Water Energy - Ozone Laundry System
Ozone Laundry is a term generally used to describe a philosophy of textile care. It uses energy and oxygen, in a unique way, to replace many of the chemicals and eliminate the hot water normally used in the traditional laundering process. Oxygen and energy (electricity or UV) are used to create ozone. Now, with advanced technology, this ozone can be used with cold water to replace most of the chemicals you currently use to deliver a superior finished product. This is the most effective and environmentally friendly way to clean, deodorize, and sanitize your laundry. This fundamental change to one of the major aspects of textile care comes with a litany of benefits that all serve to greatly improve the results of your laundry and to significantly reduce the day-to-day costs of your laundry operations.
The Water Energy Storm delivers an armada of powerful cleaning agents to your laundry
- Ozone
- OH (hydroxyl) Radicals
- Atomic Oxygen
- Diatomic Oxygen
- Hydrogen Peroxide
For any laundry, a quality finished product requires a combination of 4 things:
- Water
- Chemicals
- Time
- Agitation
If you reduce one, you must increase others to create the balance needed to reliably deliver a quality finished product. When used properly, ozone actually REPLACES many of the chemicals you would normally use to achieve the results you want.
Using ozone, instead of a lot of chemicals, keeps the proper mix required to deliver a superior finished product without having to increase any of the other components. Mechanical action will always be critical to achieve quality results, because mechanical action/agitation actually accounts for more than half of the cleaning action. Remember, people used to get their stuff clean down at the river by rubbing it on the rocks, without any soap! Lots of water and ‘elbow grease’ will get your clothes clean but both of those are hard to come by these days.
The energy contained within the hot water is being replaced by the energy contained within the ozone molecule. Also, because of the laws of physics, heat destroys ozone. Using hot water with ozone will neutralize its effectiveness.
Therefore, to take advantage of the power of ozone, you must only use cold water. Using ozone laundry correctly will drastically cut your hot water use and significantly reduce your electric bill and is a huge step toward sustainable laundry in your own home.
It is made entirely out of oxygen, right on the spot, and all you have to do is plug it in. There are no plastic bottles to discard; no chemical residues to get on you or end up on your sheets or in your clothes to make you itch, or worse; no chemicals going down the drain to contaminate your local surface water supplies; no hot water is needed which greatly reduces your energy bill and your carbon footprint; chlorine bleach is also eliminated and this is the most effective thing you can do to reduce indoor air pollution and eliminate nasty, cancer-causing THM’s from your home; double the life of your valuable linen by eliminating hot water and harsh chemicals and reduce the huge environmental impact of creating more sheets, towels, and clothing and then getting them to you.
Old School: Commercial
- Hot Water
- Alkali
- Detergent
- Acid
- Chlorine Bleach
- Anti-Chlor
- Fabric Softener
Old School: Residential
- Hot Water
- Detergent
- Chlorine Bleach
- Fabric Softener
Today for both Commercial and Residential
- Cold Water
- Ozone
- Limited Detergent
- No Chlorine Bleach
The big shift is realizing that you can achieve a superior finished product without using all the hot water and chemicals normally used to achieve a satisfactory finished product. Ozone is a highly effective oxidizer that delivers multiple cleaning factors to your laundry, using only cold water.
In traditional commercial laundry washes, so much alkali and hot water are used, that the wash water becomes very caustic and damaging to valuable linens. Most chemical suppliers will tell you this is done to help swell the fibers of the linen to release the dirt. Well, the fibers do swell, but only as a result of the extremely damaging effects the extremely high pH has on the fabric. Acid must be used to bring the pH back down to Earth before the load is finished. You do the same thing when you add acid to your swimming pool.
The truth about what is going on is that heat and extremely high pH are required to bring about the creation of OH Radicals from water (H²O) molecules. One of the Hydrogen atoms gets ripped-off the water molecule and voila, you’ve got a Hydroxyl Radical (OH) to do the heavy work. Hydroxyl Radicals are the most powerful oxidizers in the Universe – really! With ozone laundry, you can create the same OH radicals with a neutral pH, in cold water containing dissolved ozone. It is a revolution, and it really works!
