As we adjust to rapidly changing events and instructions that might affect working hours, please review these guidelines for how to operate your dry cleaning machine in situations where you might be using it in a reduced capacity. For example, you might be scaling back from 6 day-per-week production to 4 day-per-week production. Or, maybe you have two machines and will not need both machines every day.
For All Affiliates:
Be cautious of moisture building up in the machine due to humid air that cools down as the plant is not operating for a longer than normal period. You might notice beads of water on the base tank glass. We suggest running a load with only cotton or cotton-polyester towels FIRST, using that affected base tank, before proceeding with normal customer dry cleaning loads. Moisture on the glass is always caused by water, since the surface tension of GreenEarth is too low to form droplets on glass vertically.
- For Example: If you see that Tank 2 has significant moisture drops on the glass, please add about 15 pounds of cotton towels to the wheel and then run a Tank 2 Short Cycle. The towels will absorb the water and when the load dries, the water will go to the water separator, exiting the machine. You can use the same towels multiple times if you need to de-humidify more than one tank.
If your machine smells stale or humid, please run a Dry Only cycle to remove the moisture from inside the recovery head and air filter area prior to cleaning customer items.
Please consider doing your annual / major maintenance during slow periods so that you are ready to go full steam when this slow period ramps back up to normal.
For those Affiliates using Activated Clay Filtration / GreenEarth Activated Clay:
If your machine will be sitting idle for more than two days, please run your spin filter program before shutting the machine down, but DO NOT add Activated Clay until it is time to start the machine back up again.
- For Example: If today is Thursday and you will not use the machine again until Monday, run the filter spin / disc cleaning program after the last load on Thursday but do not add Activated Clay until Monday morning.
Why is this important? Activated Clay is a chemical that in normal circumstances (daily GreenEarth silicone circulation) remains neutral and works as intended including easy spin-off from the disc filter. If the clay sits on the filter for too long, and the machine is not circulating GreenEarth through the filter, the clay can become hard and sticky, making it very difficult to spin off the filter later. This may result in difficult distillation, wasted silicone fluid, and the requirement to service the spin filter discs.
Please minimize downtime where the Activated Clay is sitting still on the filter.
For those Affiliates who will be temporarily turning off a second or third machine during working hours due to low volume:
We suggest turning on each machine once per week and run a normal cleaning cycle out of each working tank. We also suggest rotating which machine is temporarily shut off. This keeps everything fresh in all machines and will reduce the chance of odor building up.
- For Example: If you have a two-tank machine, please run a normal load using Tank 1 and a normal load using Tank 2 so that the machine continues to “exercise” and moisture does not collect in the tanks.
If your machine normally uses Activated Clay, it’s OK to run one or two loads without clay in an emergency or temporary basis.
