Enlightened about my dryers. Is it true?

[Distance Runner]

A local rep came to my mat, and while there he evaluated various things, including my makeup air, AC installation, floor plan, etc.

One thing he said was to remove and replace 4 of my dryers. He said they loose money everytime they are used. He said for every quarter put in, they cost me 30 cents. I believe these dryers are by Borg-Warner (or something like that). He says they are probably 30+ years old.

Is what he said accurate? Can someone offer some insight?

Once again, thanks for everyone's help!

[DaveLevenson]

Penny:

How much time to you provide for a quarter?
How much gas do your dryers burn per minute? (They are rated in btu/hour.)

Perhaps with some numbers, we can answer your question.

[pete f]

There should be a name plate on the back of the dryer stating the electric, ie, 110v, 220v, amps, etc and max BTU. Tell us what the btu number is. Most older dryers had upwards of 100k BTU, if 50# dryers even more. If your time per quarter is 12 mins or more than the rep could be right. If you are around the going rate of 7-8 mins per quarter you are making money.

[Distance Runner]

Ok. Here's what I got off the back of the machine.

110v
125,000 BTU
6 minutes per quarter

Does this help with figuring?

[pete f]

Ok. Here's what I got off the back of the machine.

110v
125,000 BTU
6 minutes per quarter

Does this help with figuring?


My last bill was about 1.70 per therm, so let's say you pay about the same. A therm is 100,000 BTU. Your dryer is rated 125,000, meaning that is the max BTU it can burn. There has been much diccussion here about how long a dryer really burns. This gets dependant on glow bar or RAM, and everything from kae up air to the load of clothes themselves. While numbers of 40%have been tossed around, lets' say 75% of the time the burner is full blast. 75% of 125,000 is 93,750 per hour. So if gas cost 1.70 per 100k BTU, your cost is 1.59 per hour. At .25 every 6 mins, you are taking in $2.50 per hour.
The rep sort of lied. It is true, however, you could use newer dryers to achive lower BTU burn and make more money. I ma guessing you have 50# dryers, so even new ones will not have much BTU burn difference, except maybe the Solaris line. The new stacks are around 80k BTU, so that woudl save, but you can't price them like a 50#, so it comes down to if your dryers are ratty looking, paint them or buy new ones. If you need more dry capacity, yanking old and adding stacks make sense. If you have 30# dryers sucking down 125k BTU, than you can do better with new ones for sure. To figure if they are 30# or 50# you can post the measurments, diameter and depth, or even just the width of the dryer itself.

[Distance Runner]

Pete,

You always respond to my questions, and I so very much appreciate it! I hope we can meet sometime at a local Florida show. I will determine the size of the dryer, and get back to you. Thank you for the fantastic explanation.

Warren

My last bill was about 1.70 per therm, so let's say you pay about the same. A therm is 100,000 BTU. Your dryer is rated 125,000, meaning that is the max BTU it can burn. There has been much diccussion here about how long a dryer really burns. This gets dependant on glow bar or RAM, and everything from kae up air to the load of clothes themselves. While numbers of 40%have been tossed around, lets' say 75% of the time the burner is full blast. 75% of 125,000 is 93,750 per hour. So if gas cost 1.70 per 100k BTU, your cost is 1.59 per hour. At .25 every 6 mins, you are taking in $2.50 per hour.
The rep sort of lied. It is true, however, you could use newer dryers to achive lower BTU burn and make more money. I ma guessing you have 50# dryers, so even new ones will not have much BTU burn difference, except maybe the Solaris line. The new stacks are around 80k BTU, so that woudl save, but you can't price them like a 50#, so it comes down to if your dryers are ratty looking, paint them or buy new ones. If you need more dry capacity, yanking old and adding stacks make sense. If you have 30# dryers sucking down 125k BTU, than you can do better with new ones for sure. To figure if they are 30# or 50# you can post the measurments, diameter and depth, or even just the width of the dryer itself.

