Devon Laundromat & Cleaners

My dear friends;

Welcome to Devon Laundromat.
To wash your clothes efficiently, I am pleased to help you with some informative tips.

As you may know, there are 3 factors to wash clothes, soap, water and mechanical action. Of course everyone has soap and water at home, but you might not have mechanical action or not enough. That’s why you came here

.What is happening in the washer ?
Some decades ago before the washing machine invented, people hit the soap soaked clothes with wooden stick that was the very mechanical action.

Soap;
Soap acts 20%, water 40% and mechanical action 40%.

The wash machine has 2 compartments, #1(primary soap cleanser) and #2(secondary cleanser)

Detergent (NaOH, alkali) with water dissolves many ororganic specially protein (meat, bacteria, etc.), surrounds them with soap foam and loosen them from the attached clothes by lubrication and mechanical action.

However oversudsing foam containing dirt floats up, not drain down, resulting the dirt foam redeposits back on the clothes. You may be itching when you wear the clothes. You need soap to make just enough foams to surround dirts and a little extra, not more.

Water;  
Soft water like rain or distilled water is much better solvent for the soap, unlike hard water (Calcium Hydrocarbonate) already dissolved calcium carbonate from limestone by acidic Hydrocarbonate.

May be you’ll recall this chemical formula from high school;

Soft water           Carbon dioxide                Hydro carbonate
H2O     +     CO2     ========        H2CO3    (acidic)

                      Limestone           Cacium hydro carbonate
H2CO3   +   CaCO3 =====   Ca(HCO3)2   (hard water)

Ca(HCO3)2  + Heat    ======   CaCO3  + H2O  +  CO
(Soap bubble wasted to surround this particle; CaCO3.)
That means you need a lots of soap.

Mechanical Action;
Again, Laundromat is all about mechanical action.
Make sure you have enough space in the washer drum after you filled with clothes to get vigorous impact.

The bigger drum diameter, the better mech. action you can get.

You also need full cycle (30 min.) wash and 6 time rinse as well.

There are no magic washer with short cycle and less water rinse.
 (Actually some Laundromat cheats their customer by adjusting the washer cycle and reduce water amount by half.)

Any dirt on clothes is distinguished from outside and inside.
Outside dirt is made of soil particles, oil and food. Those are easily cleanable by detergent only.

Inside dirt is of old skin, body oil, sweat, urine, etc. Those are a little complicate. Mostly those need sodium hypochlorite(Clorox, 6% of NaOCl) to kill bacteria, smell and dirty spot.
Therefore many underwares are made of white colored to wash with Clorox (sacks, pants, T-shirts that contact direct to body skin) to be safe from discolor.

Liquid softener
is a kind of wax that makes not only clothes softer, but also nice smelling,
and protect clothes from dirt after you clean and ware.
The next washing will be also very easy to clean because most dirt was
stuck on the previous wax, not direct to fiber to the clothes.

Softener can kill and reduce oversuding too.

Dryer;
We have 26 dryers, running 6 minutes per quarter at 185 degree Fahrenheit,
need 6 to 8 quarters (36 – 48 min.) to completely dry.
It is good to dry as much clothes as amount of 30 lbs washer or less.

This is a not only dryer but  a secondary washer as you can see the lint on the screen and presser as well when the clothes are completely dried.  ( Again, it will be not good when the clothes are damp).  Also most of the mold, bacteria and bugs are killed by this heat.
(Bed bug is dead at 130 degree.)

However, please do not dry plastic or rubber parts as they may clack and dryout
or may cause of fire.

Also please don’t overload the dryer as the clothes may block the circulating of the inlet heated air from ventilation through the screen, that may burn inlet side clothes and wet outlet side and wrinkle.

Meanwhile, sun drying is another way of energy saving, killing bacteria / mold
but not bugs by UV ray. It may discolar your clothes and lint/dust wll not be removed also.

Thank you my dear friends and please enjoy your washing !

We are more than happy staying with you all the time, ready to help you any problem of washing & drying

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth Choy, mgr.