The Doctor Tackles a Couple of Common Laundry Questions
Recently, a number of self-service laundry owners have asked me about two specific topics related to their businesses. As a result, I thought I would address each issue in this month’s column.
One of the topics is hard water. Everyone in the self-service laundry business – whether you’re taking in wash-dry-fold and commercial laundry or just servicing your walk-in customers – should understand the impact of hard water on the laundering process.
The other topic is the phenomenon known as “pilling.” What is it, what causes it and what can you do about it?
Let’s discuss hard water first. Hard water is the enemy of any kind of cleaning and laundering process. But what exactly is hard water?
Basically, it’s water that has been saturated with minerals and elements. Due to this saturation, hard water is terrible for doing laundry in or showering in or doing any other type of cleaning. Because the water is already full of elements and minerals that are suspended within it, it’s unable to effectively suspend very many other things within it – and that ability (or inability) to suspend dirt and soil is the key to efficient (or inefficient) cleaning.
Specifically, what challenge does hard water place upon the laundering process? In a nutshell, most detergents are designed to attack soil and dirt on garments and to suspend those elements as they dissolve into the water. However, if your water is hard, you (if you’re doing commercial or residential wash-dry-fold laundry) or your customers, are going to have to use quite a bit more detergent and other chemicals to be successful in achieving superior cleaning results. The reason for this is because, in essence, the detergent and other cleaning products initially are going to be “tied up” with trying to neutralize the hardness in your water, even before they can begin to loosen up and go to work on whatever dirt and soil exists on the garments to be laundered.
In addition, hardness within your water actually impedes the natural cleaning qualities of water itself. Water – in and of itself – is an excellent cleaning product. In fact, a lot of lightly soiled laundry can be done simply in water alone, if that water is soft enough.
Soft water will break down and actually “wet” the garment, which means it will get into the item and open up the fibers to help release whatever soil and dirt may be in there. Soft water can do that quite efficiently, almost on its own and requiring very little detergent to do so.
Of course, some of the traditionally tougher stains, such as oil and grease, definitely require the help of quality laundry detergents, as those types of stains tend to really get into a garment’s fibers and stick to them.
Understanding water hardness and knowing the specific hardness of your store’s water is a critical part of learning how to produce quality finished product, especially if you’re doing residential wash-dry-fold or commercial laundry. With both wash-dry-fold and commercial accounts, you will be paying the cost for the extra chemicals you’ll need to use to overcome your store’s hard water. In such cases, it would be much less expensive to soften your water than to keeping using more and more additional chemicals to get your clients’ items clean.
The other topic I’d like to touch on this month is “pilling,” which is the formation of those little balls you’ll see developing on cotton items. And the looser the weave on the cotton fiber, the quick the “pills” will begin to appear.
Pilling occurs when the ends of the fibers rub together and, over time, begin to ball up. They’re like tiny snowballs that grow and grow until they reach a certain size. And then new pills begin.
This will occur on everything from not-so-finely threaded sheets to garments such as sweaters – certainly cotton garments where rubbing occurs. On clothing, you’ll first notice pilling in the leg and arm areas, where there’s a lot of movement and the fibers of the garments are rubbing against each other more readily – and, again, this is especially true on garments with a loose weave.
Pilling won’t occur very often on manufactured fabrics like polyesters or on garments with tighter weaves, such as very high thread-count sheets or high-quality men’s dress shirts – both of which feature tight weaves, so it’s much harder for those little ends to start balling up.
Fortunately, there are a few solutions you can use to combat pilling. One of the easiest is to use a simple safety razor blade and, basically, shave off the pills. In addition, a lint roller will work well in some cases.
However, there also are some interesting devices designed to remove those stubborn pills. One of the more popular tools is akin to a men’s electric shaver, just with bigger holes – with a spinning blade the cuts off the pills. There’s also a de-pilling brush that looks like a lava rock, and it works well, too.
What’s more, many professional drycleaners have special wands for dealing with pills – these wands are metal rods with very tight teeth on one end, and those teeth will grab the pills and break them loose. These wands often work very well on items such table linens, but you probably wouldn’t want to use a wand on something like a sweater.
For that very reason, you should always test whatever type of de-pilling tool you plan to use, because there are several different types – and some are great for certain fabrics, yet not so good for others. Therefore, it’s crucial to first try out a de-pilling tool in an inconspicuous place on the item you plan to de-pill, as you could very easily ruin a garment if you use the wrong tool.
Hopefully, I’ve been able to clear up some of the confusion regarding hard water versus soft water, as well as shed some light on the annoying yet common occurrence known as pilling.
#WashDryFold #StoreOperations #Public #Article #PlanetLaundry #CommercialAccounts #TheLaundryDoctor
