High-Rise Porta Potty Rental in Philadelphia

A high-rise unit is a portable toilet built to be lifted. A steel frame bolts to the base of the unit and rises over the roof to a single pick point, so the crane can lift it without crushing the walls, and the frame holds the unit together when it's set down on a deck. Some sites move them up on the material hoist instead of the crane; the frame protects the unit either way.

Inside it's a standard unit: a seat over a holding tank, a urinal, paper and sanitizer. Pair it with a hand wash station on the same floor where the crew is mixing, finishing or working with sealants.

Your crane crew or your hoist operator does the lift under your site's rigging plan; the unit comes ready to be picked. We'll work out with your super where the units sit on each floor: near the core or the hoist landing, on a solid deck, out of the way of the next pour and the material laydown.

As the building rises, the units move up with the work. A common pattern is a unit every few floors where crews are active, plus the ground-level units by the gate and the site trailer. When the floors below close in and the building's own restrooms come online, the high-rise units come down.

Pumping a unit twenty floors up is planned, not improvised. Depending on the building, the unit comes down on the crane or the hoist for service and goes back up, or it's serviced in place on the floor where it stands. We set the schedule with your super around crane time and the hoist, so service doesn't take the car away when the crew needs it.

Units are serviced at least weekly, pumped out, washed, deodorized and restocked, with extra visits for big crews or summer heat. OSHA has said a toilet in unsanitary condition doesn't count toward a crew's required number, so the schedule is part of the count.

Philadelphia's skyline keeps climbing in Center City, University City and along the river, and the multifamily buildings going up in Fishtown, Northern Liberties, Brewerytown and Graduate Hospital run five to ten stories on a single lot. On a mid-rise with no crane, the units go up on the hoist and the stairs are the backup; on a tower, the crane does it.

Most of those sites are tight. The ground-level units share the street frontage with the dumpster and the material deliveries, which is where a single quote for the restrooms, the roll-off dumpster and a storage container saves a call to three vendors. See Contractors & Job Sites for how a whole job comes together.

Start with OSHA's count for the whole crew, then split it between the ground and the floors where people are working. A building with forty workers spread over six active floors needs its units where they are, not all at the gate. Tell us the crew size, the number of floors and how the work moves through the building, and the quote comes back with the count and the placement, adjusted as the job goes up.

Not every multi-story job has a tower crane. A five- or six-story wood-frame building on a Philadelphia lot is often built with a material hoist, a telehandler and the stairs. High-rise units still work there: they ride up on the hoist, or a telehandler with the right attachment sets them on a floor through an opening, and the frame protects the unit on the way.

On those jobs, the trip down the stairs is the problem the units solve. A framing crew on the fifth floor walking down and back up to the ground-level unit loses time every trip, and the units on the floors pay for themselves in hours the crew stays at work.

Upper-floor units are only part of the site. At grade, the units by the gate serve the crew coming and going, the deliveries and the trades who work at ground level, and the site trailer may need a holding tank for its own restroom. On a downtown lot with no yard, the ground-level units may sit on the sidewalk inside the fence, which puts them in the Streets Department's right-of-way along with the dumpster.

Planning the ground units, the floor units, the trailer tank and the dumpster together means one service route, one invoice and one person to call when the super needs a unit moved up three floors on Thursday.

An open deck twenty floors up in a Philadelphia January is colder and windier than the street. A unit set in the open catches the wind like a sail, so it goes near the core, behind a column line or against a wall that's already up, and it's tied down where the site's safety plan calls for it. Doors face away from the prevailing wind so they don't slam or blow open.

Cold slows everything in a unit down, including the deodorizer, and the holding tank can freeze solid in a hard stretch. Service in winter keeps the tank from freezing and the unit usable. In summer it's the opposite: an upper deck in direct sun gets hot, and the unit is placed in shade where the floor above already casts it, with service stepped up in the hottest weeks.

A restroom on an unfinished floor is used by people walking to it in a hurry, sometimes in the dark. Set it well back from any open edge, shaft or floor opening, on a path that's kept clear of material and cords, with lighting on an evening or early-morning shift. Every trade on the floor needs to know where it is, so it goes on the floor's layout like the hoist landing and the stairs.

When it's time to move a unit up, it's lifted empty after service, never full. That keeps the weight predictable for the pick and keeps the deck clean.