When a child opens the door to a portable restroom at a local festival in Québec, he or she might see a few things inside that make it easier for them to use. And when food vendors need a place to clean their dishes, they might find a portable restroom modified as a dishwashing station. These are just some of the innovations Sanivac in Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot offers its customers.

The inventory includes about 5,000 PolyJohn Enterprises units, and the staff is always happy to refashion some of them to make customers happy or fulfill a need. About 15 units have been modified for children. The main change is the addition of steps inside the unit.

In the case of the dishwashing unit, Carole-Ann Kelly, co-owner along with her brother Vincent Kelly and cousin David Kelly, says they took a standard unit, removed the front panel and inserted a large sink and counter. “There’s also a heater underneath for hot water because of the law in Québec that when you cook, you need to have access to hot water to wash your hands and dishes,” she says.

Another change designed and built by the company involved converting a few portable restroom units into single-stall showers, mainly for use at construction sites to handle emergencies.

The company is always willing to add features to the standard model, often at no extra cost, whether it’s locks, lights or hooks for lifting onto a job site. “We have a model where you can remove the whole top of it to insert it into a construction elevator,” Kelly says. “We also have a removable tank model if it needs to go on a boat or at a place we cannot reach with the truck. Customers can have pretty much anything, and everything’s possible.”

Read more about Sanivac in this month’s issue of Pumper magazine.