You're planning a large outdoor event. You want it clean and well organised. You certainly don't want people urinating in the bushes or toilets spilling out poo from overuse. Luckily, with the right portable toilet hire strategies, achieving a clean and well organised event may be easier than you think. Here are a few tips to guide you:

1. Calculate how many toilets you need

If you haven't planned a large scale event before, it can be hard to know how many portable toilets you need. Luckily, science is here to help. According to a bladder and bowel health group, the average person urinates six to seven times per 24 hour period, and you can use that number to estimate how often your festival attendees may need to use the toilets.

For example, if your event is six hours long, plan for each person to use the toilets approximately 1.5 to 2 times. As some folks will spend only minute in there and others may linger for five, use an average of three minutes per person as projected bathroom time. Using these numbers, a single toilet over a six hour period can accommodate approximately 120 trips to the bathroom. As each person is likely to take 1.5 to 2 trips to the toilets, that means that a single toilet can accommodate 60 to 80 people. Ergo, if you anticipate 600 - 800 attendees at your event, you need 10 toilets.

2. Consider other elements that may affect how many toilets you want

To keep things well organised, you have to think about more than just numbers. If you are planning an outdoor festival with lots of shows, for example, you have to consider how the lines may swell between performances, and decide if you want extra toilets to accommodate those swells. Similarly, if you are serving lots of beer or fried food at your event, consider the idea that people may need to use the toilets more than usual.

3. Organise the toilets to make accessibility easy

When it comes to organising your toilets for the event, you have a few choices, and the right choice for you depends on your specific needs and preferences. You can put all of the toilets in one area – this makes pick up and drop off easier, and potentially, it makes setting up signs directing people to the toilet areas easier as well. However if the grounds of the event are exceptionally large, having all the toilets at one end may discourage some people, and they may opt for public urination rather than hiking to the toilets area.  

To sidestep that threat, you can set up several small toilet areas throughout the festival grounds. This strategy means that people do not have to walk as far when they need to use the toilets, and it keeps foot traffic dispersed throughout the festival's area. As fewer people will be using each section, you also don't have to devote as much time or resources to organising the lines in each section.

4. Herd the crowds in every toilet area

Whether you have small or large toilet areas, you want people in and out of the toilets as quickly as possible. You don't want them confused about where to stand or to waste time waiting in the wrong spot just to learn they weren't in the right queue. To this end, most companies that specialise in portable toilet hire also offer stanchions or other line organisers.

Consider creating a large queue area with stanchions leading up to the toilets. Rather than lining up for individual toilets, people line up together for all the toilets and they pop into the first available one. After finishing, they proceed to the handwashing stations – you can rent items for the hand washing station from the portable toilet company as well.