Cooperstown Dreams Park develops Continental laundry

June 28, 2010 - PRLog -- Each week during the summer, more than 1,200 12- and 13-year-old boys play baseball at Cooperstown Dreams Park, in Cooperstown, N.Y. Focused on unmatched service, the Park offers lodging, entertainment and competitive baseball. In the interest of customer service, it also handles all visitor laundry – equating to 5,000 pounds of soiled team uniforms and personal items each day.
Cooperstown Dreams Park delivers the complete package to youth baseball teams, from breakfast in the morning and lodging, to evening entertainment. Recently, the Park began tackling dirty uniforms in-house with a new, on-premise Continental Girbau laundry.
That’s when a preexisting storage building was transformed into an on-site, energy-efficient laundry capable of handling more than 35,000 pounds of soiled laundry each week. Key to the facility’s success is a water reclamation system that filters used wash water for reuse in the laundry. Also critical was the selection of energy-efficient Continental Girbau washer-extractors and drying tumblers capable of efficiently cleaning a variety of items – uniforms, towels, sheets, blankets and players’ personal items, such as socks, underwear, jeans and shirts.
To develop the laundry the right way, Managing Director Mike Walter turned to Ben Gauch of Gauch Distributing, in Rensselaer, N.Y. “We talked to a lot of laundry equipment distributors and did our due diligence and settled on Gauch,” says Walter. Ultimately, the new on-premise laundry was equipped with eight 55-pound and two 130-pound capacity Continental soft-mount Pro-Series Washer-Extractors. The Park chose freestanding washers over traditional hard-mount washers for a number of reasons, according to Walter. Hard-mount machines require a thick concrete foundation and bolts for installation. The soft-mount Pro-Series Washers don’t require either – helping lower installation costs for the Park. The new soft-mount washers slide into place without bolts, and can be easily relocated in the future if needed, according to Walter. They also offer efficiency, programmability and productivity.
“Continental soft-mount washers reach very high extract speeds, exceeding 387 G-force,” says Gauch, who installed the Cooperstown laundry equipment. “Because soft-mount washers reach far greater extract speeds, they also remove considerably more water from every load than hard-mount washers. This can cut resulting dryer time by 50 percent, lower natural gas consumption considerably, and greatly improve the amount of laundry the facility can get done in a day.”
“The wash cycle in total takes about 30 minutes,” says Walter. “The total time for uniforms to wash and dry is about 45 minutes, which means we can get a lot of laundry done in a short time period.”
Complementing the washers are five energy-efficient Continental 45-pound capacity, dual-pocket stack dryers and two 175-pound capacity single-pocket dryers.
“We run the laundry as a 24-hour operation,” says Walter. “Team uniforms are done by the night shift from 9 p.m. to around 6 a.m.” The uniforms must be complete before each team’s first game the next day. Coaches simply drop off and pick up uniforms at a counter located in the corner of the Baseball Village dining pavilion – the ultimate customer service, according to Walter.
In order to properly wash a variety of items, the Continental Washers are programmed to combine the optimum combination of cleaning chemicals, water temperature, rinses, baths, mechanical action and extract speeds. That way, no matter what items are in the load – baseball pants, towels, sheets – they are washed correctly every time, according to Walter. “We just select a program code and press start and it goes,” he says. “We don’t have to measure detergents and chemicals because the washer automatically injects the correct type and amount based on the program number. It’s a no-brainer.”
The new on-premise laundry has allowed Cooperstown Dreams Park to successfully serve customers in an environmentally friendly way, attests Walter. “Before, teams would sign up for laundry service that they paid for themselves,” he says. “Now, we do it in-house, paying the labor and machines to give the teams better service.”
To find out more, about Continental Girbau laundry products, visit www.continentalgirbau.com.