Two numbers, and only one of them is useful
Run the defaults — 120 people, five days a week, 1.2 stall visits and 2.4 handwashes each — and the building gets through 3.17 rolls of tissue, 1.81 rolls of towel and 230 ml of soap a day.
Against capacity, eight tissue dispensers holding two 1,000-sheet rolls each carry 5.1 days of tissue. Six towel dispensers holding one 350-sheet roll each carry 3.3 days. Six soap dispensers carry 32.6 days. On the average, a restock every two days is comfortable everywhere.
Now set the busiest dispenser to 180 percent of an even share, which is a mild figure for any building with a main entrance. Tissue drops to 2.8 days, soap to 18.1, and towel to 1.8 — which is less than the two days between visits. The building that looked comfortable has one dispenser that is empty before anyone comes back to it, and that dispenser is the one that generates every complaint.
Why the towel is always the one
It is not because towel is used faster in some abstract sense. It is because towel is used on every handwash while tissue is used on a subset of visits, and because a towel dispenser typically holds one roll while a tissue dispenser holds two or more. Consumption per use is only half of it; the other half is how much the box on the wall can hold, and towel loses on both.
The three levers are all in the form and they are worth pricing against each other. A second roll in each towel dispenser doubles the cover to 3.7 days on the busiest one. Two more dispensers spread the same daily burn across eight instead of six, taking the busiest one to 2.5 days. A daily visit fixes it without touching hardware but costs a labour visit every day. Which is cheapest depends on what a restock visit costs you, which is not a number this page has.
The year
At five days a week the building uses 824 rolls of tissue, 471 rolls of towel and 48 soap cartridges a year. In cases of 96, 12 and 6, that is 9, 40 and 8 cases, and at the prices in the form, $648, $2,320 and $680 — $3,648 a year, or $30.40 per person. Towel is 64 percent of the bill on its own, which is worth knowing before anyone spends an afternoon negotiating the tissue price.
What the numbers cannot come from
There is no defensible published figure for sheets per visit or pulls per dry, because both are properties of the dispenser mechanism and of habit rather than of people. Move a building from a lever dispenser to a sensor one and the pulls per dry change the same week. The only source that means anything is your own store cupboard: count what goes out over a month, divide by the occupied days, and divide again by your own visit and wash estimates.
The peak factor is the same kind of number and it is the one with the most leverage on the answer. If your refill records show the lobby dispenser being filled three times for every one on the top floor, your factor is not 180 percent. Every figure on this page is a field for that reason, and none of them is a recommendation.
Questions people ask
How much toilet paper does a 120 person building use?
At 1.2 stall visits a person a day and 22 sheets a visit, 3,168 sheets or 3.17 rolls of 1,000 a day, which over a five day week and 52 weeks is 824 rolls a year. Both of those per-use figures are yours to supply — this page publishes none — and the way to get them is to count what leaves the cupboard over a month and divide.
How often do restroom dispensers need restocking?
Not as often as the average suggests. In the defaults, towel dispensers carry 3.3 days on an even split but only 1.8 days on the busiest one, against a two day restock interval. The number that decides your service schedule is the busiest dispenser, not the building average, and the ratio between them is something only your own refill records can tell you.
Why does the hand towel run out before the toilet paper?
Two reasons that compound. Towel is used on every handwash while tissue is used on a subset of visits, and a towel dispenser usually holds one roll where a tissue dispenser holds two. In the defaults that gives towel 3.3 days of cover against 5.1 for tissue on the average, and 1.8 against 2.8 on the busiest unit.
What is the busiest dispenser factor and how do I find mine?
It is how much traffic the hardest-working dispenser sees compared with an even share across all of them. Your own refill log is the source: if one unit is filled three times for every one filled once elsewhere, your factor is far above the 180 percent placeholder in the form. It has more leverage on the answer than any of the consumption figures.
Does this say whether the building is supplying enough?
No. It counts stock against capacity and against the interval you enter, and that is all. What a building must provide, and to what standard, is decided by the rules adopted where you are and by whoever manages the building. Nothing here is a hygiene, adequacy or compliance verdict.