Ozone works extremely well when properly integrated into your overall laundry program. There are many types of linens and many types of soil loading. Ozone is a powerful oxidant and it is what you need to destroy most stains, smells, bacteria, and viruses. With cold water, ozone, and a little bit of detergent, you can achieve cleaning and brightening for most items that is equal to what you would get using copious amounts of detergent, chlorine bleach, and hot water!
- Kill Covid-19, Staph, c.diff, and other spores, viruses and bacteria on your linen in seconds
- Wash in cold water only – save BIG on gas bills and slash your carbon footprint
- Cut chemical use by 75% - use only a small amount of detergent and nothing else in most cases
- Reduce water use up to 1/3 and increase productivity by shortening wash formulas
- Make towels softer and fluffier by eliminating chemical residues that stick to the fibers and dull your linen
- Brighten your clothes by washing in cold water with no harsh chemicals
- Greatly extend the life of fabrics by eliminating hot water and harsh chemicals
- Use the power of supercharged oxygen to totally clean and totally sanitize your linen
The Storm puts ozone in you wash water. Ozone is a purely natural compound made entirely of oxygen. It destroys odors with powerful natural processes similar to how they are destroyed when clothes are dried on a clothesline. Suddenly, old T-Shirts smell like new again! Pet beds smell like new again! Cloth diapers smell like new again! Items that have been stored for a while (coats, clothing, blankets, curtains, pillows, etc.) smell like new again! Smoke damaged items smell like new again! Antiquities you may inherit will smell like new again! Hand-me-downs will smell like new again! Remember how the sheets and towels smelled at Grandma’s house after she brought them in from the clothesline? That’s what you can expect your linen to smell like when you get a Storm. No perfumes are needed to make your linen smell sweet and natural, like nature intended.
Hunters: if you want to remove the smells from your clothing and hunting gear to aid in your camouflage, get a Storm. Ozone destroys the odors that will surely give you away. Win-Win!
Over time, washing with the Storm and using very few, if any, chemicals, will actually rejuvenate your old towels by removing layers and layers of chemical residues and hard water buildup from the terry. This will make the towels softer and fluffier as these residues are dissolved and removed from the fabric by the ozone. You will feel like you are at a 5-star hotel when you wrap your body in a soft, fluffy, sun-dried-fresh towel that you washed in ozone. You may be able to hold off on purchasing a new set of towels for another couple of years when you start using a Water Energy Storm! Win-Win!
Study after study has shown that ozone is by far, the most powerful sanitizer available to the consumer. Ozone destroys bacteria and viruses without chlorine bleach or other poisonous, man-made disinfectants. Ozone destroys all of these microbiological invaders, thousands of times faster than good-old Chlorine Bleach does, without any of the nasty, cancer-causing vapors created when you use chlorine. Ozone also destroys many types of nasty critters that chlorine and hot water just can’t touch. One of them is Clostridium Difficile or c.diff. This mighty little spore-producing bacterium can cause gastrointestinal chaos and even fatal diarrhea. It is much more common than you might think, and it is transmitted through the feces of someone who has it. Chlorine and hot water do nothing to stop its progress. It can be spread from one person to another through contaminated linen in the washing machine! In fact, one contaminated rag, or pair of underwear, can infect an entire load of laundry with this disease that can then infect others when they come into contact with the ‘clean’ linen. Ozone in cold water absolutely destroys c.diff in a very short time.
Ozone also destroys drug-resistant MRSA staph and other drug-resistant bacteria. Ozone destroys them by blasting holes in their cell membranes on the molecular level wherever ozone comes into contact with the bacteria. This type of assault cannot be avoided by any mutation or other defense mechanism of the bacteria. This means that ozone will ALWAYS work to destroy the bacteria and/or virus – ALWAYS! Chlorine bleach cannot say that!
Remember, ozone breaks down rapidly. As it destroys the bacteria and other contaminants in your laundry, it falls apart and some of it ends up as simple, dissolved oxygen (DO) that goes down the drain in the wastewater. This oxygen has the most positive impact on the wastewater treatment process of anything you could possibly send down the drain. Its benefit is near the polar opposite of the destructive effect all those chemicals have on the process. With the Storm, it really is a Win-Win situation!
Washing most everything in cold water greatly reduces the load on your hot water heater. This translates into lower energy usage – a much welcome and huge benefit of ozone laundry. The Storm only uses a tiny amount of energy to make ozone. The energy savings are huge!
