Health Department and Restaurant- II

Health Department Concerns with Plumbing Issues
Restroom Fixtures

The building code provides the occupancy rate of the square footage and the population occupying the space is determined. Based on plumbing code, with the assumption of 50% per each gender, the required number of occupants per gender is determined. The number of water urinals is determined by two triggering factors, the population, and the health department requirements. Generally, liquor licensee of the space will trigger the urinal requirements.

There are three means of solving for the occupancy ratio:

• Direct shell square footage off the space divided by the retail or restaurant ratio, depending on the jurisdictions interpretation.
UPC 2006 Table A. chapter 4. IBC occupancy rate

• With an approved set of architectural drawings, tabulate the areas into the corridors and restrooms (no occupancy) to kitchen, managers’ office, and dining area. The tabulation of the areas with respective occupancy ratio, provides the number of occupants, generally less than the earlier method, Dining=30 sqft/person, Office=200 sqft/person, etc.,
• If more than 100 occupants, separate restroom for employees, and
• The last methods is simply accounting for the number of seats plus number of employees. Last method is the least number of occupants. The number of employees triggers quite number of issues. The number of employees less than four can use the public restrooms. Beyond four up to 10 require unisex restrooms, and after 10 needs two restrooms. The question becomes is the space. In mall situation with a common restroom, the distance between the front entry of the store to the public restroom is critical. If the restroom is too far, then independent restrooms must be provided.

Floor Drains

Floor drains are not necessarily mandated unless there are two water closets or one water closet and one urinal. It is also required with commercial kitchen. It is an operational concern to maintain a hygiene floor for after hours or in case of spill. The floor slope is now mandatory UPC 411.4. The long distances between floor drains increase the maintenance time. The sharp bends in floor plans are not conducive for good operations. The floor drains cannot be too far from walls to insure proper venting. Floor drain combination with kitchen fixtures are discussed in UPC. Combination sewer/vent is highly encouraged in many codes. No flat venting plus slope on the vent piping gives many challenges. The floor surround the floor drain must be depressed to all directional flow of the water to floor drain.

Note that urinals require mandatory floor drains.

Floor sinks

Floor sinks are used for indirect waste or condensate piping. Although they are flushed with the floor, they cannot be used for cleaning of the floor. In some jurisdictions, they raise the floor drains. Generally floor sinks are within reaching distance of walls, and thus less problematic.

The UPC requirement of all direct drains except the scullery sink became a major combative issue with health department. The health department likes every thing to be visible by naked eye for monitoring purposes. Yet the plumbing code among many reasons identified the floor sink to be used and abused by adding as many fixtures on floor sink without any modifications to the pipe sizing. In addition, they added the floor drains in upstream of the fixture to avoid the overflows to occur within the fixtures.

One of the most critical design problems is the elevation of the existing lateral connections. The point of connection to a floor sink is generally –18” to 24” below finish grade. Given ¼” slope per foot for piping and travel distances to the grease interceptor, and additional 4 to 6” of loss within grease interceptor and final connection to normal building sewer piping may add to substantial elevation loss. This may not be suitable for the lateral connection available. If 1/8”/ft is selected, to meet the proper elevation, then the probability of blockage increases substantially. It must be noted that any mechanical lift (sump pit/pump assemble) due to lack of proper elevation is lethal to the operations of the store. An issue with the sump will tarnish the image of that restaurant forever. It addition, this question must be answered by developer prior to any tenant decision.

Case History: 15000-gallon interceptor was designed for five restaurants and student hall kitchen. The original designer allocated 2” sewer pipe o each store. 2” was certainly not enough and the installation of new 4” pipe cost near $200,000.

Case History: In a mall, as soon as the new restaurant was installed, the existing grease interceptor was filled with sewage from restrooms. The plumber followed all as-built instructions, however, he did not realize all markings on existing sewer piping were marked incorrect. Grease interceptor was acting as septic tank for two small restrooms for many years.