What Makes a Building Product Green

Toilet flushing uses a great deal of water in many commercial buildings. While appropriate pairing of flushometer to toilet bowl is necessary for effective flushing performance, retrofitting existing commercial toilets with low-water use and dual-flush flushometers can yield significant water savings. Flushometer retrofits are also available for urinals. Although flushometers can be installed in residential buildings, they are primarily used in commercial buildings.

Note that commercial toilets may have different flushometer options. Dual-flush flushometer valves offer similar performance for standard commercial blow-out toilets, and many flushometers include sensors that improve sanitation by triggering the flush.

Flushometer and toilet pairings should be able to evacuate 500 grams, according to Maximum Performance (MaP) testing. The MaP testing website offers a database of tested pairings and GreenSpec recommends that this database be consulted before deciding on a retrofit flushometer.

GreenSpec lists flushometers that use less than 1.28 gallons per flush (gpf) and are capable of evacuating 500 grams under MaP testing. Dual-flush flushometers are measured by averaging two reduced flushes and one full flush. GreenSpec also lists urinal flushometers that use at most 0.5 gpf, in line with the WaterSense criteria for urinals.