Laundry detergents all have wetting agents in them to help the water saturate the clothing and boost the effectiveness of the detergent. However, they hold on to water and at the end of the cycle, you’ve got more water going to your dryer, making it run longer, and taking more energy to dry your clothes. When you use a Storm instead of all the chemicals, you eliminate the wetting agents and you get more water out of your clothes in the spin cycle. This means shorter drying times and another big energy savings! You will cut your energy bill by hundreds of dollars per year and you will truly cut your carbon footprint dramatically! Win-Win!
Get a Storm and cut detergent use by 75% or more and eliminate chlorine bleach and fabric softener entirely. Ozone does the majority of the cleaning and a small amount of detergent will dissolve any oily/greasy dirt that may be on your clothes, then it all gets rinsed down the drain. Ozone is made entirely of oxygen. It cleans your clothes the way Nature intended and leaves absolutely no residues behind. If you are washing towels or other lightly-soiled items, absolutely no detergent or other chemicals are required. You will get pristinely-clean linen that feels and smells heavenly! You will save hundreds of dollars per year on chemical costs and you won’t be throwing a lot of plastic containers away. Win-Win!
To use the Storm correctly, you need to greatly reduce your chemical use. We recommend that you use about 1/8th the amount of detergent that you were using before the Storm. It is also recommended to use a plain soap that is free of dyes, optical brighteners, or perfumes. These compounds actually destroy some of your ozone and reduce the effectiveness of the Storm. You want to get the full impact of all of the ozone directly on the dirt, odors, and microorganisms in your linen. A small amount of plain soap is sufficient to dissolve any oil/grease that may be present; encapsulate the dirt and other contaminant residues that are left after the ozone oxidizes them; and then make sure everything goes down the drain with the water. Using very few chemicals with the powerful cleaning action of ozone means your linen will be virtually residue-free. No more itching all night from chemical residues on your sheets. No more itching during the day after you switch detergents. No more rashes or other reactions relating to chemicals in your detergent that you can’t even identify. Nothing but clean, fresh, sanitized linen comes into contact with your sensitive skin. Win-Win!
Eliminating chlorine bleach from your washing machine also eliminates one of the primary sources of indoor air pollution in your home. Chlorine is a halogen. Using chlorine bleach pretty much anywhere creates hundreds of powerful, cancer-causing compounds called THM’s. You do not want these invisible vapors, or VOC’s, floating around in your house exposing you and your loved ones to an increased risk of lung cancer. You hear about formaldehyde coming from carpet, floor and wall coverings, and other building materials. Well, the same thing and many other scarier fumes come out of your washer when you use chlorine bleach. That ‘clean chlorine smell’ we are all so comfortable with is actually something that we should work to eliminate from our lives because it indicates we are in the presence of powerful, cancer-causing vapors. Using ozone instead of chlorine bleach totally eliminates the production of these nasty vapors while providing far superior sanitation! Win-Win!
Using a Storm with cold water to wash most of your clothing and linen items greatly reduces the amount of carbon you cause to be released into the atmosphere. When you stop using hot water, you also stop the fossil fuels from being burned to heat that water. Using a Storm also shortens your drying times, reducing your carbon footprint even more. Whether your dryer and hot water heater are gas or electric, you reduce the use of fossil fuels when you start using a Storm and stop using hot water. Using the Storm reduces your carbon footprint much more than you would think is possible. Simply washing a large load of towels in cold water instead of the standard hot water wash will reduce carbon emissions by more than 1 pound of carbon per load of laundry. There are very few things, if any, that you can do so easily to reduce your carbon footprint so drastically without significantly lowering your quality of life. Using the Storm actually improves your quality of life in a multitude of ways! Win-Win!
For every load of laundry you do in cold water, you keep about 1 pound of carbon from being released into the atmosphere! With about 750,000,000 loads of laundry being done in the USA each week, that is a whopping 375,000 tons of carbon being released into the atmosphere from washing clothes at home, every week! That’s almost 20 million tons of carbon per year contributing to Climate Change that we could eliminate if everyone got a Storm!
