hydroponik
Senior member
lol @ short sleeve dress shirts.
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"Drycleaned" vs. "Laundered" vs. "Butt-raped".....
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lol @ short sleeve dress shirts.
redgtxdi
Diamond Member
Short sleeve dress shirts = certain annihilation here in So Cal! 😉
Note to Magnus..........
Here in So Cal they're called "Cleaners"😛............Yup......as in "Dry Cleaners"😛 😛...........(Laundry in the phone books direct you to cleaners, thus and so, etc. etc., fax mentis incendium gloria culpum, memo bis punitor delicatum! etc. etc.).
Dr. Detroit
Diamond Member
Long sleeve dress shirts are laundered. Washed then starched & pressed.
Dry cleaning is for fabrics that could be destroyed in a normal laundry. Silks, wools, taffeta, cashmere all go into the dry cleaning and is usalluy more expensive.
Laundry is generally $1-$2 a shirt
Dry cleaning can go up to $8/item depending on the difficulty. Expect wedding dresses to be more.
Dry cleaning is for fabrics that could be destroyed in a normal laundry. Silks, wools, taffeta, cashmere all go into the dry cleaning and is usalluy more expensive.
Laundry is generally $1-$2 a shirt
Dry cleaning can go up to $8/item depending on the difficulty. Expect wedding dresses to be more.
redgtxdi
Diamond Member
Ahhhh.....................thanks 12B!! About the most honestly, informative post in the bunch. (No offense to others who genuinely intended to help.😉 )
Although I will say that they wanted to charge extra for starch & I don't care for it unless it's a true dress-shirt.
P.S. Chuck Norris can't have his dress shirts starched or his shirts have to be registered as deadly weapons! 😀
Drop the fearmongering please; that claim likely is specific only to perchlorethylene, and theres been a debate about it for years. as far as what Ive read is concerned, testing linked to cancer done in (iirc, its been a while) mice exposed the subjects to highly unusual doses of the solvent. A consumer would *never* get exposed to it in such a way, if at all, and workers are very unlikely to.
if you have a source youd care to cite id be particularly interested; especially if its connected to a different solvent.
fwiw, perc (what we call it for short) leaves zero residue on any cleaned items if properly handled and is no danger to the consumer. the handling requirements are *very* strict so as to avoid contact with the solvent.
there are other "alternative" solvents, so named because perc has been the industry standard for decades and nothing else has taken a significant hold (as of my last reading on the subject, a good 8 months ago). My dad and his father both worked with the stuff for decades, and neither have cancer. Ok, his dad is dead, but he had no cancer. Ive known other guys who worked in the industry for years....also no cancer.
The alternatives include petroleum-based solvents and even pressurized CO2 as a solvent. There are some others, Im not too familiar with them, as I havent worked as a drycleaner for a number of months, and only have specific experience with perc and DF-2000 (a petroleum-based solvent)
I think it's worth it if you have to wear a suit or button down shirt to work. A meager iron can't compare to those giant steam presses they have at the dry cleaner. I didn't think it was worth it for slacks but for $20 every two weeks I thought it was well worth it for button down shirts. Fortunately I no longer have to wear button downs so it saves me the money 🙂
i mostly agree. if you need dress shirts pressed and suck at doing it, they can take a while, and may be worth the 2 bucks if you need to look good at work.
i couldnt tell you how many polo/knit shirts, tshirts, and jeans we got in on a regular basis. we also hand a few customers who liked their *bed sheets* starched and pressed weekly. this is one i still dont get.
even more surprising is the amount of *work* clothes we got in from people that were beyond really cleaning. i cant imagine what some people are thinking; but i got some nasty stuff in regularly.
also, a good drycleaner can remove a stain you may never get out at home.
of course, a decent place will do more than dry cleaning and laundry. we cleaned hats, shoes, leather goods, fur, stuffed animals, rugs, drapes, curtains, comforters, cushions....mostly anything that would fit in the door if we felt we could do it without damaging it, and do it well enough that it was worth charging for.
we also handled "press-only" items for people who wanted to save a few bucks (really, the cleaning itself is only a moderate portion of the cost) and did alterations as well
if i wasnt broke id be willing to bet it got laundered after the stain was worked on. *most* food stains wont come out in drycleaning and get pre-treated, the main exception being a grease/oil stain from some sort of fried food.
its always good to take a stain to a drycleaner if you dont know how to deal with it, but just because you took it to a drycleaner *does not EVER* mean the item was drycleaned.
ive wetcleaned (cleaned in water, but not a machine-wash) *Alot* of "dry clean only" items to get a stain out. And Ive had countless customers say they want something drycleaned and we laundered it anyway becase when it comes down to it, most people know nothing about one or the other, and just want what will make their garment look best.
