Green Cleaning: Steam Cleaning in Manufacturing and Food/Beverage Processing

In our recent blog, we discuss not only the history of steam cleaners, but more importantly we talk about the emergence of dry vapor steam cleaners within the US market.

In the post, Green Cleaning: The History of Steam Cleaners, we explain that dry vapor cleaning is an economical, eco-friendly and effective form of cleaning. At Goodway, we’re finding that these cleaners are particularly useful to the manufacturing and food/beverage processing industries.

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Green Cleaning: The History of Steam Cleaners

Steam cleaning has been used for more than 150 years as a way to remove grease and oil from machinery, primarily on railways, ships, car/truck engines and on power stations.

In the 1960s-1970s, Italian boiler manufacturers purportedly started experimenting with steam vapor as a cleaning method. The steam vapor cleaning method was embraced by European manufacturers more than 30 years ago when they realized the potential cleaning power of highly pressurized, low moisture steam.

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What You Need to Know About Boiler Maintenance Costs and Benefits

An article in Facilities.net highlights the benefits of preventative maintenance programs for boilers. The article explains such programs provide great benefits to building managers by improving safety, minimizing downtime, decreasing replacement costs, and reducing energy and water usage.

But before instituting a plan, a building manager should still take the time to determine if using a program will prove beneficial enough, considering the costs.

Preventative maintenance programs for boilers are most beneficial if the failure rate of the system as well as the cost of the program are less than the cost of repairs or other corrective action, according to the Facilities.net article. 

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Explosion Proof Vacuum Can Help Prevent Spontaneous Combustion

In continuing service to our loyal readers, Goodway and the Just Venting blogging team bring you perspective on HVAC that’s designed as “food for thought.”  Here’s the latest!

Previously in my career, I was a US Navy Damage Control Officer/On Scene Leader. A few years ago while aboard a US Navy destroyer, we experienced an on-board fire in the paint locker. After conducting an investigation, it was found that the fire was caused by spontaneous combustion.

That got me thinking about a recent New York Times article concerning an unfortunate incident in China that killed 3 people and injured 15 others. The article basically discusses combustible dust in the ventilation system with specific mention of aluminum dust. As demonstrated by the two men in the video below (shown experimenting with volatile aluminum dust), the incident in China must have been devastating.

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When Should A HEPA Vacuum Be Your Weapon Of Choice?

There are all sorts of vacuum cleaners available in the commercial and industrial world – wet/dry, soot and powder, machine shop and heavy-duty, to name just a few.  In most cases, it seems fairly clear which sort of vacuum cleaner you use for which application.  But one kind of vacuum – the HEPA vacuum – carries with it more than a little uncertainty about when it should be used.

“When should we use a HEPA vacuum?” we often hear you, our readers, ask. The answer is – a HEPA vacuum is like the old “roach hotel”.  Dirt goes in but it doesn’t come out.  So,  you should use it when you want to fully contain everything that enters the vacuum cleaner.

A true HEPA vacuum cleaner has been tested to a specific standard, usually MIL-STD 282 – and has been proven to capture 99.97% of particles .3 micron or larger.  It takes a pretty good filter to capture all but 3 of every 10,000 particles that pass through it.

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Cooling Tower Cleaning: Is Your System Dirty and Tired?

In case you haven’t noticed — and we know that you have — summer time is almost upon us. And as the pleasantly cool nights and mild days give way to increasing heat and humidity, it’s time to switch over from heating to air conditioning and bid a fond farewell to that brief spring interval when we can open the windows and soak up the outdoor sweetness of the season. This means the onset of the heaviest annual load on the cooling towers in our HVAC systems — which in turn means it’s time to focus our attention once again on best practices — including various types of Goodway’s products – for achieving maximum cooling performance for maximum energy efficiency.

One of the main risks in all of this is that our cooling towers may become “fatigued.” That’s how Tom Ryder, an engineer and cooling tower expert with Delta Cooling Towers, puts it in “Maintenance for Cooling Towers” (Industrial Heating, March 2, 2011). (Also see Ryder sharing the same valuable information in a widely reprinted article — see, for example, here, here, and here — from 2010.) “If cooling towers are not kept in good shape and receiving preventive maintenance, they can become ‘fatigued,’ which can in turn put a strain on system equipment and downstream processes,” he writes.

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Cooling Tower Cleaning: A Roundup of Reasons

If you’re a regular reader of Just Venting, and/or if you’re involved in any aspect of commercial and industrial HVAC cleaning and maintenance, then it’s no secret to you that cooler tower cleaning is one of Goodway’s specialties. After all, we have a whole line of equipment — our CTV-1501 Cooling Tower Vacuum, our TFC-100 TowerWash Cooling Tower Fill Cleaner, our CTV-F2 Cooling Tower Filter System — dedicated to it.

The current spring season is prime-time for directing attention to this necessary task, and so for your convenience and edification we thought it would be a great time to review and emphasize the basic reasons you need to focus on system cleaning and maintenance. We’ve mined not only our own blog archives but also some other Internet resources to summarize the reasons for keeping current with your cooling tower cleaning schedule.

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Accessories Make Your Pressure Washer More Useful

If you have a pressure washer, chances are there is a fairly narrow set of tasks for which you use it.  Sure, you clean the sidewalks (especially the cracks between the individual blocks), and maybe you wash the mud off your pickup truck or lawn tractor…

Ho Hum…snore…

But add just the right accessories and options and you can extend the functionality of your pressure washer, letting you do so much more than just get the dirt off your stuff. For example…

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Our – and We Hope Your – 2011 Chiller Maintenance Resolutions

If you’ve deferred maintenance on your chiller or other HVAC equipment until next year, now is a good time to partake of two year-end activities that have become traditions over the centuries – the top 5 list and the New Year’s Resolution. If these activities are not part of your year-end rituals, then please, allow us to help you get started this year.

First – the resolutions, of which there are two:

Please repeat after us: “I hereby resolve to create a 2011 maintenance plan to cover my chillers, heat exchangers, coils, boilers and all my other HVAC equipment.”  And then, say:  “I resolve to actually follow the plan I just created.”

There…now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

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Pressure Washers: Is Just One Enough?

If you were to take an inventory of the equipment you use most often in your day-to-day- activities as building and facility managers, what would be on that list?  Chances are most of them are the prosaic, ordinary stuff we all take for granted – ladders, vacuum cleaners, flashlights, two wheelers, small hand tools (screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, etc.) and pressure washers.

 One thing they all have in common is that they are amazingly versatile and can be used in almost every situation – that’s why they are our go-to tools.  It’s hard to imagine going any length of time without needing and using all of them.

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