 1,646.4 gallons/day. 2 bedroom single, 1 toilet. 6 units a. 2 bedroom double, 1 toilet. 26 units b. 4 bedroom, 2 toilets. 21 units c. CSA rooms, 1 toilet. 5 units 3. Cabernet - 53 toilets, 204 people = 714 full flushes = 1,142.4 gallons/day. 2 bedrooms, 1 toilet. 49 units. 4 units 4. Sauvignon toilets, 891 people = 3,118.5 full flushes = 4,989.6 gallons/day. 4 bedrooms, 4 toilets (6 people). 144 units

3 Beaujolais toilets, 660 people = 1,320 partial flushes, 990 full flushes = 2,904 gallons/day. 4 bedrooms, 4 toilets. 159 units. 12 units 6. Tuscany toilets, 712 people = 1,424 partial flushes, 1,068 full flushes = 3,132.8 gallons/day. 4 bedrooms, 4 toilets. 114 units. 14 units 25 campus buildings, divided by researcher Matt - 20 urinals 77 toilets GMC, Facilities 3 urinals, 12 toilets Tuscany pool area 1 toilet Rec Center 3 urinals, 14 toilets PE building 13 urinals 38 toilets Childrens school (9 total, 1 standard and 8 children sized) Chalk hill 1 urinal 3 toilets Jesse - 16 urinals, 41 toilets Ives - 4 urinals, 14 toilets Person theatre - 3 urinals, 6 toilets Commons - 3 urinals, 5 toilets International Hall - 3 urinals, 10 toilets Art Building - 3 urinals, 6 toilets Nic - 42 urinals, 80 toilets Library - 18 urinals, 33 toilets Stevenson - 14 urinals, 26 toilets Health Center - 1 urinal, 3 toilets Nichols Hall - 6 urinals, 10 toilets Campus Police - 1 urinal, 2 toilets RLC building - not occupied Cooperage - 2 urinals, 6 toilets Josh - 38 urinals, 74 toilets Darwin - 16 urinals, 24 toilets Student Center - 18 urinals, 30 toilets Salazar - 4 urinals, 20 toilets Assume Residents use res life toilets and non-residents/employees use campus buildings Assume gal/flush for res life is an average of full and partial flushes Assume 210 days per res life student and 150 days per campus building Assume urinals used by males which are 1/3 of total amount of people among campus buildings

4 *We averaged the gal/flush for res life which accounts for the slightly smaller total of gal/year compared to our paper. Toilets: People: # of Flushes/ Day: Ave, Gal/ Flush: Gal/Day: Day/ Yr Gal/Yr: Res. Life , ,031,802 Campus Buildings , ,601,000 Urinals People: # of Flushes/ Day: Ave, Gal/ Flush: Gal/Day: Day/ Yr: Gal/Yr: ,300 5,723,102 Total Gallon / Year ~6,000,000 Gal/Year Conclusion During our investigation about the water usage and potential savings from low flow toilets, we found there to be 2,032 toilets on the residential side on campus and 272 toilets along with 116 urinals on the academic side of campus buildings, from which we can estimate that SSU uses about 6,000,000 gallons of water a year just from toilets. In 2013, SSU had a domestic water usage value of 57 million gallons per year. Based on this value and our findings, we concluded that the use of toilets account for about 10% of total water usage on campus. The remaining 90% could be from showers, sinks, dining areas, water fountains, pools, and other factors. The toilets installed throughout campus, that use about 1.6 gallons per flush, are considered to be low flow compared to old American standard toilets that use around 3.5 gallons. If the school were to look into replacing all of its urinals with waterless urinals, which according to a quick Google shopping search cost roughly $233 each, they would need to spend a about $27,028 on urinals ($233 x 116 urinals). Assuming that water is $.0015 per gallon, it would take about 36,037,333 flushes to balance out the initial cost based on the.5 gallon/flush value for urinals. The cost of switching from low-flow to no-flow urinals would pay for itself within two years, if we just consider the cost of the urinals themselves. The toilets currently installed at SSU provide enough savings, that replacing them would not be beneficial. Our original objective was to find the potential savings SSU could generate by making renovations to on campus bathrooms. We found that SSU already is using efficient toilets to use as little water as possible. If the school was interested in becoming even more efficient, the initial cost would be too great and take too long to balance out for it to be worth it.

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