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RogerM Unpleasant odours The Telegu school we visited had toilets that would make the owner of an unaccustomed

nose squirm, the cause for this is mismanagement: infrequent and/or inadequate cleaning. This is something that can be found in many schools and public toilet facilities. The improper use of the facilities by the students may lead to in-adequate cleaning when the party responsible only does the minimum that is required of them instead of doing a little bit extra and making sure that everything is actually clean. The minimum consists of spraying water around and scrubbing the premises with a brush, often done in haste because of negligence, lack of proper equipment or untrained. Infrequency of cleaning, once a week, will also lead to the build up of unpleasant odours which having sunk deep into the porous building material may not be possible to clean with a mere spray and a scrub, the use of tiles has minimised this to a certain extent but just as a chain is no stronger than its weakest link the glitch in this system are the white cement seams. While the glazed tiles are impenetrable by liquids, the white seams being porous are liable to absorbing them and letting them fester. There are a few ways that we can curb this and make these facilities more sanitary: Educate the students & cleaner on proper usage of these facilities. -Showing them where to aim and why releasing outside the given area is not good. -Tweaking the design of the commode/urinal to make the method of its use clearer.

Something to aim at inside the urinal

Modifying the gripping pattern on the footrest to indicate direction.

Cleaning more frequently, setting a more frequent schedule and creating a system where the level of cleanliness is inspected by a second party. Tweaking the design of the latrine to create slopes that assist the flow of fluids in the correct direction, this can be enforced by the use of hydrophobic treatments such as
Slope will assist flow

RogerM Zycosil which will make sure that the surface repel the water, like on a lotus leaf (right), and that means nothing is absorbed into the building material. This will help minimise the odours because of low retention and subsequently the amount of water used to clean the facilities will also be less which will also mean that the job of the cleaning party will also be less. This treatment can also be applied to urinals and their drainage system.

Hydrophobic surface of the lotus leaf repels water which the follows the slop of the leaf and travels to the lowest point, the leaf stays dry.

The hydrophobic effect of Zycosil

Looking at what has been done around the world I have seen fancy ideas for toilets that have been features in various toilet innovation competitions but these are not applicable to this setting because: 1. Low funds, which could be sorted out through various means 2. The problem that is being addressed here is for toilets that already exist, modification of the already existing facilities is the only way to go about this.

The best way to go about this is to implement all three of the points mentioned above, education on sanitation for the students & cleaner, a tighter schedule for cleaning and slight modifications to make a toilet facility low maintenance and require less water. One other idea that popped up during a search for answers in this area was to make a product that can be attached to the bottom of a urinal before the outflow pipe, this odour trapping mechanism (Ecotrap, shown in picture below) would contain a layer of oil that would trap the smell of urine under the surface. This will only be effective in a sealed drain system and will change with different designs of urinals. This device can be used along with the previously stated solutions synergising into a truly low maintenance, water saving toilet.
Adding this part only works for some urinal designs

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