Are Laundromat Energy Efficiency Claims Exaggerated?
Article by Larry Larsen: Do you like to save money? Can brand new laundromat equipment really provide extraordinary improvements in water use and energy savings? Probably not. This is likely an exaggerated sales tool of distributors and factories who want you to buy their new model equipment. You could ask yourself; how can anyone actually save water in a washer?
There is only one way: use less water. The amount of water used is a key factor in getting clothes clean. The other necessary factors are heat, chemical and agitation length. Professional industry engineers know if you reduce one aspect, you need to increase another in order to maintain the same level of cleaning.
Laundromat washers use a short cycle wash (normally 22 minutes plus fill time) in order to move customers along and limit the number of washers needed to handle customer volume. If you don’t increase another aspect, you simply will be providing a poorer wash for your customer. (Please verify this with your own newer home-use front loaders claiming reduced water use to meet government regulations. Observe the greatly increased agitation times, often well beyond an hour).
There is no other way to obtain the same quality of washing. There are no magic improvements in washing clothes for the past twenty-five years. The button trap was removed and the distance between the inner tub and the outer tub was narrowed. Fewer cycles in complete wash cycles (in the old days two full washes and three full rinses were the norm on front load machines) provided a vastly superior wash to top load models. Now front load owners use one wash and two rinses to save water. Saves money but reduces quality of the wash.
Many older front load machines often can be adjusted to single wash and double rinse. There is no magic. Reduce water, reduce quality. Saves water but your customers may likely notice. A top load washer (always was one deep wash, a spray rinse and a deep final wash) are now touted by some to produce equal quality dirt removal to front loads. In fact, the action of the agitator is found to be superior for certain soils.
You should replace your front load washers when the repair costs exceed the monthly payment for new equipment, not because the new washers purport to use less water. Quality of your wash product has been a staple for operators for a generation.
How about dryers? Same as washers, there had been no significant change in how dryers evaporate the moisture out of fabric. Yes, we’ve stuck a computer board on our equipment that allows more easy adjustments, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing that will vastly improve energy savings without losing the quality of the service. Microwave drying hasn’t hit the market, and may never be produced because of metal buttons and rivets on clothes. Yes, admit that there are some minor improvements in our industry; invertors, insulation, air flow design and so forth but nothing to justify replacing operating equipment for the sake of energy savings.
We’re just not that big an industry to have real money poured into finding true earth-shattering improvements. Same principle applies to water heaters. Year after year I’ve read the vast savings owners achieved when they installed new water heaters. If the owners had maintained their own heaters and delimited them as needed, they would have achieved nearly the same energy savings as when they install heaters of the same size and model. Contact me if you want a tip on knowing when your heaters need to be delimed.
Here is an additional suggestion if you’re new to the business, and you’re about to purchase or inherit a store with coin, card and app options for receiving your money. Think about this, this business survived for fifty years with a few companies providing coin drops and coin slides.
We’re a small industry, and yet there are now over a dozen companies proving app and card systems. We have 35,000 or so laundromats total. Common sense tells you all of the current companies selling cards and apps won’t all be around in ten years. Which companies will survive and which will pass away and along with their passing so will their upgrades, parts, service staff and technicians to keep their products operating?
Look at the Rowe coin changer owners who cannot find the parts to repair hoppers and computer boards. Try to find a hopper motor at a reasonable price. Just a tip to you to carefully consider the likely longevity of your equipment acquisitions is probably more important than concentrating on saving a few dollars on your energy bills.
Source: “Laundromat Larry”
For more information visit https://laundromat123.com, or call 714-390-9969.
Also see: Suppliers Directory