When specifying a laundry for any care or residential home there are a lot of factors to take into consideration, the most important being the operational capacity of the equipment, although this can often be dictated by the size of the laundry room or access to this room.

General ‘rule of thumb’ is 1/2 kg per resident, however this may need to be increased where the home experiences a high proportion of incontinence; using the 1/2kg ratio, a 32 bed home for example would need circa 16kg of capacity, operating at up to 8 loads per day.

This can be addressed in a couple of ways, 1. a 16kg washer and matching dryer, 2. 2x 8kg washers and 2x matching dryers, or even a 10kg paired with a 7kg to give a little more flexibility on mixed load sizes, often the choice will be made by the afore mentioned available space and access; however there is the question of power as any machines over 11kg capacity will require a 400v 3phase power supply, if the home in question was previously a domestic residence then this is unlikely or a very costly upgrade.

Fortunately, commercial laundry machines come in a multitude of sizes and there will pretty much always be a configuration that will work.

Sluice Washing

Sluice washing, soiled (red bag) laundry, also needs consideration and will need to be washed on a ‘sluice’ wash programme, these are standard on all commercial machines fitted with a drain valve, as opposed to a drain pump that is found on domestic machines. A sluice wash is initiated before a wash load goes into its normal wash cycle, the drum fills with water thereby loosening any remaining solid waste, this is then flushed out via the drain valve and then a normal wash takes place, for this reason two or more washing machines can be a very efficient option as a sluice was will tie up a machine for at least an additional 30minutes.

Drying

Drying, brings its own challenges, dryers are much larger than washers for a corresponding capacity, for example a 10kg washing machine has a 100litre drum and a matching dryer 200-250 depending on the manufacturer, a dryer of this size is always 400v 3phase if you are restricted to electrically heated, however this brings into play ‘gas’ heated dryers most of which, until they get very large use a 13amp supply because gas is used to heat the drum, if you are able, then gas dryers are the go to choice, not only do they dry faster but as a fraction of the cost, ranging from a third to half the cost of an equivalent electric dryer.

In a typical 10kg dryer the cost of a 27 minute drying cycle on the gas machine at 6p per kWh gas cost would be 42pence, the electric version costs £1.05p at 15p per kWh for a 33 minute drying cycle; just 8 loads per day can save over £1,800 per dryer per year! Any additional installations costs are very quickly recovered.
Gas installations do need to be inspected and conform to ‘Gas Safe’ regulations, these include adequate ‘free, make-up air’ easily accessible shut off valves and steel ventilation ducts.

WRAS

Care homes or any premises that carries with it a risk of infection must install machines that comply with WRAS or KIWA fluid category 5. WRAS (Water Regulations Advisory Scheme) test and approve all machines that are intended for use in high infection risk installations, care, hospitals, veterinary etc. Cat 5, requires a water inlet with an approved ‘air gap’ and often in conjunction with a single check valve, this eliminates any risk of contamination making its way back into the mains water supply.

As you can see from the above, the installation of an on-premise laundry into a care home isn’t straight forward but thankfully there are professionals very willing to visit and make recommendations.

36kg Laundry suitable for 72 Bed Home