The Project
Golf courses earn their reputation from design and course management, and maintaining the proper aesthetics that affect both. The Pecan Valley Golf Course and the City of Fort Worth Parks and Community Services Department needed to replace four aging restroom facilities, and they selected Romtec, Inc. to provide the new waterless restrooms. The golf course managers had several priorities for the design of their buildings that needed to be accomplished. They wanted to accentuate the appearance of their course in way that would fulfill the needs of their facility.
In 1963, the Pecan Valley Golf Course opened as a 27-hole course on the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas. The original 27 holes were designed by Texas Golf Hall of Fame member Ralph Plummer, and nine more holes were added in 1981. The location of this course was largely outside of the City’s plumbing and electricity, a condition that remains.
In customer surveys, golfers at Pecan Valley rated new restroom facilities as a very high need for the course. The new facilities needed to have waterless toilets in order to accommodate the conditions of the original course. The new restrooms also needed to be easy to clean and maintain for the limited staff members at the course.
The Pecan Valley managers looked online through standard searches to investigate what options might be available to update their restroom facilities. It was there that they found Romtec’s website as a design-build restroom company. They looked through Romtec’s restroom models and were impressed that Romtec could provide natural stone siding and metal roofing, two elements that were consistent with the surroundings at Pecan Valley.
The Romtec buildings were perfect solutions, but there was another advantage to buying through Romtec that was decisive in purchasing the four waterless restrooms. Romtec and the state of Texas have a negotiated contract on the Texas Multiple Award Schedule, or TXMAS. State negotiated contracts guarantee competitive pricing for government purchasers, so they can avoid lengthy bidding processes. For Pecan Valley and the City of Fort Worth, purchasing through a TXMAS contract saved the 3-6 weeks that would be required during the normal bidding process.
Through simply exploring the Romtec website, the Pecan Valley Golf Course managers were able to find the buildings that their project required at a price and timeframe that were within their scope.
The Solution
Pecan Valley purchased four identical waterless toilets. The design process began with one of Romtec’s pre-engineered buildings. The basic model was a concrete building with two, single-user unisex restrooms. In the front and back roof gables, Lexan windows were specified to provide both rooms with natural lighting. The pre-engineered model also includes Romtec’s own Sweet Smelling Technology, which uses natural air pressure to ventilate the restrooms.
Pecan Valley and the City of Fort Worth added several options to this basic model. First, they chose a four foot roof extension over the restroom entrances. Then they added the attractive and low-cost tongue and groove 2×6 roof decking with Delta-Rib metal roofing. The result was an impervious and striking roof feature with natural wood elements and weather protection.
Next, natural Texas limestone siding was added to the concrete building, which Romtec purchased locally from a stone yard in Texas to preserve the regional appearance. Then signage was chosen to designate the restrooms as women’s and men’s facilities. An important benefit during the construction process was that the four, new Romtec buildings were able to be installed in the exact locations of the restroom structures being replaced.
In the end, the managers of Pecan Valley Golf Course and the City of Fort Worth were able to purchase four waterless restroom buildings that were designed, supplied, and installed by a sole restroom company, Romtec. The new restrooms are already in place. According to the City of Fort Worth’s Director of Golf, the golfers love the new facilities, and the entire experience of the course has been enhanced.
