A water pump is the most important component of your cleaning system, using the optimal pump and importantly, one of high quality can drastically reduce the downtime of your cleaning system and ensure your yield from the investment is a positive one. Grundfos, in our opinion, manufacture the best pumps on the market for the industrial applications we require.

This article will touch on the following:

• The advantages of Grundfos
• Why selecting the optimal-sized pump makes the difference in ROI
• What you should consider when choosing a cleaning system for your facility.

The Advantages Of A Grundfos Pump

Grundfos is the leading manufacturer of pumps in the world, with more than 19,000 employees globally and 16 million+ pumps produced each year. Without a doubt, they are the gold standard in the industry.

At SGA we identified 3 core advantages to using Grundfos:

1. First and most important they deliver on quality. In Australia, they offer a 5-year warranty and if being used appropriately they shouldn’t need any major servicing.

2. This is point number two, Serviceability and local parts accessibility is crucial for food and beverage facilities as halting production and the cost associated with doing so is really a worst-case scenario. From our experience, a broken part that needs to be flown in or isn’t easily accessible can cost the producer additional cleaning hours that are a result of manual labour used to clean the area where the pump usually generates efficiencies. A prolonged period equates to prolonged cleaning budget blowouts. Therefore, it is critical to have an efficient and durable cleaning system. If something does go wrong, Grundfos being a global brand with service technicians on every corner with access to parts in just about every industrial part store is fantastic peace of mind.

3. Cost is obviously important. Grundfos is not the cheapest, however, they also aren’t the most expensive. At SGA we believe they are fairly priced for the quality and amortized over a decade they offer substantially better value for money over the long term.

Why Selecting The Optimal Sized Pump Makes The Difference In ROI

Many years experience with cleaning systems has shown us that picking the correct size pump matters. It is way more common than you’d expect that pumps powering cleaning systems are actually undersized pumps for the water output required. They are just modified to run at a higher RPM to move the same volume of water. This is done to cut costs.

However, the initial savings will end up problematic. Over the years we’ve seen various examples of incorrect pump sizing, the main issue with this is it’s not conducive to durability. Higher RPM means increased wear on the pumps which results in more frequent part failures and replacements. At SGA we suggest you don’t put yourself through the future frustration of dealing with the costs, time and effort associated with having those smaller pumps maintained in good operating order.

Over the expected lifetime of a cleaning system your ROI will improve significantly by choosing the optimal pump size to power the rest of your cleaning system.

What You Should Consider Before Choosing A Cleaning System For Your Facility

What pressure to use:

What is the best rinse pressure for cleaning in the food industry?

Many hygiene teams have their own view on what the best rinse pressure is for cleaning in the food industry, but what do you think?

Whilst high pressure water produces hazardous aerosols and is inefficient, low pressure also can be very efficient, so where is the happy medium? It’s just that – medium pressure (10-25 bar)! Here’s a suggestion why Medium Pressure is deemed the better rinse pressure for the food industry:

Why use medium pressure rinse?

With a medium pressure rinse, you can clean faster and to a higher quality in less time, enabling you to make savings in many areas. It can reduce food contamination risks, power usage, water and chemical usage, in addition to the labour and time which is of course, money. Read on to find out more, but firstly consider this fact:

A correctly controlled medium pressure jet will maintain its impact over a greater distance than other high pressure jets. (qjs.co.uk)

Pump Location:

Internal or external pump location, which should you choose? Having seen so many internal pumps in production areas get water or chemical damage and generally be problematic. External is certainly the way to go whilst eating onto floor space there’s only one correct answer here – external pumps are superior if you can plumb them in! It will save you many headaches.

The Bottom Line

SGA have over two decades experience using cleaning systems, with that relatively large sample size we conclude that opting for the optimal size external Grundfos pump unit to run a medium pressure cleaning system will give you the greatest ROI and last much longer than alternative set-ups.

In the future keep an eye out for WaterGuard by SGA, which combines our many years of industrial cleaning experience with Australian made and developed manifolds to partner Grundfos pump units. The end result is an Australian manufactured end to end medium pressure cleaning system that addresses the short comings of systems we’ve experienced and makes improvements, all without the ridiculous mark-ups.

We hope this information serves you well when considering cleaning systems or pumps in the future.

Stay safe,

The SGA Team