Compliance
Cleaning up on compliance: safe and efficient laundry
Specialist cleaning and compliance tasks can help to ensure that your home’s air and water supplies are as safe and healthy as possible. Gary Nicholls, MD of duct cleaning and Legionella risk expert Swiftclean, explains why air and water compliance is essential to laundry and cleaning routines, as well as to protect clients, visitors, and staff
When caring for the elderly, we all recognise that good air quality and clean water are essential. Over the years, industry guidance and best practice have been developed to support this aim, and we now have in place a number of regulations and specifications designed to manage the risks associated with the management of care homes. Clean laundry is an important aspect of any residential facility, and this is especially true of care homes, where elderly and infirm residents need particular care and support. Some homes may tackle aspects of laundry in-house, while many completely outsource their laundry to external service providers.
It is estimated that commercial laundries in the UK wash, dry, and press over 50 million pieces of laundry a week, and their combined output includes over 90 per cent of the NHS’s textile products, and 95 per cent of hotel linen. Commercial laundries also handle a huge number of uniforms from medical and care settings. In fact, the commercial laundry industry as a whole provides more than 24,000 jobs in the UK. The Textile Services Association (TSA) estimates that if commercial laundries were to cease operation overnight, 90 per cent of hospitals would be forced to close within 24 hours. Care homes would not be far behind. Like hotels, pharmaceutical plants, and food processing factories, care homes who use an external laundry service would undoubtedly be faced with closure within a few short days if the laundry suddenly became unavailable.
The safe and efficient operation of every laundry is therefore critical. However, there are aspects of laundry maintenance which can sometimes be forgotten. One of the most frequently overlooked aspects of laundry maintenance is extract ventilation
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Neglect of laundry extract ductwork is an urgent issue
ductwork cleaning. This task has been covered by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) standard TR19 Air and its predecessors – TR19 and TR17 – for many years; yet, separate from the main ventilation system, it has often been overlooked, and suffered from ‘out of sight, out of mind’ neglect.
Laundry extract ductwork Neglect of laundry extract ductwork is an urgent issue, as it represents a major fire risk. This should be remembered by all care homes – even in those which outsource the bulk of the laundry, there are usually some laundry facilities for more urgent tasks. In theory, we all know that we should remove dust and lint from drier filters after every load. Failing to clear filters can reduce the efficiency of the machine and lengthen
the drying time, causing it to use more electricity to dry each load. Over time, this can have a significant cost implication. What is often overlooked, however, is the importance of cleaning the machine’s extract ductwork. This oversight can create a huge fire risk. When laundering towels, bedding and other textiles, one of the unavoidable consequences is the generation of large quantities of lint and fibres, which become airborne during the drying process. Particles are drawn out of the machine and along the ductwork, but, as the air cools, they lose momentum and are deposited in the ductwork itself. Lint and fibre particles accumulate in drier extract ductwork, forming highly flammable deposits. Deposits can also collect in voids within the drier machine itself. Any deposits of this nature should be removed during the regular servicing of the drier machines by the service engineer. If not regularly removed, fibre deposits
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com February 2025
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