No, seriously. A lot of the time after I use one, it results in some kind of mess with varying degrees of subtlety. It’s been mildly irritating for years and I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something obvious.
Are you supposed to aim toward the center? To one side? High? Low? Into the drain/water?
I’ve tried aiming near the side so that the stream hits the urinal quietly and has a low angle of deflection, thinking it’ll minimize splash back. But sometimes it seems like there are tiny droplets in a radius around the stream and some flecks will get onto the outside of the urinal, which is no good.
I’ve tried aiming at the deepest part in the back of the urinal, hoping that the intense splashing from hitting it at close to a 90-degree angle will be counterbalanced by the greatest amount of surrounding urinal surface in the vicinity, but this is too optimistic and tends to deposit a fine mist on the floor between me and my target.
I’ve tried aiming downwards at the drain, or when it’s the style of urinal with a standing water level, at the back half of the water where it’s shallow. This is loudest and probably provokes silent judgment from anyone else unfortunate enough to be using the bathroom at the same time as me, but it doesn’t seem to be especially good at minimizing mess and in the case of standing water, has a low chance of splashing an actually threatening amount of liquid back in my direction.
Perhaps it’s just inevitable that this particular plumbing fixture comes with a little mess involved. In other areas of life we are fine with periodically cleaning in our Sisyphean struggles against the various avenues where dirt and grime accumulate. But I want to be a conscientious user of shared facilities, damn it. And there’s only so many times a guy can discreetly wipe off his shoe with a paper towel before going insane.
Please help.
It’s a pistol, not a rifle. Get closer.
Do you know what an arabic toilet is ?
My technique is come in at a sharp angle, aim for the porcelain and not the water/drain/cake. 98.5% of the time this results in no discernible splashback, for me at least. If there is splashback, it’s usually due to the design of the fixture itself and I quickly adjust to compensate - some are more shallow or rounded, others are awkwardly curved or angled, and the height at which it’s mounted matters as well.
You might just be unlucky and have a super powerful stream or something. If that’s the case, you’re probably better off just sitting to pee.
I’m with you on this. But the good thing is, we’re not alone.
Around 1 million liters (264,172 gallons) of urine are spilled onto the floor and walls of public restrooms each day in the U.S.
We theoretically predict and experimentally validate that when the impinging angle is below an invariant critical value of ∼30◦, the flow rate of splashback under human urination conditions can be significantly suppressed…
I feel like I’ve found my people. Thank you. This is incredible.
Urinal physics before GTA6
A pub that I like shows football (n.am. soccer) matches. The urinals have little football nets with a little football hanging from a string mid-net, and if you aim just right, the ball spins around and around. I aim for that.
This advice is not easy to generalize outside of this particular pub, but I wish you luck.
Sometimes they have a picture of a fly at the optimum spot.
It is lower down
The only thing I’ve found that helps is if the urinal has one of these deodoriser mats. As long as you aim for the mat (coaster sized) there’s no splashback, and a fresh scent to boot.
You might think theres no splashback but I hate to tell you others will smell the spray from the deodorizer mat on you
Yes. And the awkward social situation is when they ask what I’m wearing, but I didn’t pay any attention to the brand of the urinal mat.
I don’t want that to happen again, so now I’m careful to take note of the urinal mat branding.
The best solution is to stand slightly to one side and pee almost parallel to the curved wall of the edge of the urinal. The goal is to get the stream to immediately adhere to the wall of the urinal and have friction slow it down as it curves toward the back, minimizing escape.
This is the way. Little to no splashing, very effective
“Aim”? What’s this “Aim” you speak of?
The only way I’ve ever known is to stand four feet back, whip down your pants and skivvies right down to your ankles and just firehose that sunuvabitch.
As God intended.
Oh, hey dude. Haven’t seen you since our office moved, was wondering how you’ve been doing?!
Same as always. Just going with the flow.
I haven’t used a urinal since the '90s. Take the weight off your feet, avoid splash-back and fully drain your bladder to mitigate post-wee leakage by using a cubicle. And as a bonus, you’ll never have to worry about shy bladder syndrome.
Here in EU/NL most stalls have installed an aim indicator where splashing would be reduced. Maybe you can find some imaging if you Google for it
This kind of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinal_target
[…] put pictures of bees in urinals and toilets. They served as a target, but also a joke about the pronunciation of the honeybee’s genus, Apis. Engineer and businessman Thomas Crapper […] in the toilets his company produced […]
Two puns for the price of one!
Stop using urinals. Just wait for a stall to free up.
If you want the correct answer, don’t pee so hard. Control the flow so it’s soft and doesn’t splash.
Urinals use significantly less water than toilets, fyi
Usually but I’ve seen exceptions. Modern low flush toilets beat the legal and thus common regular flush.
Even low flush toilets use more water than modern urinals though. Some modern urinals use no water at all
just use the bushes
They’re planning ahead for this possibility.
Who are you that you can control the flow? It’s either on or off. And if you turn it on then forcibly off it’s incredibly painful.
Squeezing? Maybe? I’m old enough that I’m not going to do anything to restrict the flow that my prostate isn’t already doing lol
I prefer to do it standing up but I guess you could do a handstand if you really wanted to
[off topic]
Every once in a while I find a place with the old style chest to floor urinals, the ones with a bowl the size of a sink at the bottom.
It took me years to realize that these were designed so that a drunk could stand up and vomit like a gentleman.
This is what they took from us.
I found a spot to do it where it splashes into my eye.
