Urinals & HEU's
What is a High-Efficiency Urinal?
The High-Efficiency Urinal (HEU) has been a part of the North American plumbing fixture marketplace for over 25 years. This long history includes both flushing and non-water urinals. It is only within the past 15 years that it became necessary to adopt a definition of an HEU in order to avoid confusion and mis-labeling of products in the marketplace.
The HEU is defined as a urinal fixture that functions at 0.5-gallons per flush (gpf) or 1.9-Litres per flush (Lpf) or less, a threshold that is 50 percent of the current U.S. national product standard (maximum) mandated by the U.S. Energy Policy Act in 1992. By this definition, the HEU category includes non-water (waterless) urinals.
In 2009, the U.S. EPA’s WaterSense program issued a specification for flushing HEUs. Today, a wide variety of urinal fixtures and flush valves bear the WaterSense label.
High-Efficiency Urinals in the North American Marketplace
Fixtures currently considered as qualifying for the HEU designation fall into several different design and flush volume categories. View the latest MaP High-Efficiency Urinal Listing that is organized to display those categories and reflect the latest information obtained from the manufacturers and other sources. The flush volumes shown in the tables are as certified and/or as reported by the manufacturer. It is the responsibility of the reader to verify this information.
NOTE: OUR LISTING SHOWS A TOTAL OF 356 HIGH-EFFICIENCY URINAL MODELS OF WHICH 273 FLUSHING URINALS ARE CERTIFIED TO THE WATERSENSE SPECIFICATION. PLUS 60 CERTIFIED ZERO-WATER CONSUMING URINALS.
THE LISTING ALSO INCLUDES 196 FLUSHOMETER VALVES (FLUSHING DEVICES) CERTIFIED TO THE WATERSENSE SPECIFICATION.
MaP urges readers to seek out performance and maintenance information from industry and other sources when making a urinal selection. In addition, we strongly urge readers to perform a full life cycle cost analysis of purchase, installation, and maintenance before making a purchase decision.
Included in this MaP listing of HEUs is a column that identifies the 270 urinal fixtures and 164 flush valves that have been certified to the U.S. EPA’s WaterSense specification for high-efficiency flushing urinals. Information about the WaterSense labeling program for high-efficiency flushing urinals may be found at: https://www.epa.gov/watersense/urinals
The WaterSense urinal specification may be found at: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-01/documents/ws-products-spec-urinals.pdf
The EPA’s own listing of WaterSense-certified flushing urinals may be searched here: https://www.epa.gov/watersense/product-search
For the MaP list of HEUs and links to the HEU manufacturers, click here.
