Ever since it’s founding, this magazine has reported on a number of -laundry fires which have happened here in the west.These fires range from the total destruction of entire shopping centers down to single dryers or a single trash can blaze. Even a small fire could leave a laundry smelly from smoke.
There can be little doubt about it. Some of these fires result from the spectre of spontaneous combustion. One second there is nothing, the next moment there is a fire. It can happen with even new installations.
There also can be little doubt that the majority of laundry fires are due to lack of machine up keep, lint build up and proper cleaning of vent systems.
Dryer fires, no matter how large or small, don’t just affect the appearance and smell of a laundry, they affect the overall income of the business. Most laundry insurance policies contain a deductible clause that means the laundry owner will pay the first five hundred or thousand dollars of any loss, so there are real dollar losses every time a fire breaks out.
These losses never seem to be just to the machines where fire takes place. There will be lots of hidden costs and business losses from the smoke and water damages, fire fried electrical wiring replacement, repainting, etc.
No one is happy with the smell of a laundry that has been fire damaged either. The smell is difficult and expensive to remove. Some odor removals are only a matter of time.
Fires can occur when one of the customers chooses to wash gasoline soaked rags or kitchen towels that have heavy grease or oil residues left in them. Also, another outside cause can be from customers doing a dryer full of wax soaked mop heads.
Dryer fires might start when customers think that their towels or rags are done with the drying process, but they have not let the cycle run long enough to be sufficiently cooled down. In other words, the cool down cycle has not finished cooling down a chemically laden load, and will ignite that load when exposing it to the oxygen in the open air of the laundry.
Another cause of laundry dryer fires may be a bad or improper installation or poor maintenance, to one degree or another. These conditions are the leading cause of lint fires where use is heavy and air flow is limited.
One needs to locate the dryers where there is plenty of room to work on them at the rear. You should have at least two feet of open space at the rear of the machines to allow your service technicians enough room to maneuver and to do their necessary work. The tighter the space they have to work in, the higher will be the cost to do their job.
Proper installation takes the right amount of make up air to provide dryers with sufficient fresh air from outside to cause the flame to burn cleanly. Without the proper oxygen mix, a clothes dryers heater box flame will burn unevenly. And the more dryers that are working at one time, the poorer the burn process will be.
The correct amount of make up air will vary with the type, style and model of the dryer installed, but it varies very little. Normally you can plan on needing one square inch of open air for each 1,000 btu capacity of the dryers.
There should also be proper dryer exhaust vents that are suitable to the size of the dryers that are being installed. Have the vent pipes be an equivalent size for those vents coming out of the machines. These need to be installed on an angle of forty five degrees or less. Otherwise there is a risk for greater lint build up.
When replacing older dryers with new ones, one also needs to be sure that the vent pipes are correctly sized to match the required sizes for the units installed. Don’t be caught in situations where the vent sizes are smaller in the old dryers than is required in the new.
Proper dryer maintenance takes lots of forethought and planning, which is just as important as the installation itself. Read the manuals that come with the dryers to see what they recommend for the steps to proceed. There should be some daily, weekly and monthly steps to be taken.
These steps include cleaning the main lint screen as well as all areas around the lint screens. It’s an unpleasant job, and that is the reason that doing it is usually ignored. Operating any dryer that has it’s lint screen clogged is an economic sin.
Do not operate dryers that have torn screens. The screens are relatively inexpensive and are simple to replace. Their costs and ease of installation make it a cardinal sin to keep them in operation.
Another idea that is also ignored is the cleaning of the areas from around the various temperature sensors that are supplied with the dryers. There are low temperature, high temperature and microprocessors.
If these areas are clogged with lint, they don’t properly read the temps, and the dryers won’t work efficiently. Inefficient dryers cost the laundry operator money.
Remove lint that has accumulated in the duct work, as that accumulation of lint can seriously restrict the air flow of the dryer.
There is also a need to remove any lint that gathers in the fire box area and behind the dryers and on top of them.
Remember that lint is highly combustible and can be set off in a flaming flash in any number of accidental ways. It is the job of any reasonably intelligent operator to eliminate as much of the lint and many ways for fires to start as possible.
Even though dryer fires take place rarely, their occurrence can do such damage that intelligent operators will do everything in their power to prevent them. The overall cost for dryer fires makes it far easier to avoid than it is to pay for.
