Dryers come in many shapes and sizes with many types of optional features available. You never knew some of the choices were so important to get right until you started to think green. At Water Energy, we’ve already done the green thinking for you. With a Water Energy Green Laundry System you will get these dryer advantages:
- A dryer that is the next size larger than the washer you are pairing it with. This is critical to maximize performance in your laundry room. Sometimes employees will stuff a washer and when the load is done, it just won’t fit comfortably into the dryer. This causes overstuffing which reduces the amount of tumbling action the linens will get in the dryer and limit the amount of air able to circulate through the linens to carry the moisture away. What all this means is that your dryer will run longer than is necessary to dry the linens and will waste energy. Also, you will not get the fluffy towels, comforters and robes your guests desire because they will come out flat when dried in a dryer with not enough space. Your guests want big, fluffy comforters and towels. Using ozone will increase the fluffiness of the items and a dryer with plenty of space will enhance that fluffiness even more.
- A microprocessor control rather than a manual dial control.
- With a manual control, when the temperature reaches the selected setting, the flame will be turned off and the temperature must drop a full 25 – 30 degrees before the flame is reignited. This causes the rate of drying to fall dramatically and time is wasted while you wait for the burner to come back on and heat the dryer back up to peak drying efficiency. A microprocessor-controlled burner will re-light after only a 3 – 5 degree drop in temperature.
- A manual control does not allow you to adjust the length of the drying cycle so if it is set to run for 55 minutes and the linens are dry in 35 minutes, you will have wasted a full 20 minutes of time and close to a third of the energy used in the cycle. B&C microprocessor controlled dryers with Water Energy Green Laundry System programs are perfectly calibrated to take advantage of the reduction in drying time needed to completely dry the linen. The use of ozone and high-speed extract removes almost all of the water from the linens before they go to the dryers. Sheets will take the least amount of time in the dryers so you want to make sure the program for sheets lasts only as long as it needs to. (If you are using an ironer, you will not have to condition the sheets in the dryers because with the reduced moisture, the ironers will easily get them completely dry – this saves even more energy in the dryers) Towels will have their own precisely engineered cycle, the same for robes, comforters and whatever else your staff processes. Your dryers use a lot of energy – for a hotel of only 100 rooms with a traditional laundry, your dryers could use upwards of 3,000,000 Btu’s every day. A Water Energy Green Laundry System can reduce the energy used by the dryers a full 2/3 over a dryer with a manual control in a traditional laundry. This amount of savings will pay back your investment in the dryers in a couple of years and substantially reduce your carbon footprint from the very first day.
- A dryer with a reversing cylinder. This feature prevents sheets, towels, table linens, gowns and other linens from becoming tangled and knotted in the dryer. Standard dryers spin in the same direction for the entire cycle which leads to a big, tangled mess when it’s time to unload the linens. It takes longer to unload a dryer with a big knot of linens in it and there is also an increased risk of a strain or burn to employee’s hands and wrists because of having to untangle hot linens to get them out of the dryer. This slows down the production and potentially increases worker’s compensation claims. A Water Energy Green Laundry System dryer periodically reverses the drum’s rotation and keeps everything from knotting-up. This simple but critical feature will add value to your laundry, saving countless hours of labor and eliminating a risk potential.
- A dryer with the highest Btu/hour ratings available. 2,000 Btu’s are required to evaporate one pound of water. Whatever amount of water you have remaining in the linens, you want to get rid of it as fast as possible. If you have 50 pounds of water to evaporate, you need 100,000 Btu’s of heat to do it. A dryer with a rating of 125,000 Btu/hr will take 48 minutes to dry the linens. A dryer with a 325,000 Btu/hr will take a little over 18 minutes to completely dry the linens. Which one would you want? It makes absolutely no sense to get anything but the highest Btu rating available. Your biggest cost will always be labor so if you can reduce waiting time, you cut your costs the most.
- A dryer with a fire suppression system. This feature will be one of the most valuable items in your laundry even if you never use it. An average of 2,780 laundry fires occurs in the USA every year and the vast majority of them begin in the dryer due to over-drying and/or spontaneous combustion. An automatic fire suppression system is designed to immediately turn off the burner and spray a mist of water inside the drum to extinguish any flames if a fire is detected in the dryer. Our systems’ dryers will spray a mist of water and reverse the drum and spray more water several times to guarantee the fire is out. If you ever have a dryer fire, you simply remove the damp, singed linen and continue with your production. If you ever had a fire and didn’t have this important feature, you might burn down your entire building. All Water Energy Green Laundry System dryers come with this feature.
Calculating Cylinder Volume
Cylinder Diameter and Cylinder Depth are both expressed in inches.
Cylinder volume in cubic feet =
(Cylinder Diameter) x (Cylinder Diameter) x (Cylinder Depth)
2,200
Pass-Thru Dryers
Pass-thru dryers are unique in the fact that the drum is open on both ends allowing linens to pass completely through the dryer as required in certain applications. A healthcare linen facility with a barrier wall for separating the clean and dirty sides of the laundry process require the use of ‘pass-thru’ dryers for optimum compliance with the separation guidelines. These dryers have chest-shaped chassis and have doors that open on both sides of the drum to allow pass-thru operation. Pass-thru dryers are located right in the middle of the barrier wall and the wall seals around them. Clean, wet linens are loaded through the door on the side of the dryer facing the washers and clean, dry linens are removed from the door on the other side of the dryer in the finishing area of the laundry.