CH-99-16-3 -- Hot Water Use at Coin Laundries PDF

Detailed data on hot water use for one year are presented for two coin laundries. The first is a three-machine laundry that serves half of a 50-unit apartment house, and the second is an eight-machine laundry that serves an 82-unit apartment house. For the smaller laundry, the maximum possible demand - i.e., three machines simultaneously filling with hot water - occurred more than once per month. For the larger laundry, the maximum instantaneous demand was equivalent to four machines simultaneously filling with hot water. At this site, the shortest interval in which hot water use equalled that for all eight machines running hot washes was 35 minutes. The data on hot water use for the two laundries were used to validate a methodology for sizing hot water heaters that had been presented at an ASHRAE Symposium (Hiller 1998). This methodology, which accounts for heating rate, storage capacity, and water temperatures, successfully "predicted" the conditions when the water heaters would and would not be adequate for the measured loads. The data are an important part of ongoing efforts to characterize the highly diverse "universe" of hot water use in commercial buildings.

Units: I-P