Skid Restrooms for Long Term Construction Projects

Grant Stahla, Co-owner of Stahla Services, a nationwide provider of restroom, shower, and ADA trailer rentals again joins Enterprise Radio.

On this episode, the focus will be on Skid Restrooms, all the benefits and the specifics of renting one for your restroom needs.

Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Grant Stahla discuss the following:

(Host Eric Dye): Grant, Why should our listeners care about skid restrooms right now?

(Guest Grant Stahla): Yeah, well, that’s a good question. So just a quick outline so you can imagine a porta potty, a plastic porta potty. These are about the same footprint. They might be 20% bigger, 5 foot by 4 foot, but they’re a fiberglass unit with an air conditioner. There’s a toilet inside and a little sink, so maybe it’s the size of a restroom in a motor home, but it’s more of a long term solution. It’s different than a restroom trailer because it doesn’t have the axle and the set of wheels, and it’s not as big and bulky and tall, but usually they’re one stall or two stalls and you move them around with forks like with a forklift or a set of forks on a skid loader. And you can lift them off of a trailer and then put them at your site. You just set them down. They’re about 1300 to 1500 lbs per stall. So that’s a quick image of what they are.

The reason you asked why should we care? Well, if your construction crew on the 47th floor of a big high rise that you’re building, the only option is to lift a porta potty up there. Well, this is a good option for a long term restroom solution that has air conditioning with an actual sink. And then because it’s not on wheels and it has hook points on the top of the unit, so you can actually lift it up with the crane to that 47th floor of a high rise. With ground level bathrooms, that’d be a 15 minute trip down which is a waste of time. Traditional porta potties, they’re a lot lighter and no one you know, no one prefers a traditional porta potty if you’re bringing workers down, that kills productivity and creates safety issues every time you go up and down. The Skid Restroom is a game changer. They are crane lifted, forklift maneuvered and dropped anywhere. So that’s a huge improvement. This is a swiss army knife for long term construction. Definitely set up for that long term job. Something that I would say is a month or longer. Otherwise you can just if you know if you need to move locations, you can just pick it up with the with the forklift and move a location with it.

Rough economics. We’ll get into this more later. It’s about $2800 per month for a short term rental. That’s, you know, one to two months and then it reduces down to about 1500 a month for projects over six months. So that really that price point can go down when it’s it just can sit there and stay there longer. And then the units overall, the price point to buy new is anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 per stall. So and like I said, usually they’re one or two stalls, just so that you can maneuver them and that they’re not too heavy for those forks other than that, that’s a quick overview and some of the benefits of using that skid restroom.

(Host Eric Dye): What exactly qualifies as a skid restroom and its origin?

(Guest Grant Stahla) : Yeah. So it’d be a portable sanitation unit on a rigid skid base. So it’s not on a wheel chassis, so there’s no axle underneath of it. It’s a rigid skid base. It’s designed to be placed somewhere and not towed as a heavy duty steel skid frame, forklift pockets and crane lift points. It’s evolved from construction’s need to access elevated work sites and have air conditioning and sinks and soap other than just that hand sanitizer in a boiling plastic porta potty box, no one wants that. The first units appeared in early 2000s, but they’re just starting to take off so it’s just starting to be more of a thing and then the key difference from a porta potty is that it can serve actually 10 to 50 people per stall per day versus 2 to 8 with a standard porta potty. And then for deployment you can have months long construction or project based deployment and it’ll just be a good long term solution where you’re not building a building, you’re not building brick and mortar bathrooms, but it’s kind of in between that plastic porta potty and in between a brick and mortar restroom. So it’s that good 6 to 18 month deployment and then they really benefit economically with extended deployment. If you need just one or two stalls several places all over the job site, which is a common thing when you have big job sites, you have groups of people across maybe a 20 acre site and you’re gonna have them there for for six months or more, it’s just so handy to have this lower entry unit where you’re not having to pay for the the wheels and the axles and the brakes and the the lights, you know, like you do on a on a standard restroom trailer. Have to cover all those costs. It’s a little bit less mobile. It’s a little bit 10% harder to get there and set up, but once you have it there, it’s just it’s just a huge benefit.

