Drench showers are an essential for industrial safety, and by using a tankless water heater, you can ensure that you're drench showers are keeping employees safe.
Workplace safety is an absolute must in any industrial setting. This requires a combination employee training, safety planning and safety equipment. Industrial workers often come in contact with many potentially dangerous materials including harmful chemicals and extremely hot materials. While preparation can go a long way in preventing accidents with these kinds of dangerous assets, you need to be prepared for accidents on site.
In industrial plants, one of the most important pieces of equipment for safety is the drench shower, because it can quickly cleanse workers of these harmful materials before any serious harm can occur. For this reason, they are a necessary component of every industrial facility.
What's required of a drench shower
For these appliances to function properly, drench showers need to be able to meet a number of specific requirements so that all employees are safe. The first is that they need to meet the ANSI Z358.1-2009 standards for tepid water temperature. This means that water temperature needs to be between 60 degrees and 100 degrees Fahrenheit so that a user is thoroughly cleansed at a temperature that will neither scald nor induce hypothermia on the user, according to Industrial Hygiene News.
OHS Online noted that another requirement is that the shower be able to produce 15 minutes of immediate and constant water supply, so that the user has ample time to make sure he or she is safely cleansed of the material. Finally, these showers need to be installed, a minimum of 10 seconds walking from any potentially dangerous chemical or machine, according to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. This way, injured employees can access the shower as soon as possible.
How tankless addresses these issues
There are a number of industrial water heating solutions out there, but when it comes to meeting the requirements of a drench shower, electric tankless hot water heaters are among the best choices. They are 90 percent smaller than conventional tank water heaters, which makes them easy to install at the point of use. Because hot water tanks need to be housed in a utility closet or boiler room, they can be difficult to hook up to multiple showers throughout a facility. In contrast, the tankless water heater can accommodate any installation point, making it much easier to meet the "10 second rule."
Tankless water heaters also work on demand. This means that as soon as water is called for at the faucet, it begins heating the water, providing an instant and continuous supply. Additionally, these hot water heaters can be set to a specified temperature, ensuring that the water is within the range that is specified by ANSI.
These performance aspects are a major reason why tankless water heaters are becoming an ideal choice for safety, but there are additional benefits what come with them as well – namely, efficiency. These heaters are able to produce hot water at a thermal efficiency rate of 99 percent, meaning that 99 percent of the energy that goes into the heater comes out as heat, compared to just 67 percent in even the most efficient hot water tanks.
This efficiency combined with performance necessary for drench showers make tankless hot water heaters an ideal choice for any industrial facility, especially as focus shifts toward completing operations more efficiently. At the end of the day, employee safety comes first, but the bonus cost savings are tough to ignore as well.