How often should portable toilets be emptied on a long term hire? Is it the same for a short term hire? And how are they emptied? Our latest guide answers all these questions and more.
Regardless of the number of portable toilet units you hire, they cannot be installed and then just left! They will need to be emptied, cleaned and replenished with necessary consumables and the frequency that this needs to take place is dependent on different factors.
How often to empty a portable toilet
This depends on how many units you have, and how many people are using them. However, as a general rule of thumb, a single event toilet has the capacity for 10 users across a 40-hour working week before it becomes unsanitary and unhygienic. How often the toilets are emptied can be arranged to suit individual requirements at the start of a hire period but generally, they will be emptied at least once a week. This can be carried out more frequently depending on use, if hiring additional units is not an option. For a short term hire, the toilet units will be emptied at the time of collection.
It's important to point out that there is no minimum time to wait to have a portable toilet emptied but of course the more frequently you arrange for them to be emptied, the nicer they will be for the users.
The risks of not emptying a portable toilet
If portable toilets are not emptied frequently enough, they will quite simply fill up. The consequences of this are that they will become unusable. Where you have hired luxury portable toilets for an event, this will put people off using them, causing inconvenience and giving the event potentially poor reviews. Remember too that in particularly hot weather, where a portable toilet has not been emptied, it will start to smell, very quickly.
Emptying luxury toilet units at events
When you hire a luxury portable toilet from JB Event Facilities, we will arrange a cleaning and maintenance schedule with you. In order to maintain the hygiene standards on the interior of the units, we can arrange an attendant service. All major contact areas will be kept clean and consumables will be replenished when necessary.
How portable toilets are emptied
Waste from a portable toilet is stored in a waste storage tank and when it is emptied, a vacuum pump truck is attached to this via a sealed system, and suction technology is used to transfer the waste into the pump truck tank. As a licensed liquid waste disposal company with the Environment Agency (Upper Tier Licence no. CBDU283839) we then transport the waste to a specialist treatment centre for ethical disposal. Our article ‘How are portable toilets emptied?’ has lots more information about the process.
At JB Event Facilities, we have our own fleet of vacuum pump trucks which allows us to empty our own units, and offer an emptying service to other portable toilet companies without their own trucks.
Can you use a toilet while it is being emptied?
With conventional flushing portable toilets, the emptying process requires them to be taken out of service for the duration of the process. For high traffic volume events, this can be impractical and cause inconvenience to users. However, where vacuum portable toilet pods are in place, emptying takes between 1-3 minutes resulting in no downtime and with no need to take the toilets out of service. Vacuum toilets are available as all-male pods, all-female pods and as urinal pods.
To find out more about our range of luxury toilet hire for events, our standard toilets which are ideal for long term construction hire, or any aspect of our vacuum pump services, please send an email to info@jbeventfacilities.co.uk or call our friendly sales team on 01280 851200 today.
