I know...it's one of those things you don't want to think about but can't help wondering about. 
Posted on 04/05/2006 8:07:14 AM PDT by wjersey
A waterless-urinals agreement is in the can, and that means that the Comcast Center will be able to install the environmentally friendly basins in its new headquarters, a spokesman for Mayor Street announced last night.
Street brokered the complex deal between the developer, Liberty Property Trust, and Plumbers Union Local 690, with support from State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo after the potty standoff was made public in The Inquirer and became a cause celebre for the city's environmental groups.
The agreement clears the way for Liberty to install 116 no-flush urinals in the men's rooms at the 58-story Comcast Center, and increases the chances that the 975-foot skyscraper will earn the title of America's tallest green building.
Liberty, however, was forced to accept a long list of conditions to open the way for the green devices. Most significantly, it agreed to install standard water lines with the urinals, although they are unnecessary and will not be connected. The plumbers contend this is a backup measure, in case the urinals don't work.
While Liberty and the union have worked out the deal, it must still be approved in a meeting today by the Plumbing Advisory Board, an obscure but powerful body that reviews all plumbing-related changes to the city's building code. Liberty would receive a one-time-only variance.
Made up entirely of plumbers and plumbing contractors, the advisory board had blocked the introduction of the increasingly popular, no-flush basins, which require less work to install. But after Street and Fumo intervened, the board agreed to permit Liberty to use the urinals on a trial basis, said Robert D. Solvibile Sr., who runs the Department of Licenses and Inspections. He said he expected unanimous approval when the board considers the variance today.
Despite the restrictions imposed by the plumbers, Liberty vice president John Gattuso hailed the agreement as an advance for the green building movement. "We believe this ensures that Comcast Center will take its place as one of the preeminent high-rise buildings in the world," he said in a statement issued by Liberty.
But this hardly guarantees that new urinals will be flushless in Philadelphia. Solvibile said the plumbers union was allowing only an exemption for Liberty, and only because it was installing the backup water lines. The developer also agreed to a strict maintenance program that involves scrubbing the urinals daily, changing their chemical cartridges regularly, and submitting to twice-yearly inspections.
A permanent code change is a long way off. "This is going to take years to evaluate," said Solvibile.
That means that other developers might also have to raise a stink if they wanted to install water-saving urinals.
During discussions between Liberty and the union, Solvibile said, he became a convert to the technology. At the same time, he said, "there are lot of places I would never allow it: bars, restaurants, schools."
The Comcast tower, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, includes a variety of energy- and water-saving technologies that could help it win a coveted certificate from the U.S. Green Building Council. No tower its size has achieved that distinction, although the 945-foot Bank of America Tower in New York is also going for the green.
Liberty estimates that the urinals will conserve about a million gallons of water a year and save the company about $10,000 in construction costs. Liberty would have saved even more if not for the backup lines.
But saving money isn't the issue, Gattuso said.
Not getting stuck behind New York on the toilets is.
No sh*t, Sherlock.
WTF is a waterless-urinal??? A chamber pot? This really pisses me off.
As Frederick "Rick" Dubinsky, the hard-driving former chairman of United's pilots union, once said: "We don't want to kill the golden goose. We just want to choke it by the neck until it gives us every last egg," the relationship between unions and the companies they work for is “What can you do for me now.”
Unfortunately, years of union benefits piling on union benefits have made many of the companies they work for unviable. For instance, if Ford wants to lay off union workers, they still must 90% of their salaries and benefits for years. To unplug a computer in the Philadelphia Convention Center requires that a union electrician does the work (the actual unplugging). SEPTA union employees pay not one dime in co-pays or deductibles for their medical benefits and are willing to shut down the entire mass transit system in Philadelphia, indefinitely, to keep it that way.
When companies can not make a profit or compete because they are being squeezed for every golden egg, they have two options. Either go out of business or go to areas where unions are not as strong. This used to mean going to the mostly nonunionized Southern United States, where for the last 20 years every major automobile manufacturer has chosen to build new manufacturing plants, but now means to go overseas in search of the most competitive place to do business.
Management is not innocent, they have created this mess. They have made many unwise decisions of putting short term profits over the long term health of their companies. In the same vein, they have also agreed to outrageous union contracts because the bills and heartburn for them would come due on some else’s watch in the future.
Now the bills are coming due. And all the union iron clad contracts mean nothing if the company they work for goes out of business. Just ask the workers of steel and airline companies. And ask their retirees. All wish that the company they work for or retired from was a healthy and profitable company.
Unions need to focus on how they can make the companies they work for as strong as possible. This is the only way to keep union jobs, pay and benefits around for the long run. And that doesn’t mean massive pay cuts. Flexibly in work rules, retraining for new jobs when technology changes the old jobs, plugging in and using membership brains/experiences to make the company more profitable are all foreign concepts in many union shops. Their company’s future is their future. For instance, when union workers in Japan go on strike, they wear arm bands that proclaim “On Strike” as they continue to work. They understand that to cause unneeded financial damage to the company they work for, in these days of global competition, is one way to lose their jobs forever.
