Laundry – Killing Energy Costs with Commercial Solar Water Heating

The How-To-Repair Group of Companies have UK test sites for many household appliances. Utilising Free hot water produced from solar panels has greatly reduced their energy costs. They also have Laundries in the Algarve, Portugal running from solar water heaters.

The back end Commercial Laundry boasts many washing machines from numerous manufacturers. Test, Test & Test is what they do to find the Best Products to run video tutorials on their YouTube Channel. 

Killing running costs & being Green is the ethos of their Sister Company Recycled-Appliances. The first and only laundry in Portugal running on 100% renewable energy.

The Algarve boasts a magnificent all year-round climate, with over 3,000 hours sunshine a year and clear blue skies for most of the year. We take full advantage of this by running the washing machines from the hot water generated from the Solar Water Heating systems together with solar PV for the electrical requirements.

With over 2,000 L of stored water capacity, High Efficiency solar panels ensuring the tanks have enough hot water to accommodate the dozens of washes daily. The tanks are heated in excess of 80°

We have several small and large washing machines running completely from the solar hot water, as well as tumbler dryers using air drying from solar panels.

Years ago, many washing machines were fitted with two inlet pipes, one hot feed & a cold feed. The hot water needed to wash clothes was taken from the boiler, the cold water for rinsing was taken from the mains water supply. Today, it is rare to find a washing machine which is not fitted with only a cold feed.

On standard cold feed only washing machines, 85-90% of the electricity used by a washing machine goes in heating the water.

Using solar heated water for washing in order to save electricity is a sensible way forward for every domestic and commecial operation.