Portable Toilet Rental in Rogers Park, Chicago

What should you plan for when a gathering is near the lakefront?

Four beaches in one neighborhood make the shoreline a natural place for group outings, club events and organized runs. If any of it takes place on Chicago Park District land, the Park District's special event permit rules come into play: events with 50 or more participants, amplified sound, vending, tents or stages need a permit, and picnic levels 3 and 4 and all athletic, corporate and festival or performance permits must provide portable toilets for participants. The Park District's revenue department is at (312) 763-6710.

Wind matters at the lake. Chicago's lakefront is flat and Lake Michigan wind sweeps across it, so ask the provider how a unit is placed and secured on open ground, and keep it away from loose sand if the surface is soft. A unit on soft or uneven ground is something the provider should look at before delivery, and you should not try to shift one yourself.

For a larger group, how many portable toilets a Chicago event needs sets out the code figures that apply when more than 30 people are present.

Apartment renovation on the old blocks: who counts toward the toilet limit?

A building of several stories being gutted, repaired or altered needs toilets for the workers inside it. The Chicago Plumbing Code asks for at least one per 30 employees or fraction, and says that in a multi-story building no floor should be more than four stories from a story with toilet facilities. When the building's own plumbing is shut off for the work, a rental unit is how that rule gets met.

OSHA's construction rule can be stricter. For 20 or fewer workers it asks for one toilet, and above 20 it asks for one seat and one urinal for every 40 workers, with toilets reachable in under 10 minutes. A toilet that is unsanitary does not count toward the total. Confirm the governing number with the permit office for the project, then describe the crew size to the provider on the call.

For the plumbing of the whole job, the construction site toilets page explains what a provider will want to know, such as the number of workers, the number of weeks and where the truck can reach.

Does a campus-area event need anything special?

Loyola's presence at the southeast end of the neighborhood means large gatherings can cluster near the campus and the shoreline. We know of no specific event to cite, and we will not guess at one. What we can say is that any gathering with food booths in Chicago is reviewed by the Chicago Department of Public Health's Food Protection Services, and booths need a Summer Festival Food Vendor Sanitation Certificate.

If a gathering is organized by a club, department or business instead of the university itself, it is the organizer's job to find out which rules apply. Start with the Mayor's Office of Special Events at (312) 744-3315 for anything on the public way. Then decide whether handwashing should sit beside the toilets, which the handwashing stations page explains.

What does new building along Howard Street change?

Howard Street is seeing new shops and apartments, and new construction brings a different kind of site from a rehab. A crew building from the ground up may be on site for many months, and its numbers swell and shrink as trades arrive. Tell the provider your expected peak headcount, not only the day-one number, so the toilet count can be adjusted as the job grows.

Because Howard Street is the Evanston edge of the neighborhood, say which side of the boundary the site is on. Rogers Park is in Chicago, so the Chicago Plumbing Code applies there, and Evanston has its own offices. The Evanston page covers the other side.