Tunnel washers

Tunnels for all businesses

1 November 2007



Tunnel washers can be used for different applications. Janet Taylor reports on three businesses in the New Orleans area that have installed Milnor CBW washers


The Hilton Riverside Hotel has its own on site laundry that handles work both from its home site and from the Hilton Airport Hotel.

This means a total workload of around 600,000lb a month. It works seven days a week from 6.30am - 8pm in two shifts and employs 38 - 50 staff, depending on the season.

It installed the Milnor CBW washer in 2004, an eight module machine handling 150lb (68kg) batches working in a line with a Milnor 35bar single-stage membrane press and three, 320lb (145kg) pass-through dryers.

Three small washer-extractors handle small items and odd lots.

Like many laundries, space is tight and this site illustrates the difficulties that installers must sometimes face in getting the equipment into place.

The machines had to be brought in through an external wall and to do so, the railway line that runs nearby had to halt its operations temporarily.

The tunnel line handles linen for both room and food service, including towels and robes.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines on work environments are enforced and environmental legislation means that laundries must keep in touch with the discharge system to control water use and waste levels.

According to manager Hope Llarios, this is where tunnel washers prove advantageous as they conserve water use and also minimise waste-water.

The Ochsner Foundation Hospital is a multi-discipline site with advanced programs in cancer care, cardiac treatment and organ transplant.

The laundry is a high volume business, providing as it does for 520 beds on site, plus a further 70 beds at a sister hospital and work from 24 neighbourhood clinics that produce a total annual workload of 4.5million lb (2.04 million kg).

Manager Lionel Goubler has 29 staff including four working in distribution and one supervisor and the laundry runs on a 7.00am – 3.30pm shift.

The tunnel line, which was installed in 2002, comprises a 150lb (68kg) six module CBW washer and a two-stage, 31bar press – the first stage squeezes out the water, and the main stage provides the final extraction – plus two pass-through dryers, each of 320lb (145kg).

Currently, the laundry’s work is a mix of hospital linens, towels and bed pads but it also maintains the scrubs for some departments.

The laundry was also offering to begin processing linen from a full service hotel that is located on the medical complex.

While these first two laundries were providing an on-site service to their site’s core business, the third that LCNi visited was a family-owned laundry, a commercial operation in its own right.

A1 specialises in dustmats, but also handles ancillary items such as mops, towels and aprons. Its customers include auto stores, hotels, restaurants, convenience stores and school boards.

It was started by Howard Bode in 1968. His son Daren Bode is now the general manager, who works alongside an operations manager, Max Schroeder.

The company employs 45 staff including drivers and sales people and the laundry works a 4am - 2pm shift, five days a week.

The business covers 90% of Louisiana and is the largest mat specialist in the area.

As well as its headquarters where the laundry is situated, A1 has three distribution depots, sited at Baton Rouge, La Fayette and Thibodeaux.

The company has two Milnor CBW washers, three and five modules, which are dedicated to processing the 10,000 mats that it cleans each week. A1 also handles 1,000 wet mops, 4,000 towels and 4,000 aprons in washer-extractors.

Mats are pre-sorted before cleaning. Tunnel washers are ideal for processing mats. Water and light chemicals deal with the cleaning while the mechanical action gets rid of the grit.

After this process they go to a 700rpm centrifugal extractor and then pass-through dryers, two for each tunnel.

A1 is an innovative company. It has two sets of mats for each customer and builds its mat stock two days ahead.

The honeycomb storage system provides the company with a USP.

Each slot in the system carries an alpha-numeric code for accurate identification.

It also has a USP in its service to school boards, providing them with with wire framed mops that are pre-treated with oils and therefore supplied ready for use.

These three businesses operate very different styles of laundry but together provide a cross section of the use of tunnel washers.

At Pellerin Milnor, vice president of marketing sales administration, Rick Kelly says: “Milnor CBW washers can generate high productivity levels in a wide range of laundries. Although each of these three laundries processes dissimilar types of goods, they all use a CBW system to reach their goals. This is a real testament to the versatility of the equipment.”




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