Laundry Success Means Cutting Utility Bills

In the state of California and many areas of the west, local gas and electric utilities will charge differently in winter months than in summer. In California for example, about the first of April, gas prices go down only to be programmed to rise again in the fall. The Public Utility Commissions feel that they want to discourage gas use in winter by raising the cost per therm and lowering the price in summer when there is less demand.

That may sound like a wonderful idea to them, and it might work well for use in homes, but for a laundromat it is exactly opposite of what it should be. Custom says the best laundry months are in winter and the worst in summer. So this policy charges more for use in the months when it hurts laundry operators the most.

Of course it’s really unfair, but our industry doesn’t seem to pack enough weight politically to have it changed.

First, lets talk about gas. Only the aggressively thrifty coin laundry operator can affect his or her own gas bills.

The first thing that is needed to start an intelligent program for utility cost cutting is to know how your bills are calculated. How do the utilities charge your business for gas, water and electric services? Once you have an understanding of that, it makes it easier to make the right savings choices.

 

Look at your laundry’s gas bill to see if you can learn enough to understand the way your utility charges you. Odds are your bill is rendered either in CCF, which is shorthand for one hundred cubic feet of gas, or it’s in therms, which is just another name for 100 cubic feet of natural gas.

A Therm being equal to 100 cubic feet of natural gas and a cubic foot creates 1,000 British Thermal Units means a therm is 100,000 BTUs, or the amount of gas it takes to raise the temperature of one gallon of water by one degree.

One of the easiest ways to get an idea of how your laundry business uses natural gas is to periodically walk past the dryers to see which setting is the most frequently selected by your coin laundry’s clientele.

that as being the average setting for your laundry’s dryers. Knowing what the average setting is, you will be able to calculate the approximate amount of gas being used per dry. You already know the time allowed for each coin inserted, and what part of that time is cool down time.

Now it’s a choice of doing some simple mathematics.

A 10 minute cycle with 2 minutes cool down means dryer burners will cycle on and off for about 8 minutes per quarter inserted. About half of that is burn time, or four minutes. Dividing 4 minutes burn time by quarters collected from the coin boxes, you will be very close to knowing how many BTUs out there are for each coin in.

If your dryer is rated 90,000 BTU per hour, in 4 minutes you burn about one fifteenth (60 Min ÷ 4) of that amount of gas or 6,000 BTU per each quarter you collect from dryer coin boxes.

Counting the coins tells you the total number of cycles used. The total quarters collected times the 6000 BTU used gives an approximate gas total for the dryers.

Now, subtract that figure from the total gas used and you will know the approximate amount of natural gas used to heat water.

In most coin laundries this will come to about 50/50. In some it will be more like 60/40 in favor of water heating.

With knowledge of approximate dryer gas usage and a good idea of the gas used for water heating, it becomes easier to figure where and how to start economizing.

 

Now that we understand gas bills better, let’s figure how we can use that knowledge.

Most operators, if faced with rising prices, either cut costs or raise prices. While a vend price increase isn’t always a good option, because of area economics or low price competition, lowering expenses is always in style.

Let’s use what we know to try to lower the natural gas bill.

By shortening the drying time per coin or keeping the time the same but making cool down longer, the price has been raised and the amount of gas per drying cycle has been decreased.

By adjusting the water temperature coming in from the heaters down, the gas consumption of the laundry has been reduced and the overall bill lowered.

If dryer exhaust vents are cleaned on an irregular basis, the dryers are not running at full efficiency. Combining a lowered dry time with cleaning vents more regularly may make the reduced time less obvious to the customers because the dryers are running more efficiently.

There is another quick check that can be made on dryers. If the burners show a yellow, lazy flame, gas is being wasted and the burners need to be adjusted. The burner flame needs to rise steady with a bright blue tip. That means the gas is being used with maximum efficiency. That is a service at a price most laundry owners will love. Many utility companies will actually adjust the dryer burners at no charge.

Some operators bring in their water from city lines through a copper manifold laid over the dryers. Dryer heat is radiated into the copper lines in the manifold, preheating water and thereby reducing the cost of gas required to bring wash water to the proper temperature.

The point being that anything done to understand utility costs makes operators better able to think of ways to cut bills.

 

Reduction of a laundry’s electrical bills is almost impossible for an average coin laundry owner to calculate in advance. They take an action and see how it affects the power bill over time. Such actions as placing timers on the ceiling lights and air coolers is about the limit of places to save.

Night lighting traditionally has been the security method of choice for coin laundries. Letting the lights of a new laundry burn through the night is also a way to let the neighborhood know it’s there, and has been a traditional way to advertise new laundries. The traditional security lighting usually means some of the overhead lights will remain on all during the night. Thus passers by will be able to look inside and see anything that’s done wrong.

That’s not very efficient, and over time can prove to be very expensive. It is better to have the main lights turned off after business hours and have one or two special lights positioned to give the best security for the least money. That will provides security at a much lower cost.

A number of operators have their overhead lights on timers, and use single bulbs that are turned on when it gets dark in the laundry and go off when light from the other lamps on timers come on in the morning. In one case it saved the operator nearly $50 each month to do security lighting that way.

Daytime lighting requirements vary with the relation of the laundry to sunlight. Long narrow operations that face to the north will get little illumination from the sun during daylight hours. That place will require higher electric input to stay bright and cheerful for customers. Their bills will be higher than those laundry operations that have benefit of a facing sun much of the day.

Darker laundries will benefit from being decorated with light, reflective colors, especially on the rear wall. A number of western laundries use reflective stainless steel panels across the back wall. It’s not quite mirror like, but it does reflect daytime light coming into the front of the laundry.

When an operator engineers his laundry’s lights so that the fixtures are consecutively staggered from front to rear, and the rows of lights are on timers, the laundry can still save on lighting, even if it is really in a bad position relative to the sun. The combination of automatic light sensors to turn on the lights, as they are needed, pays for itself rather quickly.

Most laundry owners should have lighting set from front to back. In daylight, the front of the laundry requires no artificial lighting, but the back gets little benefit from the sunlight, so the rear lights remain on. As it begins to get dark outside, the middle lights come on too, then the front ones as it gets totally dark out. That is considered the most efficient use of lighting and efficiency means savings.

The only calculations necessary in doing some of these changes is to see how the average monthly power bill drops each time one of the electrical efficiencies are begun. One should always remember that savings are not just for one month, or even one year, they are for as long as a laundry operates.

 

The largest monthly bills in a coin laundry are usually water and sewer charges. Except for stopping all waste and leaks, there’s not much operators can do about this expense without the purchase of new, more efficient wash machines. New water efficient styles of washers may reduce water and sewer bills enough to actually make equipment payments possible from the savings on water and sewer bills.

Many laundry owners are considering the addition of larger capacity front loading washers to their machine mix. Larger capacities will provide greater income per square foot from the laundry space. One can charge more per load for larger washers.

It will also be producing more pounds of clothes washed per gallon of water used, and thus cut down on a laundry’s water consumption. That saves everybody money as well.

It may be possible to adjust washer water levels to affect savings. That can be dangerous for customer relations, and usually isn’t recommended except in extreme cases.

 

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