The wash wheel shows five controllable factors that have impact on your ability to clean your gear and ensure you aren’t damaging it.
By identifying these factors, departments can see how their laundry equipment is performing vs an optimal wash cycle. Let’s use water temperature as an example.
You can wash bunker gear in 120°F water during the pre-soak and main wash phases of the wash cycle, but can your extractor control the water temperature?
An extractor that heats its drum can ensure the water temperature stays in the 117-120°F without exceeding the high limit.
If you are only supplying your extractor with hot water from your station’s hot water tank, you are only ensuring the water temperature does not exceed 120°F while it is being filled with water, but there is no way for the machine to keep the water at the recommended temperature.
Kellen Gurniak
Through our testing, we have experienced water temperature loss greater than 30 degrees at the end of these phases.
Maintaining the consistent water temperature can positively impact the efficacy of many detergents being used on bunker gear. One feature on an extractor that impacts two parts of the wash wheel!
Water temperature and extraction speed are easily quantified, so they are most often spoken about.
Compliance with these two measurables ensures that your bunker gear won’t be damaged during the wash cycle.
NFPA also has recommendations on water level and cycle duration, but these are often less discussed.
It is suggested that bunker gear be washed with a high volume of water in 5 of the 6 phases, so you must have control over the volume of water entering the machine.
We believe that longer pre-soak and main wash phases allows more time for the detergent to clean your bunker gear.
Kellen Gurniak
A short wash cycle should not be the goal when washing bunker gear.
In fact, when you add the suggested time for the 6 phases that make up a bunker gear wash cycle, you should be running for 35-39 minutes.
That time doesn’t factor in the time it takes for the extractor to fill and drain the drum, which happens 5 times throughout the wash cycle.
It’s been our experience that a wash cycle may run from 60-70 minutes.
Educating departments on how to use their extractors properly is important.
However, we can also “set them up for success”, when it comes to washing their gear.
With a preprogrammed extractor, a department would only need to use the touch screen to select washing their inner liners or outer shells, rather than creating a wash cycle each time they use the extractor.
Some of the older equipment requires a number of buttons being pushed in sequence to have wash gear correctly.
It’s an opportunity for a mistake to be made and there is always a risk that it could go unnoticed.
Another way we can set a department up for success is by connecting the extractor to an automated detergent pump.
Kellen Gurniak
Automated detergent pumps will administer the correct amount of detergent at the correct time of the wash cycle.
No and that is a great question! We are seeing departments implementing sanitization cycles in their extractors to use for these events.
These cycles use different detergent for these cycles than they would washing after a structure fire.
Additionally, the phases of a sanitization cycle are different.
A department can add a second automated detergent pump to administer the laundry sanitizer during a sanitization cycle.
If they don’t have a pump, they can simply use the soap box on their extractor.
The data that the fire service receives that shows the strong correlation between the profession and cancer diagnosis, is impossible to ignore.
From a manufacturer perspective, it makes you constantly analyze what solutions we are putting forth.
The questions I ask myself, “is this solution easy to use every time it is needed?”, and “what can we do to prevent mistakes?”
When it comes to washing bunker gear, the best we can do is eliminate the opportunity to make mistakes.
We can program wash cycles and automated detergent application, but there is still an educational component with the firefighters.
Kellen Gurniak
It is their responsibility to make sure they load the machine to capacity and that the liner of their bunker gear is to be flipped inside out before going into the extractor.
This article was originally published in the March issue of Fire & Safety Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital copy, click here.