Clothes, sheets, towels, blankets, quilts, etc. are all made of tiny fibers that take a ferocious beating every time you wash them. Strong detergent, harsh bleach, and hot water literally shatter the fibers on a microscopic level. As the fibers come apart and fray, they end up in your dryer’s lint filter. All these fibers will love it when you get a Storm. Eliminating harsh chemicals and hot water greatly reduces the wear and tear on your linen, every time you wash. Cut your costs and extend linen life from 2 to 5 times. Win-Win!
Longer linen life translates into significantly less pressure on the environment. It takes a lot of natural resources to produce new linen by growing cotton and by making new synthetic polyester fibers out of petroleum products, then harvesting; processing; manufacturing; packaging; and distributing it. Get spectacular results from the Storm and save the Planet! Win-Win!
Traditional laundry processes have a dark side. All the chemicals you normally use must go somewhere. They go down the drain and wreak havoc on the process at the local wastewater treatment plant. Eventually, they are discharged into the surface water supplies in the area. Surfactants (soap), bleach, phosphates, dyes, perfumes, optical brighteners (nano particles), foaming agents, etc. all end up contaminating the surface water where your city discharges its treated wastewater. These chemicals are toxic to the aquatic life forms naturally present in the environment. Using a Water Energy Storm produces a superior finished product without the use of all those toxic chemicals. A Storm puts dissolved ozone (oxygen) in the water going to the washing machine. Ozone does the cleaning, bleaching, and sanitizing needed for almost everything you wash without the need for the abundance of chemicals people normally use. Also, ozone oxidizes the dirt and other contaminants removed from your laundry and converts them to a state that is much more ‘friendly’ to the environment and to the wastewater treatment process. When using a Storm, you get dissolved oxygen (DO) in the wastewater and that is by far, the most environmentally-friendly and wastewater-treatment-process-friendly compound that you could possibly put down your drain – and it all happens by default when using a Storm! It is really worth doing some research on this topic to understand just how detrimental all of these chemicals are to surface water supplies. A Storm greatly reduces to totally eliminates BOD and COD from your wastewater and provides dissolved oxygen to benefit the wastewater treatment process. Win-Win!
A Water Energy Storm is totally hypoallergenic. The Storm does not put anything into the water that could possibly cause any allergic reaction. Also, and more importantly, the Storm replaces chemicals that do cause allergic reactions. If you, or someone in your family, itches or develops a rash from wearing clothing, sleeping on sheets, or using towels that have been washed in traditional laundry chemicals, you should get a Storm immediately to alleviate their suffering. Another benefit of using a Storm to wash all your stuff is that the ozone will oxidize and ‘deactivate’ any allergens that might be on your clothing or your sheets and towels from pets or from many other sources. Again, a Win-Win!
The Storm will replace most of the chemicals you currently use in your laundry. This leads to far fewer empty plastic containers being discarded and ending up in landfills or even worse, ending up in our waterways and eventually in our oceans. Plastic waste is emerging as a global scourge that is driving a worldwide effort to reduce the number of plastic items we use on a daily basis. It is widely believed that some plastics may not ever fully break down in the environment, even after thousands of years. Get a Storm, save money on chemicals and cut plastic waste in the oceans. Win-Win!
The Storm comes with a multitude of ‘Green’ benefits for every user including: a dramatic reduction in energy use and therefore a significant reduction in your carbon footprint from using only cold water in your wash and shortening your drying times; greatly reduce the burden to surface water supplies by eliminating toxic chemicals and supporting the biological process at your local wastewater treatment plant by adding dissolved oxygen (DO) to your wastewater; a big reduction in the environmental cost of producing new clothing and linen due to the extension of linen life – growing cotton and making polyester fibers out of oil & gas and then manufacturing new linens and transporting them to stores where you buy them all comes with a huge environmental cost; totally eliminating cancer-causing VOC’s coming from your washer when you eliminate chlorine bleach; reducing plastic waste going into landfills and potentially into our oceans by using far fewer chemicals; reducing illness and the associated loss of productivity and the trips to the doctor by providing far greater sanitation of your linen; and more. Win-Win-Win-Win-Win-Win-Win….!
Using a Storm in your laundry is by far, the most effective move you can make toward having a ‘sustainable’ laundry process in your own home. No one likes to see dead fish or floating plastic bottles or more smog or higher energy bills just to mention a few of the things a Storm will help you avoid. Get great results and move toward sustainability with a Storm. Win-Win!
