Category — Cool Bathrooms and Technology

Check out these urinals in the newly-remodeled bathroom at Del Mar Plaza shopping center:

Look at that nice, deep, full-height wall between them. Now that’s how you do urinals!

So Dr. and Mrs. ICBE spent 24 hours without ICBE Jrs #1 and #2 this past weekend, decease and had the pleasure of spending it at the Four Seasons Residence Club, buy cialis Aviara. I am not one for meritless praise but quite frankly the Four Seasons really kicked ass – except for the toilet paper.

All that stuff did was scratch my ass. Seriously, why would a luxury hotel chain stock bathrooms with the cheapest possible one-ply toilet paper they could find? Look how thin this stuff is…

Not sure how that stuff got past QC, but it really stuck out as a glaring flaw in an otherwise lovely stay.

Saw the following sign at Ciao Restaurant on Balboa Island:

Men
Please piss in the urinal…
Keep it clean for everyone.
Thank you

The sign was placed above the toilet – there was a urinal on the adjacent wall. My first instinct was that they were simply reminding people to aim carefully (in the urinal as opposed to on the floor), but on reflection I realized this was specifically directed at convincing men to use the urinal rather than the toilet.

I’ve got to say, when performing a #1 I’m a fan of urinals over toilets for a couple of reasons:

1. Easier to aim properly
2. Less water usage

Cleaner and more environmentally sound – got to agree with the sign on this one!

The Roskilde Festival in Denmark used to have a little bit of a problem with people peeing on the sides of trees.

Now they simply have the P-Tree:

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Or at the very least provide them with some urinals, and improve the situation for everyone. No word on what the full-bladdered female is supposed to do…

via Metafilter

When you start talking about developing nations, access to clean water and reliable energy are two major problems. The Loowatt takes a crack at both of these problems at once by providing a toilet that converts human waste into natural gas and fertilizer. It doesn’t waste water, it creates fuel, and it takes care of processing human waste – what’s not to love?

The hideous, hideous looks.

Now it’s not clear if every Loowatt is going to look like this (the pictures on the site suggest not), and I understand it is made from human feces, but does it really have to look like a gigantic cylindrical poop? Yuck!

Loowatt Page
More pics of the toilet over at Inhabitat
via mhh5th

A couple of days ago I posted about the Toepener. Well that generated a flurry of responses, or at least what we call a flurry around the ICBE. One of those response was from StepNpull, a similar product:

Great option but it’s not a new idea. StepNpull came out in 2007 which is the same concept. http://www.stepnpull.com/ Thanks

Hang on, two competing door opening solutions for your feet? I love me some sweet obscure bathroom-related products competition! Let’s see how they stack up in a series of completely arbitrary categories…

And it’s the StepNpull by a hair! Tough to argue with that price, though Beth in the original post suggests the Toepener may be easier to use in certain situations. Any volunteers to install one of each in the ICBE offices so we can torture test them?

The Toepener. It’s a door handle. For your feet. Which frankly sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea.

But you know somebody’s stretching it when this is featured prominently on the product page:

Each Toepener includes:

1. Signage for mirrors and doors
2. Four stainless steel screws per Toepener
3. One machined etched and powder-coated American aluminium Toepener

Yay for screws?

via Metafilter

If you’re ever in Newport, you can visit some historical mansions. And if you visit The Elms, then you can take a gander at these fantastic urinals:

Now generally speaking, bad urinal etiquette aside I’m a fan of urinals. They are more efficient than toilets in terms of space occupied, time taken and water used. But urinals like those pictured here – yikes! Why don’t you just go ahead and stand in the middle of the room and pee in a cup? I’d get a serious case of shy bladder trying to empty into one of those…

I was out for dinner the other night, and in the time it took for me to use the urinal, I witnessed no fewer than two people walk straight out of stalls and out of the bathroom.

Gross.

With that in mind, here’s one approach to solving the problem of men not washing their hands:

From Moggit and DailyHaHa

If you’re a regular person, you might bust out a little air freshener from time to time. As Wikipedia so aptly puts it:

Air fresheners are consumer products used in homes or commercial products used in restrooms that mitigate unpleasant odors.

Notice anything missing from that description? That’s right, nary a mention of doctors or hospitals. That’s because if you’re in the medical profession, you don’t use air freshener. You use biological odor eliminator.

Photo courtesy of unnamed family member

Though the photo depicts the MediChoice brand, rest assured that Amazon has your biological odor eliminator needs completely covered. No word on what the doctors do for non-biological odors…