Unions also need to get out of politics. All of the major unions are strong supporters (both in money from mandatory union dues and “forced” volunteers) of the most liberal of democrat candidates. They have publicly taken positions of being pro-abortion, anti-gun and anti-tax cut (among a plethora of other social issues). None of these issues has anything remotely to do with how a union operates. But it serves to isolate unions from over half the population of America who want nothing to do with them just based on their political stands on these controversial issues. Many people actively avoid buying union made products because they feel they are financing their political enemies.
The union’s heritage is of the craftsman guilds. When you hired a craftsman, you knew you were getting value – someone who was trained, knew what they were doing and did the job right. Today, hiring a union person to do a job is synonymous for expensive, inflexible, sloppy work and belligerence. That is the image that needs to be changed for unions to flourish – what can we do to provide value.
Regards,
2banana
They should hire non-union plumbers, you know, just in case the union goes on strike later.
The Unions may run Philly but it sounds to me as if the Pee is going to do alot of standing around. Those bathrooms are going to smell like pee in a bad way.
Leave it to Philadelphia to come up with the worst possible solution.
Follow the money !!
If only there were a good use for 'concentrated' pee just standing around....hmmmmm....what about pumping it into the DNC headquarters?????
Gee, I dunno, they sound like a bunch of stand-up guys.
"WTF is a waterless-urinal??? A chamber pot? This really pisses me off."
The purpose of water in a urinal is to always leave a barrier in the p-trap to prevent odors from coming into the room from the drain line.
A waterless urinal uses a cartridge with a semi permanent liquid that serves the same purpose.
So you simply urinate,the urine flows through the barrier, and it is done.
To the user it looks like a conventional urinal, except there is no water connection at the top.
A little off message, but have I missed something in the immigration debate? In order to avoid unions and union dues more and more companies are moving out of the country many to Mexico. At the same time illegals are coming in and depressing wages in many of the trades, i.e. plumbers, drywallers, carpenters etc. To my knowledge though there has been no push by the big unions to support immigration reform. In fact my wife said she read that the unions feel the best way to deal with the illegal issue is to raise the minimum wage, which to me seems very counter productive. Have the unions become so wed to the left that they can no longer even support non-leftist positions that are good for them and their members?
Naw, that'd improve the smell. The DNC smells like yesterday's loaf.
To make them happy, maybe we should change the building code to require ALL plumbing fixtures to have a backup set of pipes in case there is a problem with the first set. All elevators must have a backup elevator. All wires must have a backup wire. Etc.
I can guarantee that the next company looking to build such a building in Philadelphia will think twice about building there. Why go to the hassle and expense?
A couple favorite union stories. In the past, you could not carry a box into the Cleveland convention center. A union mover had to do it. Of course, your convention had to pay him. You could not plug a cord in. A union electrician had to do it. People got tired of it and moved their conventions. Suddenly, the unions realized they had cut off their own noses. The rules got changed.
Another. A guy I know watched a union "craftsman" lay vinyl tile squares over sawdust and wood chips. The friend asked why he didn't sweep the floor first. The union guy said, "I lay tile. I don't sweep. That's someone else's job." I'm sure his union leader would have supported him, too.
I know they want what's best for themselves, but if a moral issue presented itself, can't the union people vote for who they want regardless of what the leaders say? Isn't voting private?
You don't understand Philly (and many other NE cities). All work is done by a union man. You can not hire non union people. It doesn't matter if you can get a better plumber at 1/2 the price - you will hire a union plumber. One reason why no businesses want to move into Philly.
I know...it's one of those things you don't want to think about but can't help wondering about.
Yeah, but the union would probably have the building blown up.
I was going to paint a relative's office, but when the owner of the building found out I wasn't union, he said, "No way!". He didn't want trouble.
A large oil company built a carwash in my neighborhood with non-union guys. Part way through the job, someone blew a wall out of the place. The project was abandoned.
A friend's father runs a small non-union concrete business. The dad, son, and a friend were putting in a sidewalk. A long black limo pulled up. A shiny suit got out and said, "Which one of you is going to join the union right now?" The dad pointed at his son. He knew his equipment would be stolen, burned, or blown up if he had refused.
We called them "Trees" growing up.
Ye know not whereof ye speaketh.
These have been around for decades, and are used in many arid-west locations, especially Wyoming's highway rest areas, without any untoward oders.
Comcast's headquarters in already in Philly and they got a lot of tax breaks to stay.
"Comcast's headquarters in already in Philly and they got a lot of tax breaks to stay."
Ahh, well that makes sense then. :)
Maybe so. But so is counting (by the union thug officers...)
Well... sounds like they're making the right choice, though it's for all the wrong reasons.
