Managing large buildings or campuses can be challenging for any facility manager, whether healthcare, K-12, higher ed, commercial buildings or municipalities. With maintenance staff stretched thin, it can be hard to know how to manage labor shortages, get a high-level view of water usage and improve overall conservation and sustainability efforts. 

However, new and improved smart plumbing technology offers several benefits and solutions that can make everyone’s life easier while also improving the bottom line.

The smart solution

Put real-time data in your team’s hands with the plumbSMART app by Zurn Elkay. With a few clicks, facility teams can uncover usage patterns, water consumption metrics and preventative maintenance needs on a variety of fixtures, including occupancy lights to monitor restroom traffic, grease interceptors, backflow preventers, water fountains and bottle fillers. 

Detailed metrics offer a deeper dive into product trends, pinpoint peak hours for scheduling, identify demand usage for future projects and alert when there might be a leak or nonworking fixture.

Even before you get to the dangers of flooding and other damage, knowing a flush valve is running early can help save tons of wasted water. The peak flow of a flush valve is 25 to 30 gallons/minute; over the course of a weekend, up to 375 tons of water could be wasted.

Connected products for restrooms

Zurn Smart Products are equipped with advanced sensors detecting changes and tracking product performance. The data is then transmitted to a digital dashboard for easy monitoring. Facility managers can use these real-time insights to anticipate and manage maintenance more efficiently, which means better use of maintenance staff time and resources.

One of the fastest, easiest ways to make your restroom more reliable and more sustainable is with Zurn Hydro•X Power sensor faucets and flush valves with EZ Gear technology. This combination of a gear-driven ceramic cartridge and hydropower offers users a restroom experience that’s efficient, reliable, sustainable and attractive. 

Sensor faucets

Zurn’s commercial-grade faucets stand up to heavy use over time. They help to reduce touchpoints and minimize germ spread; the newest models feature EZ Gear ceramic gear-driven cartridges that outperform traditional solenoid models. Automatic programable line flush can be managed from a central dashboard or on-demand at point of use with Bluetooth to assist in water hygiene efforts. In addition, battery status can be monitored and checked to reduce unnecessary battery waste and replacements.

Flush valves

Available for both water closets and urinals, sensor flush valves eliminate finicky solenoids for greater durability performance that saves water and maintenance costs. They also use motion to flush fixtures when a user is done, helping to reduce touchpoints and minimize germ spread. Connected valves can help monitor restroom usage and allow facility managers to schedule and deploy staff more efficiently. 

How can smart sensor products help?

1. Preventing the spread of pathogens

Smart sensor faucets and flush valves offer significant safety improvements for facilities. Legionella is a bacterium that can build up in stagnant water and is often found in piping not used on a regular basis. Legionnaire’s Disease can seriously sicken or even kill immunocompromised and older people, and outbreaks have been found in retirement homes and hospitals. 

Waterborne pathogens are dangerous to human health and cost hospitals time and money — nearly 99,000 people die from a healthcare-acquired infection every year. These illnesses can cost hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare costs, with longer lengths of stay and a serious impact on facilities’ bottom line.

Prevention is a high priority, and proactive flushing is a significant and simple way to help mitigate the risk of Legionella and other waterborne pathogens. With smart sensor faucets and flush valves, facilities can schedule automated flushing on a timeline that works for them: regularly, at certain times of the year when restrooms aren’t in high use or only as needed.

Proactive flushing also saves time and money. Manual flushing programs can be very expensive and are often the responsibility of understaffed and overburdened environmental services or facilities teams. Consider a 300-room hospital with two outlets per bed:

If each room is flushed once a week, the hospital will waste an average of 7,800 manhours/year and cost up to $400,000. (This assumes a $50/hour labor rate and 30 minutes allocated per room for flushing.)

Switching to smart auto-flushing devices would save $4 million over 10 years, as well as 78,000 manhours. 

Automated programs also save water by only flushing fixtures that have not been used in the previous week.

Sensor faucets also help mitigate germ transfer, reduce touchpoints and make it easier for everyone to keep their hands clean while saving water and energy. Smart sensor faucets provide usage patterns to help conserve water, track usage and alert facility staff to low batteries, meaning maintenance can be more proactive and efficient in scheduling staff and inventory management.

2. Smart sensor low-battery alerts

College campuses all over the country have turned to smart products to help meet the challenges faced by today’s lean maintenance departments. To prevent restroom downtime and reduce changeout work orders, one central state university had maintenance teams change batteries in every faucet and flush valve twice a year. 

With nearly 4,000 fixtures campus-wide, this project required six plumbers working two shifts every six months. Facility managers found a solution to premature battery replacements with Zurn Elkay smart restroom products.

The maintenance team implemented smart sensor low-battery alerts and remote voltage monitoring to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Batteries are now changed based on alerts, which signal closer to the battery’s end-of-life cycle. As a result, the university saved 216 hours of labor and the cost of 30,400 premature battery replacements (https://bit.ly/3vjfHe1).

3. Remote monitoring across campus

A southern university campus had success using smart products to better manage its staff’s time. At this 300-plus-acre campus, a team of eight plumbers managed almost 200 buildings. The overworked team was spread thin, trying to keep up with routine and unexpected maintenance tasks. The staff shortage created delays in responding to much-needed work orders. 

Zurn Elkay smart remote monitoring provided insights across the entire campus, down to the room level. Maintenance managers were able to check solenoid and diaphragm life without having to leave their offices. They were also able to plan maintenance more efficiently by scheduling preventative work before any issues occurred. 

The implementation of Zurn’s Hydro•X fixtures with smart sensor technology reduced battery changeouts by 1,197 annually, saving the university 4,788 batteries. With these smart restroom products, the lean maintenance team was able to reduce truck rolls and maintenance visits by 50% (https://bit.ly/48ft4KO).

Beyond faucets and flush valves

Smart technology is also available for occupancy lights (to monitor restroom traffic), grease interceptors, backflow preventers and drinking water fountains and bottle fillers. When it comes to drinking water, many of the same benefits apply as with faucets and flush valves, as well as alerting facilities staff when filters need to be changed:

See usage patterns and predict when maintenance will be needed;

Know when lines need to be flushed to help mitigate risk of Legionella;

Know when filters are about to expire;

Stay in compliance with filtration laws;

Help reduce labor expenses by seeing data remotely.

Connected bottle fillers also offer fast filter changes and automatic filter light resets, along with the peace of mind of knowing you’re offering industry-leading filtration. 

Don’t guess — know what’s going on with your facilities. Pairing sensor restroom fixtures with smart technology makes it easy to catch problems before they turn into hundreds of gallons of wasted water and thousands of dollars of damage.  

Renita Marjan and Melissa Conner are copywriters at Zurn Elkay Water Solutions.