(Host Eric Dye) : Walk us through the anatomy; what makes a skid restroom work?

(Guest Grant Stahla) : Yeah, good question. It’s definitely something that isn’t super common, but if you visualize like a plastic porta potty, but it’s 20% bigger, there are typically 4 feet wide by 5 feet deep. So that’s a standard single unit. The two unit you’re gonna be looking at maybe 5 feet deep as well. But you’re gonna double that 4 foot to about 8 feet wide by 5 foot deep, the weight of a single stall unit is anywhere from 1200 to 1400 lbs. and then the weight of a double stall unit is anywhere from 3300 to 3500 lbs. So the typical forklift is rated for about 5000 lbs, so you should have no problem moving these around.

There’s 4 standard crane hoist points and that maintains the center of gravity and the forklift pockets fit a standard 4 inch fork with 42 inch spacing. There’s integrated tie down points for transport, anchor points for install. As far as the interior layout, the single stall units maximize space is about 20 square feet. There’s corner mounted residential style porcelain toilets, so you have an actual porcelain toilet. And then there’s a sink basin that’s 12 inches by 16 inches with a single handle faucet inside. There’s led lighting is 200 to 400 lumens and there’s occupancy sensors so you can see if someone’s in the stall. The interior height is a 7 foot minimum for ADA compliance, and then the dual stall has unisex layout so you can have you know guy guy, girl guy or just unisex. So it cuts down on the lines and then you have separate toilets or journal per stall so you know it’s individual stalls. They’re each 4 by 4 foot compartment, individual lighting and ventilation. There’s central mechanical area on both of them. Water pumps, water heaters, and there’s electrical in that mechanical area or the water systems, the fresh water capacity can vary. Some of them are like the satellite brick connect is what it’s called. It requires a continuous water hookup, so there’s no internal water tank, but then they have another model that’s called the brick traveler that has 52 gallons of fresh water in about 200 uses. There’s another manufacturer called Lang. They produce a Century Series Pod is what they call them, and they have 100 gallon fresh water tank and then water heaters, they range from 2 1/2 to 6 gallons of storage 12,000 BTU. The waste tanks vary. Some of them have, like I was talking about with the satellite brick connect, they have a sewer connection with a three inch gravity drain. So you need to be able to hook into sewer. There’s no tank self-contained unit. Self-contained waste tanks, you can use the satellite brick traveler and that has a 92 gallon waste tank. And then there’s the Lang Century Series which has the 200 gallon waste tank. That’s a two stall unit.

Pump systems. Typically you’re gonna have a 12 Volt DC power pump. For for water pumps, fresh water pumps with the electrical system, you’ll have typically a standard single phase 120 Volt, 20 amp service dedicated circuit on that 20 amp. The internal systems you’ll have LED lighting, gfci outlets, exhaust fan, water heater. So those are some of the real benefits of using that versus a plastic porta potty and then most units are gonna have an A/C air conditioning unit unless you opt out, and that’ll be a 15 amp circuit, 9000 BTU for cooling that. For remote installations, it could potentially accommodate a generator or definitely accommodate a generator input and potential solar charging depending on application and then with solar the battery backup would be 8 to 24 hours of emergency lighting and fan. Other than that, just highlighting the manufacturers like I said, Satellite has these, Lang and then Jag manufacturers them as well. And there’s a couple others, but those are some of the big manufacturers for the skid units.

(Host Eric Dye) : Help us understand the skid restroom market – major players and customer expectations.

