Scientists at Cleveland Biotech help banish urine smells with Clearinate – the ultimate in urinal c

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With UK businesses facing increasing pressure to reduce water usage, Ben Hoskyns, director of environmental biotechnology firm, Cleveland Biotech, looks at the benefits of the seemingly misunderstood waterless urinal and how Clearinate, used for urinal cleaning can prevent uric acid and limescale build-up in urinal pipework helping prevent urine smells.

 Water shortages and the sustainability of the water we use is undoubtedly a major issue facing businesses today – in fact 90pc of specialists would go as far as to say a UK water crisis is looming.

 Environment Agency figures published last year confirm this view, suggesting UK groundwater will begin to decrease by 2025, with the overall amount of water available in English and Welsh rivers reducing by 15 per cent by 2050.

This means the pressure on us – the business community - to mitigate the effects of future shortages is only going to increase further.

So with pressure to use less water but fears of blockages and urine smells, the waterless urinal system seems like the perfect solution – so why is it is plagued with misconceptions that less water means poor results?  

I spend a lot of time consulting with business owners discussing the issue of urinal cleaning, urine odours   and water usage and one of the worst offenders of excessive output in public and commercial buildings is un-controlled urinal flushing.

It’s well known that urinal systems can be problematic with costly and highly inconvenient blockages along with bad urine smells, all caused by uric acid and limescale build-up.   Ironically the common and usually futile reaction to urine odours is to deliberately increase water flow – thus using even more water.

If you do your research you will find many disparaging remarks about waterless urinals and they do often get the blame for urine smells in the washroom, but the truth of the matter is they are an excellent solution to both that and excessive water usage problems - providing they are properly maintained.

We are always told maintenance is key to getting the best out of a product but really there can be no truer example of this than with this subject.

 Microbiological systems are the most effective providing you do what needs to be done and take notice of what must not.   Whether waterless or flushed, simple measures absolutely have to be taken to prevent urine odours and the biggest mistake I see is businesses using products containing strong acids, alkalis or bleach which destroy the good bacteria in microbiological systems and degrade the gel in barrier systems.

 It’s such a simple but vital thing to safeguard against all of these problems - compatible urinal cleaning formulas must be used for the weekly dosing - use of drain clearing acids will ‘kill’ the enzyme producing microbes and disable the system.  And if you don’t fancy waterless for whatever reason, still take note - even valve systems will not operate properly if a strong cleaning chemical attacks the flexibility of the valve.

Be responsible and maintain your system correctly with urinal cleaning products like CBio’s Clearinateand you will be rewarded with fresher washrooms that are free from urine odours, huge savings on water usage and significant savings on costly blockages.