It would be smart to plumb the building for conventional urinals, since this is really just an experimental technology that may not work out in the long run. Do re-plumb later would cost orders of magnitude more.
But Philly is utterly held hostage by unions. My company has an office in Philly... and every tiny little thing is an enormous hassle and cost because of the @#$#ing unions.
When my IT dept set up the network, we had to hide from the rest of the contractors. They couldn't see us patching the switches to the rack or to the servers, or they would walk off the job. Sorry, bubba, but it's *my* damn server and *my* people will connect it up, thankyouverymuch. One day there was a huge problem because one of the electricians saw our ethernet punchdown tools in the network closet. He threatened a work stoppage for the whole site.
It's like looneyville.
Maybe so. But so is counting (by the union thug officers...)
Someone should write a book about how unions work. But they would probably blow up the printer and the bookstores.
If it is only for the men's room it is a sexual discrimination issue.
Plain and simple it is illegal as it applies only to men. Justification or common sense never mattered before, plain and simple it is discriminatory.
Aw, give the plumber's union a break. If everybody adopted these waterless urnals, they'd be left without even a pot to piss in.
Why I still remember my dear mother singing "Look For The Union Label" to me as a lullaby in mah crib.
Hmmm... They put one in a building I worked in last year. It stank to high heaven. I mean, sure the majority of the urine goes through the cartridge, and you don't get sewer gas odor. But that urine is hitting the ceramic. It dries there -- like an old fashioned up-against-the-wall urinal that doesn't get flushed, and unless you like the smell of urine, it's offensive. The second reason for the water is to cleanse the urinal. Maybe if they put extra urinal mints in it would be ok, but I doubt it. Pee is pee.
"Info on waterless urinals FWIW http://www.waterless.com/"
Your link explains it all.
"Info on waterless urinals FWIW http://www.waterless.com/
Your link explains it all. Or maybe this link
I don't think it's really "experimental" - we've had them in our building for a few years and the current largest "green" building in NY has had them for four years. They are installed at Disney, the Rose Bowl, and in Pennsylvania state government buildings in the state capital.
In fact, during this controversy, it was discovered that the waterless urinals were installed last year in Philly at a SEPTA station (SEPTA is the regional transit authority) and another city government building and they got "past" the inspectors and were not "authorized".
What really ticks me off (and I must admit that I am indirectly involved in the Comcast Center project) is that these same unions will walk hand-in-hand with the environmentalist wackos at election time and will launder each other's money, yet they'll both attack Republicans on environmental issues. But it is the union standing in the way and they'll get a free pass.
I think it is an interesting technology... but yours and other reports seem to indicate that it doesn't work like the brochures say.
Comcast is a Philadelphia company. The Roberts family is from Springfield (Montco) I think.
When 1.6 gallon per flush toilets were first forced by law to be created, they did not work. Once the manufacturers figured out what the problems were, they improved them and now you don't think twice about it. In time this may work, but so far I have not been convinced. For the places that do use them and claim success, congratulations!
I agree. Just because it isn't perfect yet, there's no reason not to keep perfecting it. Your example of the early 1.6 gal toilets is a good one.
Same with cars when the government first started the fuel economy standards. Manufacturers just made the cars smaller to comply, and therefore more dangerous in a crash. It took years before the technology was there to make a small car safe.
There was a row of them in a building I used to service. They were "green" urinals. They had signs praising it all over the bathroom. No one read them much because the place reeked of piss. I used it one time and asked my contact there why the commode stank and he gave me the whole story. Some bean counter figured that over X number of years they could save X amount in water cost and it was green since they were flushless urinals.
Perhaps in the arid sw, with low humidity, the stank cloud evaporates quickly. In the high humidity NE, it floats there like swimming in an above ground toilet.
Apparently what happens is that cleaning people sometimes pour a bunch of water in them to flush down various things that collect in the bottom of urinals they might not want to fish out. This drives out the liquid sealant and then you get the odor. If the sealant is intact, there should be very little odor.
In the end this will save money, because those waterless urinals are useless. They will be in place for a while and when the bathrooms all start stinking to high heaven due to the high amount of maintenance required to keep them operational, they will be replaced with conventional flush type urinals.
I recently visited an Ikea store that had the waterless urinals. I did not notice any bad smells. In fact, it smelled better than most public bathrooms.
I would imagine that the janitorial staff at an Ikea would be a tad more vigilant than in some other places.
My experiences with them are in government buildings, where after the waterless urinals being in place for 6 months the janitorial neglect became obvious by the smell.
It took another 6 months for the facility managers to have the urinals returned to the flush urinals.
The same will happen with these waterless urinals, I'm confident.
Good job!
Yeah, the one we had had several signs praising and bragging about it too. My first thought was... it's a frickin' wastepipe. I didn't know about the patented fluid layer, but it didn't seem to help much from my perspective.
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