With the kids back in school, the amount of germs on little hands is on the rise. As simple as it is to wash your hands, more often than not you have to pull a door handle or depress a lever handle in order to exit a restroom. It’s one thing to clean your own hands, but it’s another to have to worry about whether or not the person that exited the room before you properly washed his or her hands. This is one of the reasons hands-free restroom access kits are so helpful.

Hands-Free Restroom Access Kit

With a hands-free restroom access kit, when you want to exit, you simply wave your hand in front of the no-touch actuator and the door swings open on its own.

The motion sensor trips a relay when a patron’s hand swipes in front of it. This, then, triggers a relay in the door operator, opening the door and letting you exit with potentially germ-free hands.  This allows you to avoid touching anything after washing your hands.

When it comes to vagrancy issues, there is the option with this kit to have a clerk or other employee buzz you in to the restroom. With this option, you don’t have to have any contact with the door on entering, and it remains locked until the employee gives the go-ahead.

Hands – Free Antimicrobial Door Pulls

The motion sensor equipped exit device isn’t your only option if avoiding germs is your main concern. There is also the CuVerro hands-free pull made by Trimco.

This device allows you to avoid touching the door pull with your hands at all. Instead, when exiting the bathroom, the door pull is designed so that one just slides their forearm behind the pull. Instead of wrapping your hand around the door pull, your forearm (and potentially less germy part of your arm) pulls the door toward you.

Additionally, the CuVerro door pulls are made from a copper-based alloy that kills more than 99.9% of bacteria within two hours.  So, even if germy hands come in contact with the handle, you don’t need to wipe it down with Lysol.

Hands – Free: The Cost

The downside to a hands-free restroom access kit is that cost can be an issue. The expense of having it installed is on the higher end of the cost scale. The motion sensor itself may be relatively inexpensive, but the operator raises the price.

However in facilities such as restaurants, germ-free hands are vital (and, well, the law). Nobody likes a particularly bad case of food poisoning, right? Considering this fact, it’s not unreasonable to think that we may see the prices of these come down in the near future.

The antimicrobial door pulls by CuVerro are also on the higher end of the cost scale, running as much as four times more than the standard pull. However, once again the facility owner would need to weigh out the benefits against the cost and see if such a door pull would be worth it in the long run.