The Storm destroys mold and Mildew! This greatly extends the time before your laundry will sour from sitting in a washer after the cycle has finished. We’ve all done it. Put a load of laundry on and forget it. When we remember, hours later, everything inside has soured, especially if it is warm in the washroom. So, you wash them again. This adds unnecessary wear and tear on your stuff and it doubles the amount of water and chemicals you use for the same amount of linen and from my experience, it doesn’t truly get rid of the sour smell. It also accelerates the wear and tear on your stuff. When you use a Storm, the ozone will destroy the mold and mildew spores thereby preventing the growth of these sour-smelling critters in your wet laundry for hours longer. Win-Win!
The Storm destroys mold and mildew and other microbiological contaminants that can grow inside HE washers and create unpleasant odors, or worse. These High Efficiency washers use far less water per load than traditional top-loaders. This is good for the environment and for your water bill, but it doesn’t facilitate a thorough flushing of your washer during each load. This results in dirt, detergent, hair, lint, and other organic residues building-up inside your washer, hiding in the drum, outside of the moving basket.
This buildup is the perfect environment for the rapid growth of all types of bacteria, mold, and mildew. Throughout your day, you never know what type of bacteria, or worse, you may come into contact with and get on your clothing. Sitting in seats that someone else had their posterior against for an hour or more just before you sat in it. Coming into contact with a counter at the bank, Post Office, WalMart, Kroger, etc. Leaning on or brushing against a railing on a wall at the train station or on a bus or on an escalator or anywhere else you may go during the day. Dangerous germs are everywhere! Then, when you wash your clothes, everything on them is spread throughout your washer. If you’re washer has any organic buildup hiding inside (and they all do), it becomes a breeding ground for all the nasty little creatures you soaked it with! They set up shop and multiply! The unpleasant smells coming from your washer are from the noxious gases these critters emit as they grow. What’s worse is these germs are multiplying inside your washer and will be there in huge numbers the next time you wash something. The Storm provides the perfect solution. The Storm allows you to stop using almost all detergent so no more detergent buildup in the recesses of your washer for hair and lint to stick to! The Storm sanitizes everything in your washer and helps break up any residues that may be hiding in there where you can’t see them! Over time, your washer will be like new again! a Win-Win!
Installation tip: Some HE washers require that water be drawn from both the Hot and Cold-water lines for every fill. if your HE washer requires this, you will not be able to completely eliminate the hot water unless you purchase a water hose ‘Y’ fitting at the hardware store and connect both of the water lines going to your washer directly to the water ‘Outlet’ of the Storm. This ‘Y’ fitting is not included with the Storm. You cannot simply turn off the hot water going to the washer because some HE washers will go into ‘Error’ mode if there is not pressure on both water lines.
Using the Storm over time will help clean out your drain! The Storm adds dissolved ozone to your water and as it breaks down during use, some of it ends up as dissolved oxygen (DO) in your wastewater. Dissolved oxygen is the absolute best thing you can possibly add to your wastewater because it accelerates the wastewater treatment process. Bacteria is the primary active component of all municipal wastewater treatment systems (POTW) because bacteria break down and consume all the waste, including oil and grease, leaving only clean water after they eat everything. Dissolved oxygen is what sustains these necessary bacteria. If you have thriving bacteria down in your drains, they will liquify any sludge that has built up over time and keep your drains flowing freely.
If you will also stop using bleach and greatly reduce the use of other sanitizing chemicals that end up going down the drain in your toilet, sink, bathtub, shower, or anywhere else, you will allow the bacteria in the system to do their job and clean out your drain pipes. An ammonia-based cleaner is a good alternative because after it does its job and breaks down, it will not kill the necessary bacteria living down in the drain pipes. Using bleach or other bacteria-killing chemicals anywhere they end up going down the drain will kill the necessary bacteria that live in your drain. This causes the sludge to build up and eventually block the flow. Get a Storm and nix the bleach! You’ll benefit the environment and clean out your drains! a Win-Win!
Be it known that people almost always use far too much bleach and other cleansers anyway. Overuse is totally counter-productive to the wastewater treatment process and significantly reduces the quality of your finished product.
