How to Quickly Get an Emergency Portable Restroom

An unexpected disaster such as broken or frozen water pipes, flooding or an earthquake may make normal restroom facilities at your home or office location unusable for a period of time. Since sanitary restroom facilities are a basic human need on a daily basis, it's important to know how to quickly get an emergency portable restroom into operation.

Rental Options

There are companies that specialize in providing porta potty rentals for all sorts of occasions ranging from special events and construction sites to emergency situations requiring the prompt set-up of replacement toilet facilities.

These mobile restrooms, which look like a small hut complete with a door that locks, a toilet and a wash basin, are delivered to your location for a set amount of time, ranging from a week to several months. These self-contained units require no water hook-up and are serviced by the portable toilet company on a daily or weekly basis to pump out the accumulated waste material and sanitize each restroom.

Purchase Emergency Back-up

Another way to provide for quick emergency portable restroom use is to purchase a portable toilet and keep it in storage for use in the event of an emergency. You have a one time investment and there is no waiting for delivery as you would with a rental portable toilet situation. For this option you will need to have an enclosed space with some privacy to set up the toilet.

A porta potty looks like a commode approximately 2 1/2 feet by 2 1/2 feet in diameter. It usually operates with a deodorizing liquid and requires that accumulated waste materials be disposed of on a regular basis. Because it carries no housing around it, it can be used inside privacy partitions or an enclosed room that offers the user some privacy.

Composting Toilets

Composting toilets are among the newest technology in portable toilets that offer plenty of service as a quick emergency portable restroom. Some models are waterless and do not need any water to operate efficiently, some turn waste materials into disposable compost, and other are low water units and no gravity units which can flush waste matter in up or down directions and even around corners.

In most disaster situations where buildings are destroyed or not habitable, a rental emergency portable restroom is usually the best option. These types of units are self-contained, serviced by the rental company on a regular basis, and automatically offer the same type of privacy and security that an individual would find in a normal restroom facility housed inside a private home or office building.