URINE is difficult to treat, as it cannot be caught like grease and made to float, for it settles down upon everything it touches or comes into contact with. It can only be got rid of by copious flushes of water, and that too before it has time to settle down upon the urinal, trap, waste-pipe, or drainage. Therefore, when this corrosive matter is passed into a vessel and its belongings, plenty of water should go with it to carry it right away.

It would be very valuable if the contents of chamber utensils and urinal basins could be passed directly into the running water of the sewer without having to pass through any waste-piping or drainage. As this cannot very well be done, an arrangement should be adopted, where water is plentiful, for keeping a small body of water in the urinal basin or basins, with a constant supply of water laid on, to largely dilute the urine before it passes into the waste-pipe.

Fig. 160. - Showing a Range of Urinal Basins.

2. An automatic flashing-cistern (l, fig. 160), discharging a gallon of water into each urinal basin once every quarter of an hour, or oftener where the urinals are much used, is most valuable; but, unfortunately, many water companies will not allow such a convenient and wholesome method of flushing, and insist upon water-waste preventers, which only give a gallon of water to each basin when actuated by some cranking or labour movement - something which requires attention, and which in this automatic age is not always given.

3. It has become the bad custom of treating pedestal closets as if they were urinal basins, the consequence is, that though the interior of such closets may be kept clean enough, their exteriors, and the floor round about them, often become foul and filthy; for a man - especially if advanced in years - would require to be an expert to pass the whole of his water into so remote a vessel without mishaps. It is not every shot that hits the target.

4. Where there are pedestal closets in a private house, instead of treating them as urinal basins for one of the purposes of nature, the persons using them should sit right down upon the seat, just opening the fly-front, and this could be so done that not a drop of urine should fall down outside the closet-basin.

5. As explained elsewhere, a lip-urinal does not afford a sufficient area for receiving the urine. I prefer basins with wider fronts. And where very old people are not likely to use a urinal - in public urinals, in private hotels, clubhouses, etc. - I prefer a step, as shown in fig. 160, to compel the persons using them to stand up nearer to the basins. The illustration, fig. 160, speaks for itself. In more public urinals it would be necessary to fix a water channel on the floor next the back of the urinals, and to dispense with the step. In such cases the channel should be kept well flushed out by an automatic arrangement in connection with the general supply to the urinal basins.