Some stuff looks, and cleans, *much* better when its laundered. A dress shirt is one of those things. The only time id ever dryclean one was if someone had gotten alot of grease/oil on it from something, and even then, it got washed and pressed afterwards because finishing a drycleaned dress-shirt is a waste of time.
what exactly is the laundering process at a place like that? just a huge industrial washing machine? what is "finishing" a shirt? hell, what TF is dry cleaning? i thought it was putting the item on a padded device, kinda like a vertical ironing pad, and then pressing it with hot vapor?
i told them to dryclean the shirt because i did not want to shrinkage and wrinkling from a full-saturation waterwash and dry cycle... it came out sized excatly as it came in and is stain-free!
Im going to do this off the top of my head, so its not as organized as it could be.
Laundering:
Clothes to get laundered get sorted by color and "weight". If there are any noticeable or bad stains, they will get pre-treated.
-Dress shirts, and often khakis that are laundered, are washed together in a rather large washer. Some laundromats will have a similar wash sized for comforters. They usually start at a 30lb capacity for a smaller washer. The extraction cycle spins the basket at something like 60Gs.
-The washes are programmed to input certain chemicals at certain times, wash for certain lengths of time, rinse, add next chemical, etc.
-"Finishing" if the final act of pressing/preparing the garment for wear after it has been cleaned and is referred to for laundry or drycleaning, though the finishing process differs greatly.
-Dress-shirts are extracted, but still damp to the touch when pressed (as are other items people may want starched). There is *usually* 3 parts to finishing a dress shirt initially:
1: The body of the shirt is placed over a form that goes into a cabinet. *Large* steel plates, heated with ~95PSI of steam (Well over 300F, iirc) are clamped down onto this "buck" with ~80PSI of compressed air, turn the shirt into a sandwhich.
2: The shirt is taken off this device, and the sleeves are placed onto a similar device. However, the arms on this inflate with hot air, *then* go into a cabinet and are pressed on either side by similar, but smaller, plates. This finishes the entire sleeve off perfectly, but without a crease.
3: The collar and cuffs are place on a special press, with a curved and heated pad underneath, and a curved plate over it to press them into shape.
Starched pants get pressed in 2 ways on a press similar in design to the collar/cuff machine, but due to thickness are flipped and pressed on both sides.
Dry Cleaning is called "Dry" because there is little to no water in the solvent at all. Because of this linens, silks, rayons etc can be cleaned and dried without a worry of shrinkage (~3% shrinkage is considered acceptable in virtually *all* garments, laundered or drycleaned)
Dry cleaned garments get a much more careful look-over for stains, because the solvents cant remove the more common, "wet-side" stains, and the intense drying process can cause such stains to set further. The stains are treated, flushed, and dried thoroughly before being cleaned.
-Dry cleaned garments are sorted also (usually) by color and weight, and sorted further if the garments have any bead work or some such that may require special processing depending on the solvent being used.
-Garments are cleaned in the solvent, where a soap and sometimes a sizing (somewhat similar to starch) are added.
-The garments are then dried in a "reclaimer" (except in the case of CO2 machines, who just release the pressure) These reclaimers *keep* the solvent. This stuff can cost $16/gallon and up, and its a chemical: you dont send it down the drain 🙂 It gets filtered or otherwise cleaned.
--They work as an enclosed system, heating the clothes, with the evaporated solvent rising and flowing over a chiller of some sort that condenses the solvent, which is then sent back to the drycleaning machine to be re-used.