(Guest Grant Stahla) : You bet, so an overview of that is it’s definitely a specialized niche market. They’re set up for extended deployments and access requirements. These things excel in longer term installations. The market overall is probably $180 million annual market. You know that’s plus or minus based off of replacement of standard porta potties or restroom trailers. And then industry standards for this category is the length and the size about 5 foot deep and then anywhere from 4 feet to 10 feet wide. The single stalls are 65% of sales and then two stall units are about 30% of sales and then the rest are, you know, the other variety of sizes. The price points are anywhere from $15,000 and up, so that’s a one stall standard. Probably not with any tanks or air conditioning units, and then you might be looking at $30,000 for a single stall. If you have internal water tanks and you have air conditioning units and you have, you know, a bigger sink or just a higher end exterior like fiberglass versus aluminum. So that’ll give you an overview of the price with $15,000 to $30,000 left. if you want to add an additional stall, just add 50% of that additional to that initial price? So if you are spending $30,000 on a 1 stall level, then if you add make it a two stall then you might be looking at $45,000 for a 2 stall at that level. The target market construction, there’s municipal market and then just permanent facilities. The differentiators are reliability, service, network, hookup dependency, and yeah, it’s the customer decision framework. You wanna look at whether you have utility availability nearby, what your lift requirements are, lift availability with, whether you have a crane or forklifts, the usage duration and project timeline, you know. So if it’s a if it’s maybe less than a couple months you might prefer a restroom trailer just because you can hook on with a bumper pole pick up. If you don’t have forklift nearby or crane they usually lift it, you might prefer a a restroom trailer, but if you do have a forklift or a crane or it’s gonna be there for a long time, you might be looking at that. And then also, if you’re gonna need more stalls like 4 stalls 8 stalls 10 stalls and you need them all in one spot. A restroom trailer definitely beats out these toilets because they’re more of a replacement for a plastic porta potty when you’re just needing one or two stalls, but as you get up in in the amount then it makes more sense to have more stalls on a single platform like a 10 stall restroom trailer. So across what’s consistent across all brands, you have the four point crane lift capacity, forklift handling provisions. A lot of the brands have ADA compliant interior dimensions available. You have to specify that ’cause that’s gonna be more of a a larger footprint, like a like a 7 foot by 7 foot versus a four foot by 5 feet. So that’ll be a specific layout. And then yeah, switching over, this will be the next topic, but real world applications and use cases we’ll kinda talk through some of the case studies with that.

(Host Eric Dye) : Give us some memorable stories of these units in action.

(Guest Grant Stahla) : You bet. Yeah, happy to. Happy to do that. These I’m gonna give three case studies and these are hypotheticals. So just kind of a use case of where these would be, how they would come in handy. But the first one is a high rise construction site in Seattle. So with a 52 story residential tower, we need restrooms for floors 30 to 50 for 18 months, ground level trips would be a 25 minute round trip for employees to go up and down. So then looking at a dual stall skid unit on floors, 30 floors 40 and floor 50 and the crane would lift them in place. So price wise – 18 month project based on that you’d be looking at about $1500 per 28 days versus the $2800 standard rate and that would save about 23,400 per unit. There’d be a 40% reduction in break times and you’d have a 15% productivity increase. The total project benefits exceed $180,000 because of time and 70,200 because of reduced rental. So that’s a good case study to where the two stall could benefit they put on multiple floors.

The second case study is an infrastructure bridge replacement. And this would be a 24 month project, the bridge replacement. There’d be crews 200 feet above the ground for 24 months. Ground level access is not feasible due to traffic, so we would use 3 Satellite brick traveler units for 45 workers and two shifts. The extended timeline is, for cost of that is 31,200 per unit. Savings over 24 months. Self-contained waste tanks and water tanks means that service calls are twice monthly and then productivity gains justified deployment despite a $7500 per unit crane setup. So they would need a crane to be lifted in place, but there’ll still be savings because it just otherwise you wouldn’t be able to have a unit even be able to get up there is 200 feet above the ground.

For the third case study it would be the National Park Visitor Center installation. so looking at Rocky Mountain National Park, there’d be a new trailhead 3 miles from the road. So 3 miles from road access. Traditional construction, you’re looking at $340,000 Rd. plus $180,000 restroom building if you’re to build an actual brick and mortar building. Helicopter delivery of two satellite brick traveler units is $28,000 for transport to get those units in place as opposed to building that brick and mortar building in the road and then it would be $44,000 units. Solar panels for autonomous operation and then it be able to handle 150 visitors daily. Over the five year analysis, you’d have $420,000 of total savings versus a permanent construction. So this is a great example of being able to put a unit somewhere and then not having to build that brick and mortar building and then not have to have a road created there. So the ROI examples for construction you’re looking at break even at 120 days rental versus having units ground level. And then with permanent insulations, you’re looking at a break even at 18 months versus conventional construction. And then with emergency, it justifies premium costs through operational capability. It just it gives you access when you wouldn’t have access before. So that kind of wraps up that, that section of case studies and examples of where those skid units would be beneficial.