Ozone is Supercharged Oxygen
Ozone is a powerful and versatile compound that already works for you in many ways, every day, to protect you from harm and make your life much better. Ozone is Supercharged Oxygen. It is a triatomic oxygen molecule, made up of 3 oxygen atoms. Ozone is made, using UV or electricity, directly from the oxygen in the air around us. Lightning, in a thunderstorm, makes copious amounts of ozone which then cleans the air in a huge area around thunderstorms by destroying airborne germs, mold, mildew, and pollen. It also neutralizes many industrial chemicals and smog that may also be present in the atmosphere. It’s one of Nature’s best ways of keeping the planet clean and healthy.
UV rays from the sun shine on oxygen in our atmosphere and create an ultra-thin layer of ozone in the far upper atmosphere. This ‘ozone layer’ acts as a powerful reflecting mechanism to block the sun’s UV rays and keeps them from frying everything on the planet.
Ozone is used to keep fruits and vegetables fresh and germ-free before they get to the market.
Ozone is used to sanitize things like CPAP devices for your safety. Ozone is used in the fire restoration process to destroy smoke odors in clothes, curtains, pillows, sheets, towels, electronics, and all other items from a fire. Ozone is used to remove smoke and other odors from hotel rooms, automobile interiors, Churches, movie houses, etc. Ozone is used to sanitize Hospitals, clinics, and Government buildings (Court House, Post Office, DMV, shelter, etc.) after contamination with germs and viruses responsible for a multitude of illnesses like SARS, tuberculosis, anthrax, etc.
Ozone has been used for more than 100 years to sanitize drinking water
It is currently used in Las Vegas to recycle every drop of wastewater that goes down the drain by cleaning and sanitizing it, so it can be used again as drinking water – yes, you heard that right. Currently, the largest ozone installation in the world is at a water treatment facility for the City of Los Angeles. Ozone is extremely effective, totally natural, and creates no industrial by-products in its creation or use.
Ozone and Heat
Ozone is an unstable molecule and heat is one of its primary enemies. Ozone is born of a delicate balance between a number of elements and physical processes that must be maintained as long as possible to take advantage of the many outstanding benefits it has to offer. Ozone is made with 3 oxygen atoms that stick together only as long as you keep them calm and cool. When the temperature rises, the oxygen atoms begin to return to their more rowdy nature and quickly end the ménage a trois! That special ‘energy’ they had when it was a group thing, has been lost. You’ve got to have water to wash your clothes. But ozone is a gas. If you want to use it in your laundry, it has to be dissolved in the water you use, before it falls apart. It is a difficult process. The ozone gas and the water must be combined for as long as possible, to get as much of the ozone as possible, to dissolve into the water. If the water is above 95-degrees, it is just not going to happen. It’s physics. However, as the water becomes cooler, the amount of ozone that can be dissolved into the water increases – all the way down to freezing! If you have really cold water, the Storm will work extremely well for you. Don’t worry if your water is 85-degrees though. The process still works well under 95-degrees, especially if the water doesn’t move too fast. This is the reason the water moves relatively slowly through the Storm – that’s what makes it work! If the water moved too rapidly through the matrix, the level of dissolved ozone in the water would drop, and you would not receive optimal results. It is advisable to use only cold water for both the wash and rinse cycles. This will help you maintain the integrity of the ozone molecules dissolved in the water for as long as possible where they can do their magic and deliver a finished product that you never imagined possible! There will be those days that you’ve just got to wash that one ‘special’ item in a big hurry. No worries, you can simply run a load with the Wash and Rinse set to ‘Warm’ and the cycle will finish in record time!
Ozone and Bacteria
Ozone is extremely effective at rapidly destroying bacteria, viruses, mold and mildew spores, and other living contaminants. It only takes a few seconds for ozone to kill most of the common bacteria and viruses you might have on your laundry and only a few seconds more to kill just about everything else. It is really much more effective than any other sanitizer you could use, and it does not create any harmful vapors or residual by-products. In fact, ozone works 3,000 times faster than chlorine bleach without all the nasty, carcinogenic THM’s created when you use bleach. Articles of clothing, underwear, sheets, towels, pet beds, and other washable items can contain harmful and potentially dangerous germs that could spread to other items in your washer and eventually back to you and your family. Ozone in your wash will move the needle much closer to complete sanitation than any other sanitizer available. With a Storm, you can wash everything in ozone – effortlessly!
