Commercial Laundry Sizing Calculator

It first divides daily pounds by your washer turns per day to get pounds per turn, then divides that by your load factor to find the total washer capacity needed, since machines are never packed to exactly their rated capacity in practice. That required capacity is finally divided by 60 (the assumed washer-extractor size) and rounded up, so the machine count only ever increases in whole-unit steps.

Load factor is how fully machines are actually packed relative to their rated capacity — 0.85 means loads typically run at 85% of a full load. Raising it toward 1.0 assumes fuller, more efficient loads, so less total washer capacity is needed to move the same daily poundage, which lowers the calculated machine count.

The calculator uses a simple industry rule of thumb rather than a full drying-time model: because drying generally takes longer than washing, more dryer capacity is needed to keep pace with washer output, so dryer count is derived directly from washer count with a 1.5x multiplier rather than from cycle-time inputs.

Water use assumes about 3 gallons per pound of laundry processed per day, giving a simple daily total. Steam demand assumes 1.5 lb of steam per pound processed, but that total is spread across your entered operating hours per day, so fewer operating hours concentrates the same daily steam load into a higher hourly boiler requirement.

It's a planning allowance covering the washer or dryer's physical footprint plus clearance for loading, unloading, and service access, applied to the combined washer-and-dryer count. It does not include aisle width beyond that immediate clearance, folding or packaging stations, or any other ancillary equipment, so real floor plans typically need more total space than this figure alone suggests.