(Host Eric Dye) : What’s the real cost of getting one of these units working?

(Guest Grant Stahla) : Yeah, good question. So with the entry level commercial stall, when looking at $15,000 per stall, mid market self-contained per stall, you’re looking at $18,000 to $22,000 and then the premium configurations $25,000 to $30,000. With the used market, 5 year old units are about 50 percent off of the new price. So if you buy a unit for $20,000, within five years, it probably appreciates 50%, so it might be worth $10,000 and then 7 to 10 year old units you’re looking at about 30% of the original price.

For the rental market, the standards vary per area, but as a general standard weekend rate, you’re about $1500 for the single stall, and then that doesn’t include set up and delivery and then weekly rates. You’re looking at about $1800. Again, not including mobilization demobilization. 28 day rates dropped to $2800 dollars and then long term rentals over six months here about $1500 per 28 day period, which is a 40% cost reduction. So the sweet spot for projects for six months plus for the dual stall, you’re looking at 1.7 times what the single stall rate is. So if you’re gonna pay $1000 for a single stall, you’ll probably be looking at $1700 for the stall and then premium units with luxury finishes probably add 20 to 40%. Add it to that base rate just for the luxury and the industry standard additional costs, so delivery and then mobilization and demobilization. So typical deliveries anywhere from $4 to $5 per loaded mile. And then for teardown and set up if you’re looking at about $900.00 for set up and then $900.00 for teardown, as far as having a crane delivery a light crane, you might be looking at $1200 to $2500. If you need that helicopter delivery, depending on certain areas anywhere from $3000 to $8000 per unit.

To connect to the utilities, have an electrician or plumber come out to do that electrician wise is $400.00 for that and then to hook up water and sewer there at about $1000. Generator rental, so you probably need a 10 kilowatt generator, so that would be a towable. The smallest towable generator they have, or not even towable, depending on what you need, and that would probably be about $1500 per month plus fuel if you need. If you need a generator with the self-contained units then you’ll have those waste tank needing pumped out, and then the water tanks filled up. So usually waste tanks are pumped out every 7 to 14 days, depending on usage. And these tanks are on the smaller side, but they’re still bigger than the plastic porta potty tanks by about 50%. And so those pumpings are anywhere between $200.00 to $350.00 depending on where you’re at. And then if you get fresh water delivery at the same time, you’re probably looking at between $75.00 to $150.00, so ROI mentioned this a little bit, but the construction companies usually break even on rentals at 120 days with productivity gains. The real sweet spot, six months. Plus you have about $16,000 annual savings per unit on long term deployments. And then if you’re to buy it, the purchase economics begin to get attractive at 16 or 18 months at about 60% utilization. So those are some of the numbers to consider buying it when you’re looking at 18 to 24 months. For the target buyers versus the renters. So the project timeline really drives that rant versus buy whether you want to do the maintenance on it or not. The rental. If your rental renting all the time just one or two units for long projects that might be more attractive, but also the pricing goes down when you rent it for an 18 month project, you might be at $1500 instead of close to $3000 dollars per month. So that that’s kind of a good overview of purchase economics and rental economics for these skid units.

(Host Eric Dye) : What separates smooth operations from costly problems with skid restrooms?

