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Space Matters: Eyewashes for Facilities with Limited Space
Picture this: You're on a manufacturing floor the length of four city blocks. Overhead, cranes haul loads of hot-rolled steel into the plant, where they will be fed through a series of lumbering machines until they emerge cold-drawn in their final shape.
The environment is filled with chemicals, oils and metal fragments. Despite requirements for safety glasses, the risk of eye injury remains high. Fortunately, there's plenty of space to install a wall-mounted or countertop eyewash station. There's even room for an emergency shower to be tucked out of the way.
Now consider your average restaurant dish room during a peak weekend rush. There are dishes piled high, racks of drying pots pushed into every nook – and a range of chemicals to sanitize and disinfect everything before its next use.
Unlike the luxurious and serene environment that customers see, the dish room of this restaurant is cramped and chaotic. There's no space to spare for an eyewash station because clean dishes are stacked on every available countertop. Even if you mounted an eyewash station to the wall, it's likely someone would push a rack of dishes in front of it during their rush. In the panic of an emergency, someone needing that eyewash station would struggle to remember where it was – much less be able to push those dish racks out of the way.
It's for exactly those scenarios that Speakman designed dual-function combination faucets. This innovation provides for an eyewash that has a dedicated tepid water supply to be connected to a fully functional faucet that can be used for everything from washing hands to cleaning dishes. Best of all, both applications drain directly into the existing sink.
There even is an option for a combination eyewash that works with a commercial mop sink faucet. This unique solution provides an eyewash even in spaces where a janitorial mop sink is the only place one will fit. Again, independent water lines ensure safe protection and are found in the Speakman SEF1800 and SEF-9000 Eyesaver product series.
This new design is becoming widely accepted, with the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials classifying these products as commercial faucets with an integral emergency eyewash. That organization provides general, testing and marking requirements for dual-function eyewashes, among others.
These specialty faucets can come in a range of designs, from a traditional eight-inch, widespread laboratory application to more advanced sensor-activated designs. That's exactly what you'll find from the Speakman line of combination eyewash faucets.