There are many reasons you may be considering a luxury restroom trailer for your next event. Convenience, guest comfort, and safety, and providing the perfect guest experience are all very important justifications for adding Bonavita Luxury Lavatories to your event planning list.
I’m here to remind you of one more reason: the continued viability and safety of your own home plumbing.
I know this isn’t the first intuitive thought I’d have were I hosting a big party here at our house. I’d surely be concerned with the menu, activities, and guest list. The thing is, though, your event will arrive, and so will your guests, whether a small, intimate gathering or everyone you know and their friends, too. That is a LOT of people, and each one will probably need to use the bathroom at some point during your gathering.
Have you considered how your pipes will feel going through all that? Even more vital – what about your septic system? Every time you flush your toilet, you will use roughly 1.6 gallons for newer toilets, but up to 6 or 7 gallons for older toilets. On any given day with you and your housemates, this is a task easily managed by most septic or city water systems. But multiply that by your guest list, keeping additional water use, cooking, cleaning, and showering in mind as well, and you run the very real risk of overloading your system!
Load Capacity in Bathrooms and Restrooms
Load capacity is the maximum amount of sewage and water your system can handle before problems arise. If you use the city water and sewer systems, your load capacity will be larger than if you have a private septic system. A ‘typical’ load is about 100 gallons per person per day, with a capacity ranging between 750-1,250 gallons per household per day. Multiply that by 10, 20, 50, or more guests, and your septic system could very quickly become overwhelmed and fail!
Bathroom Flush Rates and Load Capacity
Your modern constructed toilet has vastly improved in its water-saving qualities. On average, a single person flushes the toilet between 5-7 times per day, using anywhere from 8-24 gallons daily just for flushing. Doesn’t sound that bad until you multiply that by 100 people, does it?
Your residential toilet can usually handle 10-15 flushes per hour before problems begin. Beyond that, the system may experience slow drainage or backups if there isn’t sufficient water pressure or pipe size.
A standard septic tank (1,000 gallons) can typically handle the waste from a 3-4 bedroom house, which averages 200-300 gallons of water usage per day. Depending on the size and efficiency of the system, this allows for 300-400 flushes per day before you start encountering serious issues.
City Water Systems: How Many Flushes Can They Handle?
City systems are designed to handle large numbers of flushes, with major cities’ wastewater treatment facilities processing millions of gallons daily. For example, New York City processes around 1.3 billion gallons per day. Each flush in a public system uses 1.6 to 3.5 gallons, and a city system can handle thousands of flushes per minute during peak times.
City systems typically provide water at 60-80 psi (pounds per square inch) pressure, which is more than enough to handle high-traffic periods. However, areas with low water pressure may struggle during peak hours.
Impact of Overloading Systems: What Happens When Capacity is Exceeded?
With your residential plumbing, what happens if a septic or city system is overloaded with too many flushes? Potential risks include clogged pipes, overflow, or sewage backups. Suddenly, your health, water supply, and potential repair bills are at risk! About 1 in 5 households in the U.S. experience some form of plumbing issue each year, with backups being one of the top concerns.
Septic systems can fail when overloaded, leading to expensive repairs. In homes with septic systems, it’s recommended to limit high-water usage (like running multiple toilets or showers simultaneously) to prevent overtaxing the system. Some ways to plan ahead and keep your septic system running smoothly include reducing your water usage for a few days before the event, taking care of any water-intensive food preparation ahead of time (to lessen the load on party day), and even considering a professional inspection before your big event. You should do this periodically anyway, so this would be an ideal reason to schedule maintenance!
How Luxury Portable Restrooms Handle High Load Capacities
Bonavita Luxury Lavatories can handle the higher load capacities of a party, gathering, or festival by accommodating 150 – 1,000 guests and all of their flushes. Lavatory trailers come with their own fresh water as well as waste holding tanks, which, when coupled with our portable generators, will completely remove that added load from your residential or small-venue systems. Hosting a multi-day event? The tanks can be easily emptied after hours, and the fresh water replenished. How easy is that?
Recap: Why Lighten the Load?
Average home systems are designed for 1-5 people, with a typical daily flush volume of around 200-300 gallons. They can handle occasional high demand but not ongoing large groups, especially when you factor in other reasons you’ll be putting your water systems to the test – cleaning, cooking, and extra bodies in the shower.
Luxury units can comfortably handle 200-500 flushes per day, with waste storage capabilities that allow for service to be scheduled between events. This makes them a great choice for events with fluctuating crowds.
Repairs to your sewer system as a homeowner could potentially run $3,000-$7,000. Repairing and servicing an overloaded septic system can be just as bad, depending on the extent of the damage caused by the sudden overload of water and debris into a system designed to work at a particular speed.
The Choice is Clear
This writer imagines that this may not have been the information you knew you needed today. However, while event planning includes so many exciting and even exotic choices, the condition of your available bathroom before and after your event is of critical importance. Keeping this in mind can easily save you plenty of time, worry, and money down the line.
Understanding how a large influx of water use can impact your home’s vital systems is, in fact, the information you didn’t know you needed. I am here to tell you that indeed, 200 extra bodies depending on an aging septic system can, in fact, turn into a much larger problem than you may have thought!
How could we have avoided following up after the party without having to invite plumbers, tank trucks, and diggers to our quiet corner of Connecticut? Not much of an after-party, that’s for sure.
We should have contacted Bonavita. Without a doubt.
The 80s were wild, man.