| As many of
you may know, 2650 Thousand Oaks Blvd has been going thru some
serious changes both inside and out. Most of these changes have
been dictated by the office park's new primary tenant - Clear
Channel. One of the more lengthy upgrades we have had to live
thru involved the bathrooms. Completely re-done from the ground
up, the new facilities are much more aesthetically pleasing.
However, while i appreciate the effort put forth during the 9
month
renovation
period,
at some point function does need to play a role. Yes,
while i've been told that the new tile is Italian, the concept
of function does not need to be totally lost in the name off good
design. Take for instance the Zurn Autoflusher. |
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| The
Zurn Autoflusher is the battery operated big brother of most
modern bathrooms. It is a device that senses the presence
of a facility "user" and then waits for that "user" to cease
and desist before commencing flush operations. |
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| It
used to be that you would only see these things in
airports and arenas, but in the past couple of years
they have popped up in virtually every public facility
in America. Their selling point seems to be that "hands
free" flushing is more sanitary and therefore
less germ friendly. However you are about to see that
if not properly installed, these devices can be quite
annoying. |
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| Take
for example the Zurn Autoflusher installed in Bay
#2 of the men's room on the 4th floor. As you can
see from the picture below, not only do we have the
Zurn Autoflusher, we also have a Safe-T-Guard tissue
dispenser. |
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| Now
while when used separately these two anti-germ technologies
have proven to be quite effective, it appears that when
the two are installed within the close confines of an
ADA
certified
"health-break"
cubical, they do not play nicely with one another. |
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| It
seems that every time a patron of Bay #2 "installs" themselves
a fresh Safe-T-Guard, the Zurn Autoflusher registers
that "installation" procedure as a person sitting
down. Therefore, once the said person has completed the "installation" process,
the Zurn Autoflusher assumes that the user of the facility
has finished all his duties and is ready to
flush. |
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| Now
if you have been paying attention through all this, you
will realize that all this does is send an unused Safe-T-Guard
down the drain where it will inevitably await processing
by the City of New
Orleans who is the only city along the Mississippi who
gets their drinking water from the river.. |
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| If you are
confused or are just functionally illiterate, please check out
this <video> it
should help in ways that my written communication skills cannot. |
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| As
you can see, no matter how hard you try there is no escaping
the watchful Zurn eye when attempting install a Safe-T-Guard
onto the toilet seat. Therefore, one is almost forced into
coming into contact with the evil germs (see
photo
on right)
that
exist in virtually every public restroom. The only way
around it that i have been able to come up with during
my all of my test runs is to physically hold the Safe-T-Guard
in place and just let the Zurn Autoflusher do its thing.
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| While this
may keep your Safe-T-Guard from flushing down the drain, it does
create two new problems. For one, the little paper tab that rests
in the water and is designed to pull the whole Safe-T-Guard
into the bowl when you flush, is now gone. In addition, you now
have
to
either
flush
the toilet manually or wait a full minute for the Zurn Autoflush
to reset itself. So much for "hands free" flushing. |
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| Quite annoying
isn't it... well not if your one of the top executives at Safe-T-Guard.
If I'm one of them, I'm thrilled at the engineering marvel that
is the Zurn Autoflusher. Judging simply by the rate of consumption
of Safe-T-Guards since the Zurn's arrival in bay #2, this little
device has the potential to prop up the entire seat cover
market. |
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| (yes,
i am aware that calling this an "engineering marvel" is
a stretch.. but this story needed to be told and it really
didn't fit into
any other category - so i worked it into this one) |
