Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Laundry facility takes off

Inside looks more like spaceship than wash complex


By BRENNAN REGO
Express Staff Writer

    Sun Valley Co.’s new laundry facility looks more like the interior of a spaceship than the workplace of a housekeeping staff.
    People who are picky about pressed shirts and fresh socks would be amazed by the machinery the building holds. If they could see the equipment in action, they’d never want to fold another towel or press another pair of pants by hand again. Using the new gizmos in the facility, at the intersection of Trail Creek and Hospital roads in Sun Valley, even an untrained operator can press a shirt in under 90 seconds.
    “I went to Salt Lake City to check out some of the equipment,” said Executive Housekeeper Mike Crotty during a press tour of the facility on Friday. “I watched a woman press a shirt in a minute and 12 seconds. She said she was the new girl and that she was slow. The average is about 50 seconds.”
    Crotty said his staff used to call the equipment in the resort’s former facility “The Mangler.” He said the new equipment is much safer, as well as being more time-, energy- and water-efficient. The 21,500-square-foot facility replaces the old building, a 1940s-era structure that burned down in February 2012. The new facility costs about half as much to operate, according to Crotty.
    The new building serves as the base of operations for Crotty’s 160-person housekeeping staff. He said eight people work in the building doing the laundry and another three deliver the dirty items and pick up the clean ones. Those eight employees wash about 7,000 pounds of laundry a day, Crotty said.
    “The hands-on is minimal,” he said.
    A total of about 20 employees, including office staff, work in the building.
    Crotty said the employees are as happy with the new facility as he is.
    Resort housekeeper Anita Bedolla, who was busy feeding recently washed sheets into a folding machine during the tour, said she greatly prefers the new building to the old one.
    “It’s much easier working with the new machines,” she said in Spanish. “Faster, more relaxed, calm.”
    Bedolla said she barely has to do anything now except watch the machines do all the work. The facility features an entire machine (which looks like a storm trooper’s armor from Star Wars) just to press the cuffs of a shirt.
    Leonor Palencia, a housekeeper who’s been working for the resort for 10 years, said “all” the machines are her favorite.
    The beating heart of the facility is a large-capacity “tunnel washer” that recycles water five times through five cycles, saving about 75 percent of the water that a standard commercial laundry system would use, according to a recent news release from the resort.
    “A sophisticated twin 150-hp steam boiler system drives the laundry equipment along with two air compressors,” the news release states.
    The washer can crank out about 1,000 pounds of laundry per hour, cleaning them in 100-pound “cakes.”
    The facility also has a dry cleaner (the separate room that houses the dry cleaning equipment smells like a hot glue gun) and another room that houses many large vats of chemicals. Crotty said those rooms are separate from the rest of the facility for both the employees’ and the building’s safety. He also said the new equipment requires significantly fewer chemicals to operate.
    Other equipment, which Crotty said is “all programmable” includes Lint Scrubber 8000s, which keep the facility’s air lint-free, and several large Milnor dryers.
    “I love the building,” Crotty said. “We tried to think of everything we possibly could.”
    Laundry Manager Mike Knudson said his team had to wash all the resort’s laundry for about a year without a building and the new facility is his reward. He said that sometimes his team would use laundromats in Ketchum and the washers and dryers in the resort employee’s dormitories to get the job done.
    Resort spokesman Jack Sibbach said the facility even includes “country club bathrooms” for the employees. The bathrooms are accented with marble and include a locker for each member of the staff.
    “It’s pretty amazing to get excited about a laundry facility,” he said. “But it’s pretty cool.”


Facility facts
• 21,500 square feet.
• Uses 75 percent less water.
• Requires fewer chemicals.
• Costs Sun Valley Co. half as much to operate.
• Twin 150-hp steam boiler.




About Comments

Comments with content that seeks to incite or inflame may be removed.

Comments that are in ALL CAPS may be removed.

Comments that are off-topic or that include profanity or personal attacks, libelous or other inappropriate material may be removed from the site. Entries that are unsigned or contain signatures by someone other than the actual author may be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or any other policies governing this site. Use of this system denotes full acceptance of these conditions. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing, Inc.

You may flag individual comments. You may also report an inappropriate or offensive comment by clicking here.

Flagging Comments: Flagging a comment tells a site administrator that a comment is inappropriate. You can find the flag option by pointing the mouse over the comment and clicking the 'Flag' link.

Flagging a comment is only counted once per person, and you won't need to do it multiple times.

Proper Flagging Guidelines: Every site has a different commenting policy - be sure to review the policy for this site before flagging comments. In general these types of comments should be flagged:

  • Spam
  • Ones violating this site's commenting policy
  • Clearly unrelated
  • Personal attacks on others
Comments should not be flagged for:
  • Disagreeing with the content
  • Being in a dispute with the commenter

Popular Comment Threads



 Local Weather 
Search archives:


Copyright © 2024 Express Publishing Inc.   Terms of Use   Privacy Policy
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.