A simple change for massive savings

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Tiffany M. Grigg
  • 48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England --  To reduce water usage and save money, all 500 urinals across the base are slated to become waterless before the year is over.

"We're looking at saving $400,000 annually, but more importantly we will be saving 20 million gallons of water per year," said Sean Cockrell, 48th Civil Engineer Squadron base energy manager.

To save on money, water consumption and to create a cleaner restroom, microbial cubes will be used in place of the water.

"We're going to switch the water off at the urinals in the men's restrooms," said Cockrell. "What allows us to do that is a product called solo-cubes which contain naturally occurring microbes that feeds off salts in urine along with the sodium that naturally occurs in water."

Some men's restrooms on base have already undergone the changeover to waterless urinals, including the wing commander's restroom.

"You can also see them at the bowling alley and at the golf course," said Cockrell. "They've been there for two years now."

Waterless urinals were not installed sooner for various reasons to include a fear that they would be less sanitary than the ones that use water.

"We were very slow in the test bed process as in putting them in certain places, because the idea of a waterless urinal in general can be polarizing," said Corey Norcross, 48th CES resource efficiency manager. "People either hate it or they like it, or they are worried about the smell or worried about it being less sanitary, when in fact it's more sanitary once you get past the initial four weeks."

During the initial four-week process, the smell produced is from the solo-cubes cleaning out years of build-up in the pipes.

"The insides of pipes scale up over time and traditionally we would have to pour massive amounts of sulfuric acid down the drains to de-scale them," said Cockrell. "That's why we have this running period of four weeks because the solo-cube will go in and eat the scale which turns it into soft, smelly stuff that will then be flushed down the pipes. The smell's not coming from the urinal you are using today, it's coming from years and years of build-up that the solo-cube is cleaning out."

Along with the solo-cubes cleaning the pipes, the spray used to clean the urinals also contains microbes that will clean other areas of the restroom.

"As part of the service contract, the janitorial staff is going to use the spray to clean the urinal itself and the general area which will place those microbes in other porous surfaces like the grout and the tile. This will make for a more sanitary restroom," said Norcross.

The water savings not only affect the base but will also help in conserving water for the local community.

"Even though we had one of the rainiest months this past April, the U.K. was still in what it considers drought conditions for a vast majority of the year," said Norcross. "In conjunction with the community, RAF Lakenheath placed itself on a hose-pipe ban for a large duration of the summer. Even though we are certainly not a desert climate where every single drop counts, it still has to be something we consider in our day-to-day lives because conservation does mean something, even (here), where it rains as much as it does."

The urinals are expected to be a positive change for RAF Lakenheath.

"This is massive amounts of water saving and it will take a lot of base-wide support. People need to trust that the end result will be cleaner, more sanitary and better for them and the environment," said Cockrell.