Posted by Andrew on 6/8/2010, 3:10 pm, in reply to "The "wonderful" new K Village"
Hi Raymond
I too popped along to look at this new development, and having seen your comments, thought I would check out the toilets as well. My reaction was not the same as yours, which shows how personal such reactions can be.
You said in part: “The loo is a size smaller than the average living room, ……, once inside the loo there are five urinal bowls without divisions, and three cubicles, one bowl and one cubicle were "out of order", (yes, the place has only been open a week)!”
I thought it was quite a spacious room; and there are now divisions between urinals. My view was: on entry the left hand wall had five washbasins, then a partition followed by five urinals. Men washing or drying hands could not see those at the urinals and vice versa: this is major plus point. Being on the same wall meant there was no line of sight via mirror reflection either: again a major plus point. The four cubicles were opposite the urinals. I personally felt comfortable. Having five urinals instead of say four, meant that three users would have a spare urinal between each of them. I did not check out the spacing, nor the cubicles. Will do next time. It almost felt as if the designer had read the UKPT’s Design Guidelines for Public Toilets, and gone a long way to accommodate them. I’ll get this document added to the website for you to read. In the meantime checkout the extract below of the UKPT’s Draft Guidelines for Public Toilets.
3.3 Principles and rationale - urinals
a) Use bowl urinal, not troughs. No-one likes their difficulty in starting to void to be evidenced by the lack of fluid in the trough. Nor do they wish to see other people’s urine. (tick)
b) spacing to be such as to avoid the feeling of touching elbow to elbow: the recommendation is 800mm. An alternative is to consider same spacing as cubicles as per the Bog Standard School proposal. (not checked)
c) encourage a feeling of personal space and visual privacy by providing privacy screens between urinals. The bottom of the screen should be no more than 500mm off the floor, and to top to be a minimum height of 1700mm above the floor. (screens provided though not to this height, but effective)
d) provide visual privacy by using privacy screening between the urinal area and other areas e.g. wash basins, hand dryers, entrance door; the sizing to be as above. (tick)
e) Hand dryers and towels to be separated from urinals by 800mm, along with a privacy screen. (tick)
3.4 Principles and rationale – layout of male toilet
The area behind men standing at urinals should not be a gangway, nor an area for circulation e.g. a hand washing or drying area. Instead the preference is for the entrance to be into an area with cubicles on one side, and hand washing and drying on the other. Walking through this area is to lead to the far part of the room where the urinals are located, on both sides. Screening between the two areas to be a minimum of 1700mm.
Where hand washing and drying cannot be separated in this way, but has to be level with the urinals, then a 1700mm plus high screen should separate them: see JDWetherspoon pub in Macclesfield, and the Waterhouse in Manchester. (tick)
In large facilities urinals should be grouped in odds numbers e.g. fives or threes, with further high level screening between the groups. (tick)
Not bad!
Cheers
Andrew
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