Ozone and Bleaching
Dissolved ozone at the concentrations provided by a Water Energy Storm will provide bleaching action similar to using hydrogen peroxide. Also, you will not have to worry about any damage to colored items being washed in ozone and cold water. Heat and Chlorine bleach may also be required for bleaching an occasional stubborn stain like ink or dye. For these types of stains, you will need to make sure you wash them in hot water and bleach to get the stubborn stain out before you run them through the dryer. Because once they go through the dryer, the stains will probably never come out. Once the heat in the dryer ‘sets’ the stain, the only way to get it out is with a pair of scissors. Eliminating chlorine bleach will vastly improve the indoor air quality in your house. Chlorine is a halogen and when mixed with organics (sweat; blood; spit; urine; waste; all food; beer/wine; most dirt; etc.) it creates nasty, cancer-causing VOC’s made of halogenated compounds. These compounds are referred to as THM’s or DBP’s and there are literally hundreds of them, including formaldehyde and chloroform! These powerful cancer-causing compounds float invisibly through your house and expose your loved ones to unnecessary risk of developing lung cancer. When you smell that ‘clean chlorine smell’ that’s really what you’re getting and it’s not a good thing!
Ozone and Cold Water
Ozone is not the be-all, end-all solution for every laundry issue. Some linen will still need some hot water and traditional chemicals to get it clean. The amount of hot water required is dependent on how many really dirty items you have to wash. For items with grease, cooking oil, lipstick, shoe polish, or other greasy/oily stains, you may need to wash these items in hot water to melt the grease and get it out of the fabric. So, make sure and set the wash temp to ‘Hot’ or ‘Warm’ and set the rinse temp to ‘Cold’. You will get the grease out in the wash cycle and you will get the sanitizing and deodorizing action of the ozone in the cold rinse cycle. It is better not to use fabric softener. The ozone will eliminate most of the chemical residues from the detergent and your linen will smell clothesline fresh right out of the dryer! Cold water is not suited to work well on greasy stains because of the physical nature of oil at low temperatures. Oil-based products are harder to break down when they are cold and less viscous. Heat and standard chemistry are required for more rapid emulsification of these oil-based stains. The heat melts the oil and allows the soap to dissolve it and the water carries it down the drain.
Ozone Cleansing Effect
The Storm dissolves ozone gas into the wash water. This dissolved ozone is what does the cleaning and destroys odors, bacteria, and stains in your laundry. The ozone that is available in the wash water at the beginning of the wash cycle is ‘consumed’ or used-up by the contaminants in the laundry as they come into contact with each other. Therefore, the dirtier your laundry is, the more ozone it will take to thoroughly clean it. If you have a load of really dirty items, like your undergarments after a long workout, or a day of hiking in the mountains, or pet beds that have been well used, or something similar, it is recommended that you divide the load into two piles and wash two loads instead of one. This will reduce the laundry/ozone ratio and give you more ozone power for the items in the washing machine. You can also wash the same load twice but that adds to the wear and tear on your linen and reduces linen life.
The Water Energy Green Laundry System was developed working with NASA
The Storm has its roots in a project we began in the 1990’s, working on the Space Shuttle Program with NASA. NASA asked us to engineer a way to clean the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB’s) and their enormous parachutes without creating a slug of toxic wastewater that had to be dealt with. Their objective was to develop a total cleaning system that would eliminate toxic chemical residues on the parachutes and in the wastewater, reuse the water again and again, and achieve an extreme level of cleanliness for all items being washed.
Our engineers quickly determined that ozone would be the only compound that could achieve the level of cleanliness they demanded while not adding any chemical residues to the wastewater.
After a Herculean effort, our engineers developed the ‘Tech2Ozone’ process and designed a ‘Rocket Wash’ around it that delivered exactly what NASA was looking for – very clean rockets and no nasty wastewater discharge. It was an incredible success! The mass transfer process we developed (dissolving ozone gas into water) was so effective that it was later applied to a multitude of other industries where dissolved ozone is an attractive alternative to traditional chemicals, including wastewater and potable water treatment, and commercial laundry.
It has led Water Energy to introduce the Storm to the residential and light commercial laundry markets. This compact, all-in-one ozone laundry system for residential use can bring the same level of cleanliness and confidence to you and your family that NASA required for its operations where ‘ultra clean’ results were an absolute must!