Portable sink rental: prices, water tank, hot water and when buying beats renting

Short answer

A portable sink is a self-contained wash basin with a fresh-water tank, a grey-water tank and a foot pump, so it works anywhere a person can stand. In rental catalogs it is called a handwash station or hand washing station; in search boxes it is a portable sink with a water tank or a portable sink with no plumbing.

Prices are all-in within 25 miles of our Hayward yard, which covers Oakland, Fremont, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Redwood City and 13 more cities. The pricing page has every unit and add-on; the hand washing station guide covers the construction ratio math and the weekly service routine in more depth than this page does.

What is a portable sink with a water tank?

A portable sink with a water tank is a sink that carries its own water in and its own waste water out, in two sealed tanks inside the cabinet. Ours is two-sided: two basins, two foot pumps, soap and towels on each side, so two people wash at once.

The 22-gallon fresh tank is the number that matters most for planning.One fill covers a 100-guest party, a 10-vendor farmers market for a day, or a construction crew of 20 for a week between refills. The grey tank is deliberately 3 gallons larger than the fresh tank, so the drain never backs up before the water runs out. Nothing is emptied on site: the grey water comes back on our truck to a permitted receiving facility.

Does a portable sink need plumbing?

No. A portable sink with no plumbing is the whole point of the product: no hose bib, no drain line, no cord. It is the sink for places where plumbing does not exist or cannot be touched.

• Construction sites before the water meter is set, or on the 12th floor beside the crane-lift toilet.
• Vineyards and ranches in Napa and Sonoma, three rows away from the barn.
• Parks and school fields where nobody may connect to the irrigation system.
• Parking lots and street fairs where the permit covers a footprint, not a hookup.
• Film base camps that move every two days.

The trade-off is capacity. A plumbed sink runs forever; a tank sink runs 22 gallons and then needs a refill. On a monthly rental we refill weekly as part of the price; on a multi-day event you book a $125 mid-event refill or a second sink. If your site does have a hose bib and you want unlimited water, a restroom trailer connects to it; the standard portable sink does not.

Can you get a portable sink with hot water?

Not from a stand-alone tank sink in our fleet. Our handwash station delivers unheated water, and we say so because the "portable sink with hot water" search leads a lot of people to disappointment.

For most uses, hot water is a comfort, not a requirement. Cal/OSHA 8 CCR §1527 asks for water, soap and single-use towels or a dryer on construction sites and does not require it to be heated. Where hot water is a legal requirement is the food booth: Alameda County's temporary food facility rules call for an urn or insulated container of warm water at 100°F, and vendors meet that with their own 5-gallon insulated urn, placed on a stand next to the shared portable sink. If your event genuinely needs heated running water for guests, the trailer is the answer; the restroom trailers hub compares all five sizes.

Should you buy or rent a portable sink?

Rent for anything under about 8 months of continuous use; buy only if the sink will be in service every week, year-round, and you have a way to dispose of grey water legally. The purchase price is the smaller part of the comparison.

A two-user portable sink of the same class as ours lists at roughly $1,000 to $1,800 new depending on tank size and liner. One example: a PolyJohn Applause two-person station is listed at $1,298.30 at Select Safety Sales as of October 2026. Freight, soap, towels and the water you haul are extra, and the grey water cannot go into a storm drain.

A food truck that uses the sink 50 weeks a year should buy, because the rental passes $1,300 in the 11th 28-day cycle. A contractor with 2- to 6-month jobs, an event planner with 15 weekends a year or a school with one field day should rent, because the sink sits idle the rest of the year and someone still has to dump the grey tank. Approved contractors rent on Net-30 with one consolidated invoice; the construction page explains the billing.

Price a portable sink with your toilets in 30 seconds: Instant price · or call (650) 977-2883.

Portable sinks for food vendors and health permits

Every temporary food booth in the Bay Area needs a working handwash setup before it opens, and the county inspector checks it first. In Alameda County, the Environmental Health Department's temporary food facility application lists four items: a container of warm water at 100°F with a free-flow spigot, liquid soap in a pump dispenser, single-use paper towels and a catch bucket. The same document requires at least one toilet and handwashing facility for each 15 employees within 200 feet of each food booth, and applications are filed through the county's Community Events and Temporary Food Facilities program. Other Bay Area counties enforce the same California Retail Food Code; verify the exact form with the county that covers your venue.

How a rented portable sink fits that rule:

1. Guest and employee handwashing within 200 feet. One two-sided sink at the end of the toilet row, within 200 feet of the booths, satisfies the facility requirement for the toilets. Plan one sink per 2 to 4 toilets; a 250-guest food festival with 5 toilets takes 2 sinks.
2. In-booth handwash. Each booth handling unpackaged food still sets up its own warm-water urn, soap, towels and catch bucket inside the booth. Vendors can dump the catch bucket into our sink's grey tank instead of the street, which is the question inspectors ask about disposal.
3. Vendor cluster sink. Markets with 10 or more booths rent a second sink at the back of the booth row, 10 feet or more from the food service line.

The festivals page walks through the full county sanitation plan, and the main events page covers the sequence for smaller fairs. For a backyard party with a taco cart, one $99 sink beside the porta potty is the whole plan.

Portable sinks on construction sites

Cal/OSHA 8 CCR §1527 requires one washing station for each 20 employees or fraction thereof, located so that anyone who uses a toilet can wash immediately, with soap and single-use towels or a warm-air blower. Hand sanitizer on the wall of a standard porta potty does not satisfy it. The companion rule, §1526, sets toilets at 1 per 20 employees of each sex, which is why a mixed crew of 15 usually orders the $479 compliance pack: a standard porta potty, a women's designated unit and one portable sink.

Two shortcuts contractors use: a luxury flushing porta potty at $289 per month has an interior foot-pump sink that satisfies §1527 for the people using that unit, so a crew of 5 to 20 can rent one luxury unit instead of a standard unit plus a sink, saving $29. And a crew that eats on site with 20 workers per sink usually adds a second weekly refill at $45 rather than a second sink. The construction site toilet requirements guide runs the full worked examples for 5, 15, 40 and 100 workers.

Bay Area specifics

The sink rides on the same truck as the toilets from our Hayward yard, so adding one to an order carries no separate delivery charge. Beyond 25 miles we add $3.50 per extra mile each way, on delivery and pickup only.

Permits. A sink on private property needs no permit. On a San Francisco sidewalk or parking lane it falls under the same Public Works Street Space permit as the toilets; Oakland requires an obstruction permit and San Jose an encroachment permit. The permit guide covers all three.

Service and disposal. Monthly rentals get a weekly visit: pump the grey tank, refill 22 gallons of potable water, disinfect both basins, restock soap and towels, test both pumps, and text you a photo with a GPS stamp and timestamp. Grey water goes where toilet waste goes: East Bay routes to EBMUD Resource Recovery in Oakland, South Bay routes through the City of San Jose hauler program. We are a registered chemical-toilet hauler and dispose only at permitted facilities.

Accessibility. Put the sink on the firm, level route to the ADA unit so a guest in a wheelchair reaches a basin without a step; a companion or attendant works the foot pump.

What to do next

Enter your crew size or guest count and ZIP in the calculator. It adds one sink per 20 workers under §1527, suggests one per 2 to 4 toilets for events, shows the delivery adder before you pay, and takes card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH or Net-30.

Rent a portable sink, no plumbing required: Instant price · or call (650) 977-2883, Mon–Sat 6 AM – 6 PM, in English, Spanish or Chinese.

Order by 2 PM and the sink is on site tomorrow for $95; order two days ahead and delivery costs nothing extra inside the 25-mile zone.