On the boil

Derek Parish, director of Controlled Flame Boilers (CFB) has been installing steam boilers for drycleaners for more than two decades.

  Originally his company sold drycleaning equipment but when CFB was put up for sale he bought it. As a major customer of the company he could see its potential.

The company’s products at that time were large, vertical tube gas-fired models that were reliable but needed maintenance and regular retubing. Derek’s engineers quickly developed a more efficient series of four pass, vertical tubeless boilers that became the forerunner of today’s modern and efficient 4VT boiler range.

Drycleaning chains

By the end of the Eighties CFB was supplying most of the unit shops of the Johnsons and Sketchley chains with the 4VT series. Today, CFB has a wide customer-base that includes hospitals, bakeries and pharmaceutical companies, however, Derek has not forgotten the drycleaning industry and recently produced a range of steam boilers designed specifically for the drycleaning shop.

“The 4VTSJ is a replacement for the boilers that were installed 10-15 years ago. It is much smaller, 35% more fuel efficient and can be up to working pressure from cold in 15 minutes” says Derek.

With a diameter of 682mm, the ‘Slim Jim’ is guaranteed to replaced an older CFB boiler comfortably. It will easily pass through any standard shop door.

The steam chamber is 30% larger than most vertical boilers making it capable of coping with continuous steam demands with less risk of priming. It is fully automatic in operation and has a number of safety devices built-in.

A useful option is to have the air intake ducted outside, preventing perc fumes from entering the combustion process and producing harmful flue gases.

“The market is changing” says Derek Parish. “Equipment that has self-contained electric boilers is a compromise, not giving the sort of service the expert, professional presser needs. And with so many people buying shirt machines we are increasingly asked to supply boilers.”

The four pass design makes the Slim Jim very efficient. Fired by gas, propane or oil it comes packaged with its own feed water system and ready to be connected up on site.

The 4VTSJ boiler has been designed by a group of engineers that know the drycleaning industry intimately. In the pipeline, is a companion for Slim Jim, a blowdown and integral feedwater vessel with a similarly narrow diameter that will become part of a space saving equipment package designed for shop owners who need all the room they can get.

Controlled Flame Boilers also produces larger versions of the four-pass vertical tube model, in fact the range goes from 80 to 1000kW or 128kg/h up to 1521kg/h.

The company also supplies larger skid-mounted packaged plant rooms tailored to suit the customer’s requirements.

For more information visit www.steamboilers.co.uk

Steam for laundries

Steam has been used in the laundry industry throughout the 20th century and is still being used in the 21st. Steam raising plant has changed dramatically from rather large inefficient steam boilers, to the smaller and more efficient plant of today.

Although laundry and drycleaning is looked on as one market, to the boiler manufacturers it is two distinct sectors. In the laundry sector boilers provide steam for the laundry equipment whereas the drycleaning sector is divided into drycleaning machines with in-built steam raising equipment and equipment requiring an independent steam-supply.

Boiler manufactures have much to offer but what proprietors need to know is what is the most suitable steam raising equipment for the application?

“An obvious source for this information is the boiler manufacturers” says Gordon Bareham sales and marketing director for Fulton boilers. “They will be delighted to give technical and application advice.”

General guidelines on steam plant selection are:

• consult the experts before you buy.

• two boilers are better than one.

• don’t under size the boiler or ancillary plant.

• plan for the future.

“However, customers sometime disregard such advice in favour of an inadequate package based on smaller plant or they buy second hand equipment with doubtful provenance” he says.

Fulton has a reputation for manufacturing reliable and efficient boilers. Its range is suitable for all fuels, with duties from 14kg/hour to 4790kg/hour. They are built in Britain to BS2790 1992 class 1 and supported by a nationwide service organisation.

Two recent additions to the range are the Series J and JFS steam boilers.

The Series J succeed the Series E. Currently only available for gas firing the new boiler operates at higher efficiencies with overall improved specification. The JSF is purposed built for applications when there is a peak demand for steam.

Series J boilers are available as fully packaged, skid-mounted systems for laundry and drycleaning applications.

Final installation

Packaged systems are prepared and tested in the Fulton factory to the PM5 standard of control for unmanned plant rooms and can be delivered to site on a prepared concrete base. Final installation is made easier by connecting to termination points preinstalled by the customer to ensure that the new boiler plant matches existing site services.

The convenience of this Fast Track service has benefited major projects in the UK and overseas including hospitals where the supply of steam for laundries, sterilisers and heating has been required.

On one Public Finance Initiative (PFI) project a purpose-built double-skinned steel boiler room was designed and built within 12 weeks.

The plant was equipped with two Fulton gas-fired boilers chosen for their reliability, efficiency and fast recovery for steam raising.

Steam from the boilers was also used for the hospitals theatre and burns unit.

The skid-mounted packages were delivered to site as fully-tested and functioning systems, requiring minimal on-site installation work.

Blackpool Laundry Company also turned to Fulton to provide a centralised steam system for its laundry process. Proprietors Joan and Brian Oldroyd say the move to a new location 18 months ago provided the opportunity to look for more efficient and reliable steam raising plant. The two gas fired Fulton 30E vertical boilers provide a total of 960kW/hr and were chosen after Joan and Brian visited a similar installation in Bexhill.

“There are many advantages to using steam and to specifying a packaged or skid-mounted system,” says Gordon Bareham. “Perhaps the most important are that Fulton has years of experience, takes overall responsibility for the design manufacture and delivery of a turnkey project and provides the all important after sales support.”