Here at Speed Queen, we pride ourselves on having the best solutions to commercial laundry problems. We have a lot of options, which is great when you have an expert to help, but can be overwhelming if you haven't spent as long as we have in laundry! So we thought we'd tackle some of the common option we have in our products. The first of these is hard vs soft mount.
What is hard mount and soft mount?
When commercial washing machines spin, they create significant centrifugal forces. There are 2 ways to manage these forces to prevent your washer vibrating itself around the room.
Hard mounting a machine requires a solid floor, like thick concrete. The washer is "hard mounted" to the floor via bolts and grout to ensure it cannot move (see pic below that shows an install). While this might limit where a hard mount washer can be placed, their simplistic, bulletproof and rugged design has kept them around and running for years!
A hard mount machine is bolted to the floor.
Soft mount machines are the opposite. Vibrations are absorbed within the frame of the machine by a suspension system. The smooth ride in your car is because your suspension absorbs the vibrations - soft mount machines work the same way (see pic below). This means that they don't require a solid concrete floor to secure to. It does mean they are capable of spinning at considerably faster speeds, thereby reducing the time and money spent on each wash cycle. Because of the extra engineering and components inside the washers, they are considerably more expensive to purchase than hard mounts washers.
A soft mount machine has internal suspension to absorb the vibrations from centrifugal forces.
That's great, but what does it mean for me?
In general, there are a few key differences between the two types of machines.
A Hard Mount machine will:
- + Have lower upfront costs
- + Slower spin cycles will reduce the risk of damaging sensitive laundry
- - Higher moisture retention vs soft mount
- - Has a more complicated installation (and cannot be installed above the ground floor)
A Soft Mount machine will:
- + Operate more efficiently (when loaded properly)
- + Has a simple installation (can be installed anywhere)
- + Higher spin speed resulting in lower moisture retention and faster drying
- - Higher initial cost
Have any other questions for our laundry experts? Get in touch here
