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View Full Version : fire in the dryer!


laundryguy13
06-28-2006, 11:57 PM
I want everyone to learn from our mistake. Two weeks ago we had a bad dryer fire in the middle of the night. It all started with WDF of a restraunts towels. We did the wash and had no problems. We then dried them, it was real late that night so after they finished drying we made sure the dryer was off and let them stay in the dryer for th AM shift to fold.

Well there was some sort of chemical on these towels that we were un aware of and through the night they smoldered and 2 hours later we finally had ignition. Luckly our ADT system caught it before the whole place went up. We had to replace 3 dryers and the dividening wall.

This was a really horrible error we made, I hope everyone will take my expierence to heart and avoid one of their own.

CHECK ALL DRYERS BEFORE YOU CLOSE!
GET A MONITORED SMOKE ALARM SYSTEM!

Good news is that our insurance covered most of the repairs and after a week of being closed we bounced right back.

Outlaw21
06-29-2006, 04:34 AM
You must be new to the laundry business, it's called spontanious combustion. Everyone in this business should know about it by now. Good luck in the future.

Burley
06-29-2006, 09:27 AM
Shouldn't the cool down cycle prevent this? And was the dryer temp too high? I have my top setting at 180.

DuboisLaundry
06-29-2006, 01:35 PM
cooldown time only cools down so much, especially a large load

Laundry_Mike
06-30-2006, 11:04 PM
A dryer doesn't have to very hot to have spontaneous combustion occur, and having a cool down doesn't make much difference. It's happened to us twice, it's hard to explain, but it does happen. Normally there will be some type of oil based substance on the items you are drying. (pizza shop towels and aprons for us) Anyway - when drying items that have oily residue, remove them from the dryer promptly, and let them completly cool down before folding them up. They can even start fire sitting in a laundry cart.

vernonmaytag
07-03-2006, 12:16 PM
I need to find out what one of our customers brings in. They are really bad for dumping a couple bucket's of rags into a dryer and then leaving them for a day or more.

I hate messing with machines unless I need them, so usually leave "abandoned" loads until then.

They are a janitor service, so don't think it's much for oily.

We do have a couple kitchen clients, but we always empty the dryer asap.