(Guest Grant Stahla) : You bet. Yeah, good question. There’s anytime you have something with moving parts, there’s always gonna be a little bit of maintenance. So you wanna check, do a pre use inspection and check the five point checklist with structural integrity crane lift points, skid rails, forklift pockets, alignment, tie down points and door operation and then tank monitoring. If you have that, check that component. Monitor the electrical systems to make sure they’re all working. Monitor the climate control and then just weekly, you might want to make sure that everything’s cleaned and lubricated. Test for plumbing leaks and inspect electrical and then seasonally you want to in the winter make sure it’s winterized and to make sure there’s no corrosion or mold. If it’s especially wet area the spare part you might be looking at might be an extra water pump to have around. Extra electrical outlets or door handle assemblies, toilet flusher mechanisms, LED lights, exhaust, fan motors, water heater elements, all those are fairly inexpensive. They’re all under $150.00 per issue, but the highest frequency thing that you might be looking at replacing are those slip flasher mechanisms. And then the sink faucet. The common issues you might be looking at power outages based off of the power input, whether it’s a generator or solar, whatever it is and then just really a waste tank clog if someone’s using too much paper product compared to, you know, the water that’s falling through it. So that’s a that’s a quick view of how to have operational excellence.

(Host Eric Dye) : Where is skid restroom technology headed next?

(Guest Grant Stahla) : Yeah, you bet. Set up smart monitoring systems that’s gonna start becoming a standard where you can have an app and and be monitoring how many uses per day. You can see the amount of times that the door opens, that the toilet’s flushed and the sinks turned on and then you can see waste tank levels and fresh water tank levels. So that’s smart monitoring system. Will will probably become more of a a standard. and then solar, the batteries and solar panels are getting better, so more units can be powered off of solar as opposed to have to have generator connections to run those things. Those are the two big things that where the industry’s heading on these units.

(Host Eric Dye) : Give us the one thing listeners should remember about skid restrooms.

(Guest Grant Stahla) : Yeah, well, they’re great units and I’ve talked about a few different places where they’re gonna really benefit you. Then when wheels can’t go somewhere, skid units may be the only viable solution, so the most cost effective option for projects lasting 6 months where you need one or two stalls. In potentially multiple locations on a big site, you’re gonna be looking at temporary ground level units potentially, that’s gonna be a restroom trailer. Extended deployments where you need something to be lifted up to maybe a high rise or a big bridge – that’s gonna be one of these units if you can’t do a plastic porta potty. Other than that, go to our website stahla.com, and we have a lot of information on this, obviously. This is something that I’m excited to talk about just because it provides a lot of opportunities for people and it’s really a newer innovation for this industry to be able to provide another option from plastic porta potties and restroom trailers that are on wheels and have axles. This is a really neat third option.

Tune into our ALL ABOUT Stahla Services Podcast Series – right here.

About Grant & Erin Stahla

Grant and Erin Stahla are entrepreneurs passionate about redefining portable sanitation and creating a business that reflects their values—care for people, excellence in service, and faith-driven leadership.

Their journey began with a shared passion for business, which became the foundation of their relationship. While most couples start with small talk, Grant and Erin’s first date was spent discussing sales, marketing, and operations. Grant launched Stahla Services right out of college, and Erin joined him in the business after they got married. Together, they’ve built a company that not only delivers exceptional service but also prioritizes strong relationships—with customers, employees, and the community.

Beyond their work, Grant and Erin are committed to personal growth, mentoring young entrepreneurs, and giving back through their support of Love Justice International, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing human trafficking. Their business is an extension of their mission to serve others while fostering a life centered on faith, family, and integrity.

About Stahla Services

At Stahla Services, we believe restrooms should be more than just a necessity. That’s why we provide restroom and shower trailer rentals that offer a clean, comfortable, and premium experience for event guests, construction crews, and businesses alike.

Unlike standard porta-potties, our facilities feel more like high-end hotel restrooms, featuring:

✅ Climate control for comfort in any season
✅ Fresh running water and modern fixtures
✅ Spacious, spotless interiors with fully stocked supplies

Whether you are hosting a wedding, managing a construction site, or organizing a corporate event, we deliver reliable service with a commitment to excellence. Our team ensures that your restroom experience is seamless, from setup to pickup, so you can focus on what matters most.

Beyond business, we’re driven by a purpose—to do things the right way, give back to those in need, and create opportunities for growth. With every rental, a portion of our profits supports Love Justice International in their fight against human trafficking.

At Stahla Services, we’re more than just a restroom rental company—we’re a team dedicated to providing comfort, reliability, and care in every interaction.