[Anonymous]

interesing but I'm not sure I totally agree with Pete. In my laundry many customers nurse the dryers along one quarter at a time. If they nurse them along they don't cycle and if you don't have cool down you are burning the full 125,000. So it would cost you $2.13 per hour. And you are taking in $2.50. Now check out your electric rates as that's part of running the dryers. Motors have come a long ways in 30 years. I'd bet you are close to break even running those dryers. And if your store has A/C you'll be sucking that out the dryer too, an additional cost.
But if your customers tend to run the machines for an hour straight then I agree with Pete.

[Monarch]

One additional consideration missed when evaluating older dryers. OVer time the orfices (the holes the gas come through on the burner) will burn away slightly. Getting a bit larger over time. Over a prolonged period of time, they may get 20%/25% larger in area. This permits more gas to pass, but not necessarily adding to the combustion. Incompletely burned gas will just pass up the flue, unburned, unused, but you still paid for it. In the case of the Borgs, they are quite old, so the burners will not be as efficient as when they were new. I am not enough of a thermo-galldang it- engineer to add in what flow through maybe versus newer machine, but that also effects efficiency. Factor that in with the real economics noted in earlier posts and you may be break-even or perhaps you really are loosing some money with each use.

[PeterH]

Borg-Warner was the original parent company for Norge appliances. I don't believe B-W made their own dryers; rather they sourced them from Huebsch.

Seems to me if you are getting 6 mins/.25 for a 125,000 BTU machine, you are doing good. I'm getting the same for my 205,000 BTU 50# dryers.

[pete f]

interesing but I'm not sure I totally agree with Pete. In my laundry many customers nurse the dryers along one quarter at a time. If they nurse them along they don't cycle and if you don't have cool down you are burning the full 125,000. So it would cost you $2.13 per hour. And you are taking in $2.50. Now check out your electric rates as that's part of running the dryers. Motors have come a long ways in 30 years. I'd bet you are close to break even running those dryers. And if your store has A/C you'll be sucking that out the dryer too, an additional cost.
But if your customers tend to run the machines for an hour straight then I agree with Pete.

I would guess older dryers have a factory pre set cool down on those twist meters, and few owners try and mess with it. So nursing a quarter at a time is 2 min of cool air or more per cycle. You are correct the burners will blast more, but the max is 4 min out of 6, still in that 75% range. I forget about the orffice part, that was a good point from Monarch.
I checked Maytag/ADC dryer specs, the 30 # single burns 90k BTU, the 50# burns 130k BTU. The stacks burn 80k (these are the pre Solaris) The 50# width is 34 1/4 inch while the 30# width is 31 3/8. I had some very old Hubesch 30# that burned 110 BTU once.
I still do not think the dryers run at cost or below cost, but depending on what is really there could be higher profits with newer, again, he has to do some calculations overall.

[kbc747]

A local rep came to my mat, and while there he evaluated various things, including my makeup air, AC installation, floor plan, etc.

One thing he said was to remove and replace 4 of my dryers. He said they loose money everytime they are used. He said for every quarter put in, they cost me 30 cents. I believe these dryers are by Borg-Warner (or something like that). He says they are probably 30+ years old.

Is what he said accurate? Can someone offer some insight?

Once again, thanks for everyone's help!


I look at mine in a guick form to determine if I am making money. I use the formulas once and a while but they always tend to average out to what I use. So here goes

1. My gas bill versus my dryer revenue.
As an example I take in about $4000.00 per month versus a bill of $850.

2. Washer revenue versus water and power bills.
In the same month we took in $6500 washer and water sewer and power were $775.00.

I look at it like this, it costs money to heat water and it costs money to run the dryer motors so I just say they cancell each other and thier is my quick formula. I use a spread sheet and look at all numbers weekly, monthly and yearly. It also computes total income versus gig of gas and cubic meter of water. These formulas are fast and you can see any trends from them without having to do or collect to much extra, Just use the numbers you have to see what is happening. Now as you can see here (had this rep made this reprentation about my store)I could have quickly told the rep that he was wrong because my numbers have the dryers make 4.7 times the gas bill. I can guickly see I do okay on my dryers. Also for my store I use these numbers to set my washer and dryer prices. I want my utility costs to be less than 20% but as close to 15% as I can get.

[laschmove]

I want my utility costs to be less than 20% but as close to 15% as I can get.

I'd kill for that. We're averaging about 32%, at 6 miin per/qtr.