In most commercial buildings other than new construction, rest rooms are equipped with older flushometer valve toilets that use 5-6 gallons or more of water per flush. In many cases, the water used by these toilets can account for up to 40 to 60% of the total water use of the building.

The high water use of these rest room fixtures have made them obvious targets for water conservation. These toilets were originally designed when water was plentiful and inexpensive. Some may continuously leak or use over 12 gallons per flush if not operating properly. These toilet/valve fixtures use 3 to 4 times the amount of water as their newer “1.6 gallon per flush low volume” toilets. At 50 flushes per day, an older toilet would waste nearly 100,000 gallons of water per year per toilet.

The rapidly rising costs of water and sewer is a factor motivating building owners and managers to consider replacing old high water use toilets with low water use (1.6 gallon per flush) toilets. There has been a problem accurately determining rest room fixture use in relation to the costs of replacing toilets. A break even point exists where it is cost effective to replace an old toilet based upon daily usage. The number of flushes per toilet per day needs to be known to determine wasted money for water and sewer costs. To determine actual number of flushes requires monitoring each toilet. In the past, this has been difficult because one needs to tap into the water supply pipe or to install a mechanical linkage to the flush valve mechanism. However, watercenter.com is building products that make these tasks easy.

The Flush Counter System (FCS) was developed to monitor water usage in public and business office rest rooms equipped with flushometer valve toilets and urinals. The FCS provides a simple system to determine which older toilets are used enough to justify the cost of replacement with new efficient toilets.