-Finishing for drycleaned goods is far different from laundered goods. The presses are not as hot (only sometimes using as much as 80PSI of steam, and anywhere from 45-70PSI of compressed air) and usually have not just a lower padded "buck" but the head always has at least a thinner pad, and one of various coverings to help finish the garments.
-In drycleaning, extra steam can be applied after the press is down to assist in removing wrinkles and properly setting the garment.
After the dryclean pressing, or the laundry pressing, garments on set on their hangers and usually sent to an inspector to check for missing/loose buttons, stains that may need more work, and small wrinkles that need to be touched up on a "puff-iron"
-The puff-iron is a basically a verticle device, with a steam pipe running up it to a "head" of stainless steel that has holes in the top to release steam, which may or may not have an extra pad on it. The iron releases steam when a peddle attached to a valve is pressed. This allows the inspector to use both hands to properly place the garment to remove the wrinkle (it can be troublesome when you need to remove a wrinkle....beside a crease)
After that garments are assembled based on whatever they were sorted with when the customer brought it in (this is dreadfully boring to discuss, and there are half a dozen systems used to sort clothing by customer)
To give you an idea of the cost of things, not only is the solvent pricey, but some of the spotting chemicals can run $75/gallon (id put the average well below, but i didnt do much of the billing, and its been months since i worked at the place). The drycleaning machine can easily cost $30k or better, and the reclaimer (some units are a 2-in-1 solution) cant cost another $30k, this all depends on the capacity and features, and can be slightly less, or quite a bit more. IIRC, my dad spent 80k just on the drycleaner/reclaimer that he bought a couple of years ago. I dont think that included the condenser he had to put on the roof for the reclaimer.
The presses can range from $7k - 12 easily, larger commercial presses can cost much more. The washing machines can run well over 10 grand for a unit easily, dryers probably start around $2500 or so, again all depending on capacity.
I cant remember what we paid for our last boiler. Replacement parts for most of the equipment can be pretty pricey, and hangars and other things arent cheap, especially when you have to buy units by the hundred. If taken care of, alot of the equipment in a place can last a decade, sometimes 2 or better.
Nevermind the help. The pay isnt that great for alot of the positions, but it all adds up. $2 a shirt really isnt *that* bad 😉
Oh, an air conditioner is extra. Alot of places dont have one, even if they do, its still easily 100F where the employees are working.
Edit: wetcleaning is another beast entirely and is, essentially, soaking a garment in water and a mix of chemicals. Agitation, heat, and moisture can cause shrinkage, so the water is lukewarm at best, and the garment gets only some movement by hand. Ive gotten *alot* of stains out of silks and rayons. I wont bother with more details on it.
But you should see the "tunnel dryers" some places have. Put clothes in wet at one end, it has a corkscrew basket, and they come out dry at the other. Theyre only used in *very* high capactiy places, think "Disney World"
There are also *huge* presses made to press drapes and tablecloths and sheets at one go. We never did enough of that business to get one, and just made multiple passes at such items on the occassion we had them.
maddogchen
Diamond Member
wrinkle free shirts FTW!!!
if i do need to, its $1.10 to get them laundered near my home.
if i do need to, its $1.10 to get them laundered near my home.
AznAnarchy99
Lifer
oh wow i was wondering what the hell launder and dry clean was when i went. I wear mostly long sleeve Banana Republic shirts and went to the cleaners. They asked if i wanted laundry or dry clean and i was like "wtf?" thinking like the OP. So i say dry clean. They charged me $3 a shirt and i was like WTFFFF. Laundry was only a dollar a shirt.
I dont wash at home because $80-125 dress shirts + washing machine does not come out nicely.
I dont wash at home because $80-125 dress shirts + washing machine does not come out nicely.
AccruedExpenditure
Diamond Member
I regularly spend 100 dollars a month on dry cleaning so STFU op.
JEDIYoda
Lifer
Dude any drycleaners that is worth going to knows that there are some fabrics you don`t ever dry clean. In fatc drycleaning some fabrics is just pleain not as effecient as a regular old washoing and a drying.
Since you grew up supposedly in the buisness then you know I am right and you have just proved you are wrong..
slackerinabox
Lifer
Ever consider getting a moderately expensive ($100-$200) steam press for home use? Hang your shirts, steam away. Works pretty well, actually.
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