Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Flush Valves

This is topic Flush Valves in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 09-07-2006, 09:25 PM:

For many years the only flush valves available were Sloan, now there are several other brands. We need to replace a couple that were damaged several years ago in an acid dip to remove the chrome in order to expose the brass. Does anybody have experience with any of the other brands?

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 09-08-2006, 10:05 AM:

We have the ZURN brand flush valves at the drive-in. We have 5 toilets in the ladies room and 3 urinals + 2 toilets in the mens room and all have the ZURN flush valves. One of my concessions girls, while cleaning the restrooms last year sprayed something on 3-4 of them and it pitted the chromed finish on them. I want to replace all of the manual flush handles with the automatic motion sensor flush actuators. I have found out the hard way that men don't flush no matter what, and women will not use a toilet if the women in front of her didn't flush... women also pee on the seat - but that's a whole other topic unto itself. [Mad]

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 09-08-2006, 11:19 AM:

We use Comet spray bathroom cleaner on our valves. Keeps them nice & shiny. You can also use the stuff around your sinks & dispensers... a good cleaner/sanitizer.

I think the Sloan and Zurn valves are fairly equal in quality, though the local plumbing and home improvement shops around here seem to have more parts for the Sloans. On the other hand, I never had to open a Zurn, so maybe there's something to be said there.

Barry is right on about motion valves. Over the past 2 years, I've replaced all of mine, including the ones on the sinks. It has made a world of difference, especially in the men's room, and all of us appreciate not having to go around, flushing behind our customers.

The valves we put in also have an optional 24 hour flush cycle. If not used, each toilet will flush once a day. Keeps things from stagnating.

Here are the valves we converted to.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 09-08-2006, 01:46 PM:

Is anybody using waterless urinals? They save a lot of water, but I'm not sure how well the surface would stand up to any sort of abuse. They're very uncommon here, I've only ever seen them in a couple of places.

Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 09-08-2006, 01:50 PM:

I have encountered the waterless urinals during a trip to the Statue of Liberty in NYC. Looks like not only would it reduce the amount of water used in flushing, but seemed that the restroom did not suffer any adverse symptoms from non-flushing - No odor was detectable. A fairly neat idea, I'm suprised it hasn't caught on more.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 09-08-2006, 02:38 PM:

I've never been to the Statue of Liberty, you get a much better view of it from elsewhere, but I have been to Ellis Island, and they don't have them there. Could the reason that they use them at the Statue due to either water supply or drainage being limited, maybe everything has to be pumped away, and so they wish to reduce the volume of water involved?

The saving can be huge; a single urinal can use thousands of litres of water every week, and produces an equal volume of effulent which has to be treated. Most American urinals seem to be marked '3.8 lpf 1 gpf'. Interesting that they put it in litres first. I think ours tend to use somewhat less.

<Warning: discussion of some of the less pleasant aspects of urinals coming up>

From my limited experience of them I have to agree wth Jason; there's no smell to them. Over here there's an additional advantage, as British urinals normally work differently to American ones. We don't have the manual flush valves, and the automatic ones are not that common. Most of ours have flush pipes which are connected together in short rows, typically 3-6, and the pipe is fed from a small water cistern. Water flows into this cistern slowly, taking a few minutes to fill it. When the water reaches a certain level it automatically flushes the row of urinals. This means that they are not flushed between each user, but rather every few minutes. This uses less water at busy times, but they used to flush every few minutes, day and night, whether being used or not; obviously very wasteful. In recent years most have been fitted with a device which detects when people are in the room, and stops flushing them when they are not being used, but if anybody is detected in the room then all of the urinals will continue to flush, not just any which have been used. What do people, like our students, do with them? Block them up with paper, chewing gum, and various other things which I won't mention. After a couple of flushes they overflow and you have a flood. I'm always having to unblock the things in our gentlemens facilities, and call for somebody to come and mop up the flood. I've thought of suggesting using waterless ones, but they do rely on the surface coating being intact; it's fairly tough, but I'm not sure if it could withstand some of the things our students would do to it. With reasonably civilised users they seem to work very well; sadly, a few people are not reasonably civilised.

A couple of web sites about them from manufacturers, and a report about their use at a London Underground station:

Waterless

Falcon WaterFree Technologies

Metronet

Posted by Chad Souder (Member # 343) on 09-08-2006, 03:53 PM:

We installed 31 Sloan touchless flush valves in February. Other than one bad solonoid, which was warrantied, they have been error free. I highly recommend them.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-08-2006, 04:50 PM:

Frank Zurn is a Class-A asshole! I used to have to serve him beer. I never ONCE heard him say, "Please.", or, "Thank you."

Posted by Fred Georges (Member # 505) on 09-08-2006, 10:55 PM:

"Frank Zurn is a Class-A asshole! I used to have to serve him beer. I never ONCE heard him say, "Please.", or, "Thank you."

You should have served Him that "Special" Beer! [bs]

Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 09-09-2006, 08:39 PM:

We have Zurn valves, but we always use sloan replacement parts, because that's what home depot carries. The parts fit perfectly.