Torquay Boys Grammar School

Torquay Boys’ Grammar School was established in 1904 and has been on its current site since 1983. At that time it had 750 boys but the number has now risen to 1,120 so extensive building programmes have taken place over the last 30 years to keep its facilities up to date.

In 2018 the decision was made to switch to waterless urinals throughout the school as part of a refurbishment of all the washrooms, funded through condition improving funding administered via Hookway – a firm of chartered surveyors. It was Hookway who suggested that the school consider switching to waterless urinals, based on its experience of installing them in other schools.

Peter Richardson, TBGS’s site manager, went to look at the waterless urinals installed at Colyton Grammar School and decided to make the switch. In July 2018 22 waterless urinals were installed, with a further 11 added in September 2020.

"The main benefit of the waterless urinals for us has been the money that we have saved on our water bill. In the South West we pay one of the highest rates for water in the country and so saving water and cutting usage was a big motivation for us. Now that the waterless urinals are installed I estimate that we are saving between £4,000 and £6,000 per year just off our water bills – it makes a big difference."

"Another big benefit we’ve noticed is that there’s no longer any smell in the urinals. It used to be absolutely awful. We had tiled floors so splashes of urine would go on the floors, and of course the boys can’t aim, but now the combination of vinyl floor and waterless urinals has completely removed the issue with odour. The waterless urinals have made a vast improvement to the washrooms in the school."

"When we did the initial installation we had some toilets that were quite new and didn’t need refurbishing so we kept them as they were, but recently we bought more waterless urinals and fitted them into those areas as well because we found that they had been such a success. We fitted them ourselves in house and the process of swapping over to the waterless urinals was very straightforward."

"I would highly recommend waterless urinals. We can see that our water bill has really gone down and down and down, and on a day to day level the issue with smell has been completely taken care of – we don’t get anything at all now."