News

Grey areas in grey water: condensate drains and industry standards

For as long as supermarkets have been selling refrigerated and frozen food from display cabinets, there have been issues with condensate drains and more specifically with blockages.

The problem is endemic to the supermarket industry – I would vouch that every person who has been in a supermarket will have seen the black and yellow absorbent strips at the foot of a cabinet – and although it causes thousands of hours of downtime and service callouts, as well as often causing a safety hazard, it is a problem that …

Drain Guard from Gel-clear – saving time and taking the headaches out of cabinet cleaning

Refrigeration cleaning and drainage specialist Gel-clear has introduced
the Drain Guard universal drain cover, a flexible magnetic guard to stop
debris getting in to the cabinet plumbing during cleaning.
The Guard has been designed after extensive testing to save time on
the job and provide a better alternative to conventional drain bungs and
plugs.

The fact that it is both flexible and magnetic means that it will fit to any
cabinet pan profile, to stop debris getting in, but is also easy to handle
when wearing rubber gloves. The clever device will also provide an …

Gel-clear receives top industry recognition for latest innovation in beating blockages

HVACR maintenance specialist Gel-clear has picked up a top industry accolade for its latest weapon to fight the scourge of blocked condensate drains.
The family firm won Maintenance Product of the Year at the ACR News Awards last Thursday for its bio-beta Pipe Chair – an innovative product that can play a big part in stopping blockages in refrigeration cabinets. Developed with the assistance of the University of Central Lancashire, it has been extensively tested to provide superb results, time after time.

Blocked condensate drains are an all-too-common hazard that is estimated to account for up to 40 per cent of refrigeration …

The First Food-Safe Non-hazardous Concentrated Cleaners For Refrigeration and AC from Gel-clear

Gel-clear, the refrigeration cleaning specialist, will be introducing concentrated versions of its popular non-hazardous food-safe cleaners: Eco-clear refrigeration sanitising cleaner and Air-clear HVAC coil sanitising cleaner. At the same time, Gel-clear will unveil Ice Clean, its first specialist cleaner for ice machines.

Created with performance in mind the new range are 10 times more concentrated than any other concentrate on the market and are built on the Gelclear ethos of solution lead, quality products.

These high performance products are the first non-hazardous concentrates on the market, with no COSHH requirements, and are NSF-accredited …

Lancashire Firm Helps Vietnam Fight Covid-19

Lancashire cleaning specialist Gel-clear has supplied its Air-clear air conditioning cleaner to Vietnam, where it is being used to help hospital, medical and food production facilities to fight Covid-19 and other contaminants.

The Darwen-based family firm has in a matter of only weeks set up its own bottling plant in Vietnam and arranged distribution throughout the region with local partner 3N Tech.

3N Tech, a Vietnamese HVACR industry supplier based in Ho Chi Minh City, will sell the Air-clear through its own branches and online and …

BESA – AIR CLEANING SHOULD BECOME STANDARD PRACTICE AFTER PANDEMIC

Clean air technologies and strategies should be adopted by every healthcare facility in the UK in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA).
Information is emerging rapidly about how the coronavirus can be spread around buildings leading indoor air quality (IAQ) experts to agree on the need for more proactive measures to tackle airborne contaminants and to manage air flows to keep patients and healthcare workers safe.
Speaking during BESA’s latest daily COVID-19 update webinar, air cleaning expert Richard Greenwood of technology firm Radic8 said the ventilation industry had …

Expensive problem: Why blocked drains are rocking the industry

A huge fine levied against Tesco is set to have major repercussions for retailers and their contractors, as it puts refrigeration management and the relative responsibilities of managing leakages from display cases into the spotlight.

Luton Magistrates fined Tesco almost three quarters of a million pounds for failing to manage the consequences of display case leakages. The £733,333 fine and prosecution for health and safety breaches brought by environmental health officers for local authority Dacorum Borough Council followed an elderly customer slipping and breaking their hip in the Hemel Hempstead Tesco Extra.

The magistrate highlighted a failure to manage a systematic problem with …

The Real Cost of Blocked Condensate Drains

Supermarket giant Tesco this week found out that blocked condensate drains have a very real cost, with an eye-watering fine of £733,333 – almost three-quarters of a million pounds – after a customer slipped and broke their hip in their Hemel Hempstead store.

Tesco received the fine, which is still set to rise further, when costs are added, at Luton Magistrates Court on 24th January for breaching The Health and Safety at Work Act by not ensuring customers and staff were protected from risk.

The fine relates to …

The Lancashire Business Improving HVACR Drainage to Fight the Climate Crisis.

Gel-clear™s innovative products reducing carbon emissions from the global HVACR industry, a big achievement for a small northern town business.

When Gel-clear founder and managing director Paurick Gaughan was invited to attend by the Carbon Trust at the Houses of Parliament, it marked a huge achievement for the small Lancashire company. The business briefing on the theme of ‘Net zero and the 1.5 degree challenge’ was hosted by Rachel Reeves, Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee.

Gel-clear has been investing in products to increase efficiency in HVACR drainage for almost a decade. Gel-clear tablets and ancillary drainage products …

Cooling Business of the Year: Runner-up – Gel-clear!

Gel-clear describes itself as providing ‘complete HVACR condensate management and our judges were so impressed at the sheer range of projects by the four-person company in the pursuit of this mission that they awarded it the Runner-up award for 2019.
Gel-clear is a good example of the breadth of the cooling industry – and indeed the variety in the Cooby awards – in that it is a small company dedicated to the niche area of condensate and preventing blockages. The company started out providing condensate removal tablets for display cases but has since expanded to include complete systems for …

Breakthrough: Gel Clear tablets reduce maintenance costs in a Sauermann Australasia trial

A recent Sauermann Australasia Gel Clear tablet trial was conducted at a store located in Sydney, NSW. The store has a problematic history of water leaks on the store trading floor.

The store is located above a railway station meaning there is no drainage through the concrete slab underneath each refrigerated case like most regular stores. As a result, condensate pumps have been installed under each of the refrigerated cases to discharge all the condensate water into common tundishes in the ceiling space.

Each of the condensate pumps at the store regularly formed …

What has Muhammad Ali got to do with Gel-clear tablets?

Well, quite a lot, and I’ll tell you. I loved watching Ali as a kid, on a business trip to Las Vegas some years ago, I couldn’t pass the opportunity to sit in his booth at the Golden Steer Steakhouse, one of his haunts back in the day, along with Elvis, Marilyn, and Joe DiMaggio https://www.goldensteerlasvegas.com I would strongly recommend a visit if you’re there, any steak is brilliant, but get the Caesar salad before it, that’s a must.

I convinced the guy I was meeting to have dinner there, and we booked Muhammad’s booth for our meal, it was this …

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