How Are Turnout Gear Decontamination Laundries Engineered?

The barrier is both a wall and a workflow. I place barrier washers in a partition wall with the dirty face on the bay side and the clean face on the station side, so contaminated gear never crosses into clean space. The dirty side gets its own entry from the apparatus bay or an exterior decon area, a pre-rinse sink, and soiled-gear storage; the clean side gets inspection tables, drying cabinets, and clean storage. Pressure zoning reinforces the wall: dirty side most negative, clean side less negative, station neutral. Doors are self-closing, and I keep transfer openings minimal so the pressure relationship holds. This is contamination control borrowed from laboratory design, scaled to a fire station.

The wet side of the design starts with hot water: extractor cycles demand high flow at temperature, so I size storage or instantaneous capacity for back-to-back loads and verify recovery between cycles. Floors slope to trapped drains with primers, walls get washable finishes to a working height, and the room drains as a wet room. Lint interceptors sit where maintenance can actually reach them. For drying, I prefer dedicated gear-drying cabinets over hanging gear in a warm room — cabinets dry faster, contain the moisture, and exhaust it directly outside. Their heat and exhaust loads go into the mechanical design from the start, not as a field addition.

A gear laundry protects firefighters from the contaminants their gear absorbs. This checklist covers the design items that make it work. • Barrier washers in a partition wall with separate dirty-side loading and clean-side unloading • One-way dirty-to-clean workflow with dedicated dirty entry and clean exit, no backtracking • Room held negative to the station with dedicated exhaust and tempered makeup air • Hot water sized for extractor washer simultaneous demand with proper recovery between cycles • Sloped sealed floors to trapped drains, lint interception, and chemical-resistant drainage materials • Dedicated gear-drying cabinets with their own exhaust, heat, and moisture management