Porta Potty Service in Philadelphia, PA

Once a week is the baseline on a construction site, and it's what's included with every unit we rent for a job. For a small crew sharing one or two units, a weekly visit keeps the tank well below full and the supplies from running out, and the unit stays usable from Monday to Friday.

Weekly service works when the number of units matches the number of people. A crew of a dozen on a single standard porta potty will run it hard by midweek; the same crew with two units will barely notice the week go by. Before you add visits, it's worth checking whether a second unit is the cheaper fix. Our guide to how many porta potties you need has OSHA's table for job sites and the counts for events.

Some sites need the truck back before the week is out. Twice-a-week service splits the week in half, usually a Monday or Tuesday visit and a Thursday or Friday visit, so the unit never goes more than three or four days without being pumped and restocked. These are the jobs that usually call for it:

Plenty of Philadelphia contractors, landscapers, schools, churches, sports leagues and farms bought their own porta potties years ago. Owning the unit was the easy part; keeping it pumped is the part nobody wants to do with a shop vac and a 55-gallon drum. We service owned units on the same schedules we use for our rentals: weekly, twice a week, every other week for light use, or on call when you need it.

The visit is the same full service: the tank pumped and recharged, the inside washed, the supplies restocked. The waste goes to a licensed disposal site, never down a storm drain or into a sewer cleanout, which is the one part of owning a unit you can't legally do yourself.

To get a quote for service on your own units, tell us how many you have and what kind (standard, flushing, accessible, a hand wash station or a holding tank), where they are, who uses them and how often, and how the truck gets close to them. If a unit is cracked, missing its latch or hasn't been pumped in a long time, say so; the first visit may take longer, and a unit that's past fixing is something we'd rather tell you about than service.

Event units are serviced around the event, not the calendar. For a one-day block party or wedding, the units arrive clean and stocked and are pumped after the event when they're picked up; nobody needs the truck in the middle of the first dance. A weekend festival, a multi-day race or a fair is different, and the units are serviced overnight or early in the morning between days so every day starts clean.

Under Philadelphia's portable toilet permit, units at a public event in a residential area have to be serviced at least every 48 hours. That sets the floor for a multi-day event in a neighborhood. The headcount sets the rest: a crowd that runs the units hard on a Saturday may need a visit midday as well as overnight. See our event rentals and the Philadelphia portable toilet permit guide for how the permit works.

Sometimes a unit needs service before its next scheduled visit: a crew doubled for a concrete pour, a unit got tipped, somebody locked the tank lid down with a sandwich in it, or a client walk-through moved up a day. One call or email puts an extra visit on the schedule, and it goes on the same invoice as the regular service.

On-call service is also how some owners of their own units prefer to work: no fixed schedule, just a call when the tank is getting full. That works for light use, like a unit at a ballfield that only sees weekend games, as long as somebody is actually checking it.

You don't have to guess. The unit tells you when the schedule isn't keeping up, and the crew usually tells the superintendent before the superintendent tells us. Watch for these:

Service covers more than the single-stall porta potty. A luxury restroom trailer has its waste tank pumped, its fresh water refilled and its stalls, sinks and mirrors cleaned. A hand wash station gets its gray water pumped, its fresh water refilled and its soap and towels restocked. An office trailer holding tank is pumped on a schedule set by how many people use the trailer's restroom.

All of them go on one service schedule with the porta potties on the same site, so one visit takes care of everything.

Philadelphia gets enough hard freezes for the tank of a porta potty to ice over, and a frozen tank can't be pumped. From late fall through early spring, the deodorizer charge in each unit gets a freeze-resistant mix so the tank stays liquid, and hand wash stations with fresh water tanks need their own winter plan. Units placed out of the wind and in the sun freeze less. Our Philadelphia winter job site guide covers the rest of the cold-weather planning.

A service visit only happens if the truck can get to the unit. On a rowhome block that means a place to stop close enough to run the hose, and on a big site it means a path that isn't blocked by a lift, a dumpster or a delivery. These keep visits on schedule: