Commercial Laundries · Application 17

₱40,000 a month back in your pocket.From day one.

For Philippine commercial laundries — hotel back-of-house, hospital outsourcing, coin-op chains, uniform contracts. The LPG boiler that's been feeding your washers, swapped for one Karnot iHEAT R290 cascade — financed by the bank, paid for out of the saving, with no flame on site.

₱40K
Per month · net cash
1.1 yr
Cash payback
−64%
Wash-water energy cost
33 t
CO₂ avoided / yr

Your laundry's biggest input cost is the boiler. And the boiler is on fire.

A 500 kg/day commercial laundry burns roughly 11 tonnes of LPG a year just feeding the washers with 60–80 °C wash water — about ₱935,000/year on fuel alone. LPG prices in PH have climbed ~40% since 2020 and there is no scenario where they reverse.

LPG price is going one way — up

LPG in PH has climbed ~40% since 2020 and there is no realistic scenario where it reverses. Hotels, hospitals and coin-op chains are now absorbing fuel cost increases their service contracts didn't anticipate. Every extra peso per kilo of LPG flows directly to the wash-water line on your P&L.

A flame on site, every operating hour

An LPG boiler room means a permit, a periodic DENR inspection, an insurance loading and a fire risk attached to your operating licence. Karnot iHEAT R290 sits outdoors with a 1.4 kg sealed refrigerant charge, no flue, no flame, no boiler-room maintenance schedule. The boiler-room headache disappears.

One machine. Same duty. No combustion.

An aircon takes heat OUT of a room and dumps it OUTSIDE. The Karnot iHEAT R290 runs that same machine in reverse — it takes heat from the air around your building and puts it into your wash water. 75% of the heat comes from the air, free. You pay only for the 25% on the electricity bill.

Karnot iHEAT R290

The heart · 25–100 kW

Air-to-water heat pump. COP 4.0+ at PH ambient, 60–85 °C delivery. R290 natural refrigerant — GWP 3 vs 2,088 for legacy R410A. Outdoor unit, no boiler room. Cascade from 25 kW (one washer line) to 100 kW (hotel chain back-of-house).

iSTOR M500 buffer

2,000 L thermal store

Phase-change thermal battery holds 60–80 °C wash water on demand. Decouples when the heat pump runs from when the washers fill. Pump runs at the cool of evening, washers fill at full capacity in the morning.

iCOOL CO₂

Linen cold store · R744

Walk-in storage for soiled-linen segregation (infection control for hospital contracts) and clean-linen holding. No R404A phasedown clock on the asset register. GWP 1, A1 safety class.

iVOLT Solar

Zero-export · flat-roof gold

Laundries have huge flat roofs and daytime load curves that match PH solar irradiance perfectly. Sized to feed the iHEAT cascade 30–50% directly from the roof, with non-lithium battery for evening run-down. No export to the grid.

500 kg/day laundry. A real number per kilo of linen.

Modelled on a 500 kg/day Philippine commercial laundry — 6 day/week, 50 week/yr operation, 4,800 L/day wash water 22→70 °C. Your laundry might be 200 kg/day (divide by 2.5) or 2,000 kg/day hotel chain back-of-house (multiply by 4) — the per-kg economics hold.

Annual figure · 500 kg/day laundry Today · LPG boiler Karnot iHEAT R290 cascade You stop paying
Fuel / electricity input11,000 kg LPG/yr23,856 kWh/yrno flame on site
System efficiency82% boilerCOP 4.0 annualised4.9× better per peso
Annual energy cost~₱935,000~₱334,000−64% / ~₱601K
Refrigerant / combustionScope 1 LPG · ~33 tCO₂e/yrR290 · GWP 3 · naturalScope 1 → zero
Total investment (VAT-inc)(already paid)~₱660,0001.1 yr cash payback
LPG baseline ₱85/kg, 13.6 kWh/kg, 82% boiler efficiency. iHEAT R290 cascade 50 kW, COP 4.0 annualised, Meralco GP ₱14/kWh including 3-phase premium. CAPEX includes 2,000 L buffer tank, controls and Permits-Managed Service LOW tier. NPV ~₱6.4M at 8%, lifetime saving ~₱9M over 15-year asset life. Excludes iVOLT solar (cuts OPEX 30–50% further).

The cash flow. Plain and dull.

CAPEX of ~₱660K, financed under a green loan at ~7% p.a. over 60 months. Monthly LPG saving (~₱50K) is larger than the monthly loan payment (~₱10K). Net cash in pocket from day one.

Month 1
₱40K
Saving on the bill minus the green-loan payment. Net cash in pocket. Every month. From day one.
Year 1
₱480K
Cash in pocket while the loan is being repaid. The kit has paid for itself by month 13.
Year 5
₱2.4M
Loan paid off. You keep every peso of the ₱601K annual saving from here on.
Year 15
₱8.4M
Total cash retained over the 15-year asset life vs running the existing LPG boiler.

You pay nothing up front. The bank does.

Three Philippine banks run green-loan programmes built for exactly this kind of project. The monthly LPG saving is larger than the monthly loan payment. Net cash flow goes up from day one.

DBP · SEFP
Sustainable Energy Finance Programme
Agri-industrial priority · 70–80% LTV · 5–10 year terms · designed for energy-efficiency CAPEX.
~6.5–8% p.a.
LandBank · SEILP
Sustainable Energy Investment Loan
Path of least resistance if you bank with LandBank. Standard SME terms with green-discount.
~7% p.a.
BPI · SDF
Sustainable Development Finance
Fastest decisions for established SMEs with a BPI relationship. Sized for renewable + efficiency CAPEX.
~1–1.5% below SME

These are loans, not grants. Karnot files the application as part of project scope — you sign at the bank window, not before.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much can a Philippine commercial laundry save?

A modelled 500 kg/day commercial laundry saves approximately ₱601,000 per year — a 64% reduction in wash-water energy cost. Today's LPG boiler costs about ₱935,000/year at ₱85/kg LPG; the Karnot iHEAT R290 cascade delivers the same 60–80 °C wash-water duty for about ₱334,000/year of grid electricity at Meralco GP ₱14/kWh. Real numbers depend on linen throughput, shift schedule and current LPG price — confirmed by a free site visit.

What is the payback period?

Roughly 1.1 years cash payback on a 500 kg/day laundry. CAPEX is approximately ₱660,000 (one iHEAT R290 50 kW + 2,000 L buffer tank + controls + Permits-Managed Service); annual saving is approximately ₱601,000. With a 5-year green loan at ~7% p.a., monthly LPG savings exceed the monthly loan payment, leaving roughly ₱40,000 net cash in the operator's pocket every month from day one.

Can a heat pump really deliver wash-water temperatures of 60–80 °C?

Yes. The Karnot iHEAT R290 cascade delivers 60–85 °C hot water at COP 4.0+ in Philippine tropical ambient. R290 (propane) refrigerant has a critical temperature above 90 °C, well-suited to high-lift hot-water duty. The cascade includes a buffer tank that holds wash water on demand, decoupling when the heat pump runs (cool of evening, on solar) from when the washers fill (full capacity in the morning).

Is R290 refrigerant safe for a commercial site?

Yes. The Karnot iHEAT R290 unit is installed outdoors with a sealed 1.4 kg refrigerant charge — well under EN 378 thresholds. No indoor flue, no flame, no boiler-room maintenance schedule. Compare this to an LPG boiler which carries continuous on-site combustion risk, periodic DENR inspection requirements and an insurance loading.

Does this work for hospital laundries with infection-control requirements?

Yes. Hospital outsourced laundries need 60–80 °C wash temperatures plus high-temperature thermal disinfection cycles up to 90 °C — both achievable with the iHEAT R290 cascade. The iCOOL CO₂ refrigerated walk-in handles soiled-linen cold segregation for infectious-load protocols. Same architecture as the commercial laundry case, hospital-grade controls and monitoring.

What about the dryers — can heat recovery help?

Yes, in a Level 2 engineering scope. Laundry dryers reject huge volumes of warm humid air at 35–50 °C. A pinch analysis identifies how much of that reject heat can preheat incoming wash water for free, reducing the iHEAT cascade duty further. This is a project-specific optimisation typically worth an additional 10–20% energy saving on top of the boiler-replacement baseline.

Does this support SEC PFRS S2 climate reporting?

Yes. Replacing the LPG boiler eliminates Scope 1 combustion emissions — roughly 33 tCO₂e per year on a 500 kg/day laundry. R290 refrigerant has GWP 3 versus 2,088 for legacy R410A, removing the refrigerant-related Scope 1 disclosure. Audit-grade M&V data from the optional iSAVE dashboard satisfies SEC PFRS S2 reporting and supports I-REC eligibility.

Want the numbers for your laundry?

Send us your daily linen throughput, washer capacity and 12 months of LPG + Meralco bills. We come back with a sized iHEAT cascade, projected saving, payback and the bank application ready to sign.