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Does anyone know what the liquid in porta potties is?


Alpo

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Novel. Environmentalists. Kind of like the monkey wrench gang.

 

They're going to build a restaurant on this vacant lot, and the lot is home to a bunch of burrowing owls. So the night after the lot was surveyed someone pulled up all the survey stakes and filled in the holes. The construction crew could not get started until the lot got resurveyed.

 

By the time the second survey was finished, the porta potties for the construction crew had arrived. Again the stakes were pulled up and the holes were filled in. And this time alligators were put in the porta potties.

 

From the smell in a freshly cleaned and filled porta potty, that's not just plain water down there. Got me idly wondering what that blue liquid would do to an alligator.

 

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When we were kids in Michigan we ate blueberries all day everyday during the season. I could tell you what the blue stuff in there was then!

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How Porta-Potties Work

 

Quote

 

Tank is filled with three things 

1. Blue dye to hide the appearance of the waste

2. Fragrance to mask the odor

3. Biocides to kill bacteria and microbes

 

For decades, the industry standard for killing bacteria in porta-potties was formaldehyde, the same potent chemical used to preserve tissue samples and embalm corpses. But an increasing number of states have outlawed formaldehyde in portable toilets, because wastewater treatment plants aren't equipped to properly dispose of the chemical, a known carcinogen [source: CEPA].

The phasing out of formaldehyde has led to the development of "greener" solutions for porta-potty chemicals. Instead of killing off all microbial life in the tank, the green approach is to introduce beneficial enzymes and microbes that feed on odor-causing bacteria. Some biological additives even speed up the decomposition of organic matter, including toilet paper, which means that tanks don't need to be emptied as often.

Weather can mess with porta-potty tanks. When it's hot outside, it's even hotter inside the bowels (literally) of the potty. And when temperatures soar, bacteria go into overdrive, meaning things get very stinky very fast. To combat this, porta-potty operators bump up the ratio of chemicals to water in the summer, and also when a unit is expected to receive heavy use, like at a festival.

Frozen turds are equally bad. How do you clean out a unit when the tank is a putrid block of ice? In the depths of winter, porta-potty operators add a salty brine to lower the freezing point of the tank. A nifty trick for keeping the brine ratio correct is to add a cake of rock salt to the urinal. As patrons use the urinal, the cake slowly releases more salt into the tank

 

 

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1 hour ago, Michigan Slim said:

When we were kids in Michigan we ate blueberries all day everyday during the season. I could tell you what the blue stuff in there was then!

 

NOW I know how you chose your profession!  

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I don't what use in porta-potties...But in Tombstone in Big Nose Kates place they use bags of ice in the mens room...Just a long urinal for the guys to go....I guess it keeps the smell down....The girls I was with did not believe this and had to check out...Went right in and looked....

 

Texas Lizard

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