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IVH to debut new $6M laundry facility

Ribbon-cutting on Friday

T-R PHOTO By MIKE DONAHEY Iowa Veterans Home Laundry Supervisor Hope Harvey is pictured with some of the facility’s new high-tech laundry equipment in its newly constructed building recently. IVH officials are hosting a ribbon-cutting and grand opening from 9 a.m. to noon Friday. The public is invited.

Getting laundry done right, and on time can be challenging for singles, couples and families.

Iowa Veterans Home Laundry Supervisor Hope Harvey has the task of getting it all done right and on time for approximately 500 residents.

However, Harvey and her team of 20 staff, one seamstress and 35 resident workers are now looking forward to a new 16,500-square foot facility with state-of-the-art machinery to get the job done.

Harvey and staff have been training in the new building next to Heinz Hall, and on the new machinery.

“Our new laundry will debut to the public from 9 a.m. to noon this Friday,” Commandant Timon Oujiri said. “We encourage all to come out and see it.”

Oujiri said the $6.2-million facility was funded 65 percent by the the Veterans Administration and 35 percent by the state.

Harvey is a veteran of laundry service work in the public and private sector, and is thrilled with the new facility and equipment which will improve operations, use less energy and water, as well as boosting worker morale.

The old laundry was in a window-less basement.

The new facility has windows and re-cycles clean air.

Harvey explained the IVH system: “We have two different colored bags. The red bag is for personal clothing. The green bag is for all other soiled laundry. Each morning these bags are sorted in the ‘soiled laundry room’ by hand. The green bags are sorted out, put into slings and dropped into the Continuous Batch Washer. Our new CBW will have five modules and 110-pound capacity of each module. It takes average six minutes to transfer goods from one module to another. The new CBW uses less energy, less water than our old model. Our old washers would use 2.7 gallons of water per pound, but with the new pulse-flow tunnel washer that is significantly reduced to .9 gallons per pound. It recovers water from extraction device and premixes it with fresh replenishment water using a level control.”

Last year the laundry facility cleaned an average of 7,000 pounds a day.

Laundry is returned to residents two or three times a week, depending on where in IVH a resident lives. This service is free to residents.

“By whichever means residents have their clothes laundered, it is extremely important that they have all their clothes marked with their name,” Harvey said. “If clothes items are not marked, they could get lost. If not claimed, unmarked clothing is donated to the clothes closet.”

The laundry department works Monday – Friday, 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

“It is one of the most popular shifts at IVH,” Harvey said. “We have low staff turn-over.”

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Contact Mike Donahey at 641-753-6611 or mdonahey@timesrepublican.com

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