NATIONAL REPORT—When staying at hotels, travelers tend not to treat the guestroom like their own home. No surprise there. Assuming that is the case, why trust them to report something as simple as a leaking toilet? According to Joseph Benson, Vice President of Business Development at EcoSense Solutions, a warped flapper is the leading cause of a leaking toilet and can alone waste up to 200 gallons of water a day. Over a year’s time, an average leaking toilet will waste 75,000 gallons of water and cost an owner about $600 based on the national average water rate. Benson says it is common for his company to find more than 20 percent of toilets leaking in a hotel. That is a lot of money down the drain and potentially a lot of water damaging your property. “Waste has a zero ROI,” Benson says.
Stopping a toilet’s leak before it can cause financial or physical damage is the goal of EcoSense Solutions, whose UL and Green Certified toilet fill/flush valve solution—the AquaMizer—can eliminate flooding and shut off running water within one minute while reducing water consumption up to 41 percent. Flooding is limited to one tank volume plus 0 to 2.6 gallons. “It really comes down to the sensor,” Benson says. “The protector cup on the AquaMizer shuts off the flow of water.”
EcoSense Solutions, which just launched its new website, offers several different payment options: pay upfront, over time, or a pay for savings option with no money upfront. EcoSense Solutions can either do the installation or train a property’s maintenance team to install the AquaMizer.
For those interested in saving money and conserving water beyond the toilet tank, EcoSense Solutions just introduced its EcoH20 Basic Package which includes a hard plastic flapper (designed to prevent warping), an enhancer (toilet tank fill diverter that saves .5 to 1.5 gallons per flush), dye tablets to identify a toilet leak, 1.5 gpm low flow showerhead, flush handle, and a faucet flow restrictor (aerator) which reduces water flow 75 percent.
Other Toilet Leak Prevention Options
The 400LS—Universal Fill Valve, Leak Sentry from Fluidmaster, Inc. fixes noisy toilets and detects leaks. With its universal fit, the Leak Sentry prevents the automatic refill of a leaky tank due to a worn or faulty flapper. The water-saving roller clamp allows one to regulate the fill level in the bowl.
The Toilet Scrooge is a 24/7 wireless toilet monitoring system offered by The Water Scrooge. It is designed to help hoteliers instantly identify malfunctioning toilets, repair leaks and increase profits. With The Toilet Scrooge, one can quickly analyze an entire building’s toilets on a mobile device.
The wireless Aqwifi also makes it possible to monitor toilets for leaks 24/7, fix the leaks that can annoy guests, and significantly reduce water costs. Aqwifi’s sensor detects “normal” and “abnormal” water flows into the toilet’s tank via the refill tube. On installation, the toilet is flushed to let the sensor know what normal water flow “feels” like. Any flow that deviates from the normal flow is detected as an abnormal refill, indicating a potential leak. Once the Aqwifi determines that abnormal flows represent a leak, the leak indication is e-mailed or texted to on-site personnel on a daily or even hourly basis.
James Brackett, Co-Founder and CEO of Aqwifi, says the device was engineered with a radio inside it, along with a sensor. It fits inside the toilet tank. Aqwifi helps improve guest satisfaction and streamlines the leak reporting process. Brackett says it can also identify faulty parts. “Some flappers and fill valves are bad out of the box,” he says. “It lets you know if you have a bad part.”
Aqwifi, which can result in about an 18 percent reduction in water use, makes the most sense where water rates are higher. “We place the system for $10 per unit per toilet,” Brackett says. “We monitor the toilets for $4 per toilet per month.”
Glenn Hasek can be reached at editor@greenlodgingnews.com.
