Northeast Sanitation Blog

Portable restrooms need to be secured for both high winds and from mischievous kids who think tipping over porta potties is a fun activity. Typically some sort of metal spikes or rebar are used to spike down the units however in the winter with frozen ground this is impossible, therefore, sandbags from your local hardware store are the best measure.

Many of our seasonal sports leagues, who are tired of the nuisance caused by kids that think tipping over units is a “fun” activity during the summer, will secure the portable toilet with a chain against a link fence. Usually this is done by municipal fields that have no shortage of kids looking for fun. When a restroom is tipped over, we do ask our customers to call us. We will then dispatch one of our trucks to clean up and possibly replace the unit.

In the winter months, high winds caused by winter storms do cause more problems for portable restrooms than throughout the rest of the year. If you have a portable restroom and you have not anchored the unit down with spikes yet, you may not be able to given the frozen ground, so your next solution is either sand bags or poly rope and cinder blocks.

However, we think that using sand bags is the easiest way to help prevent high wind tip over’s, but putting the unit in the right place, such as along a building or construction container will help as well. Please keep in mind however, for safety reasons; whatever is used to secure the units should not interfere with entry or exiting the unit