DELPHOS — We’re all familiar with the car wash song; perhaps soon there will be a tent wash song or a chair wash song.
Delphos Tent and Awning recently purchased equipment that will do just that — wash tents and metal folding chairs.
Jerry Wessel at Delphos Tent and Awning is the operator of the two new pieces of equipment and is very enthusiastic about the new machines.
“The tent washing machine saves on manpower, time and will recycle water to save on that, too,” he said.
The business’s owners had seen an advertisement for the washing machine and made a trip to Dayton to observe a similar machine, which is smaller than the one they purchased from a Hermann, Mo., manufacturer.
The equipment was shipped by truck and a factory representative set the machine up. A local plumber installed the plumbing equipment in the building where the machine is housed.
The business previously had a local company clean their tents. When that firm went out of business, they were using a business in Wapakoneta, which costs them more in time, labor and gas to make trips back and forth to that location.
The stainless steel machine can wash 3,000 square feet — 600 pounds of tent material — in two hours and uses 10 pounds of soap. Instead of an agitator like a regular machine, the drum moves in a circular motion, then reverses and moves counter-counterclockwise. The machine goes through a wash and two rinse cycles.
Once sand pump filters are installed, similar to a swimming pool filter, the water used can be recycled.
“We use about 450 gallons for each wash and two rinse cycles. With recycling, we’ll probably only lose about 50-100 gallons daily, doing three loads of wash,” Wessel said.
Wessel also operates the new chair washing machine purchased last week. It can wash approximately 70 metal folding chairs in 15 minutes.