Help with eyewash station

[tresi]

Here's the problem. I need to put an eye wash station in a location with no running water. That's no big deal but the location is also unheated. I know that there are self contained eyewash station that have an optional heating/insulation jacket but the only ones that I've found are in the $1500 price range. Anybody know of a more affordable solution?

[h2oboy]

Bad news, if it says "safety" the price triples. I have used several of the un-insulated ones and they are not much less. 1500 can buy a lot the bottles of eye wash jugs.

[tessdad]

How about a phone booth size enclosure (plywood with windows), an electric wall mounted heater. This would also keep it clean and also be used for other First Aid type supplies/materials. An automatic light switch on the door would make it more user friendly in an emergency, an perhaps alert others to the problem.

[Mitch Kelly]

When we have done chemical work "in the field", we have / had a simpler solution: a plastic toolbox containing a number of single-use saline eye flush bottles. The box is lined / insulated, and kept closed with one of those easily breakable zip-tie thingies (basicaly to show if it had been opened). A log book for use and replacement schedules was kept inside. We used this is situations outside the labs, such as in the field, on farms, workshops etc. It might not be enough, but if it helps, it worked for us.

In the labs, we have a thing that looks like a watering can rose attachment, fitted onto the cold water line next to the hand washing sink. With a suitable sign in place, it becomes a "dedicated eye wash station" , and complies fully (in fact exceeds) with UK / EU legal requirements. If you have a cold water line for drinking water / hand washing, this might also be an option.

[zapster]

Anyone ever hear of saftey glasses?

Thats what they are made for..
Stopping trips to the eyewash station..:rolleyes:
End the problems before they even start..


...zap!

[tresi]

Well, I've already tried most of those ideas. You can't have a door in your path to the eyewash station. As for the wash bottles the ANSI specs state the the flow must last 15 minutes of non stop flow at a specified flow rate meaning that you're going to need to 15-16 gallons of water ready to go.
The bottles and smaller self contained wash stations are classified as supplemental wash stations or personal wash stations. They allowed only if still have a fully approve primary wash station. Wear all the safety glasses you want, even wear a spacesuit if you have corrosive liquids you have to have an eyewash station. The regulation broken down to plain english, if you ever add antifreeze to an engine you have to have an eyewash station. I think the boss is going to have to bite the bullet on this one and buy a heated portable eyewash station unless someone has an idea that meets the ansi specs.

[enlpck]

Hows about this for an idea?

30gal stainless drum, a barrel heater blanket with thermostat, and a couple inches of fibreglass insulation? Drum will have female pipe fittings, plumb your choice of pipe material and leave the system dry by having the valve right into the drum. Use a drum vent, or put a trap off the upper bung and prefil the trap with bleach solution, so the thing can breath and won't let all kinds of nasties in. If it get used, the bleach will be diluted enough by the water to not be a problem. Mount the tank high enough to get decent gravity flow... maybe 6 feet would be fine. You might also want to insulate the pipe too the head, and box around the valve to retain heat so the valve doesnt freeze up.

You could also use an immersion heater.... screw in styles are available for going into standard pipe fittings, but then you would need a drum with extra bung holes. http://www.mcmaster.com/ctlg/DisplCtlgPage.aspx?ReqTyp=CATALOG&CtlgPgNbr=480&RelatedCtlgPgs=480,481,482,483,484&term=Immersion+Heaters&sesnextrep=701840871848968&ScreenWidth=1280&McMMainWidth=1048

drum vent: http://www.mcmaster.com/ctlg/DisplCtlgPage.aspx?ReqTyp=CATALOG&CtlgPgNbr=1659&term=Drum+Bung+Adapters&sesnextrep=701840871848968&ScreenWidth=1280&McMMainWidth=1048

The 30gal stainless drum is about $600 new. A plastic drum is cheaper, but you need to be careful about heating them.

[Sandy]

I would think that keeping stored water bacteria free would be a problem without very frequent changing and flushing. Chlorine I guess.

[enlpck]

I would think that keeping stored water bacteria free would be a problem without very frequent changing and flushing. Chlorine I guess.

Or addative packets. That's why I would vent through a trap with chlorine in it.

The wall tanks at work are *supposed to* be cleaned and refilled every 30 days. I don't think it has been done in two or three years. But, on the other hand, dirty water is better than battery acid.

[Sandy]

Or addative packets. That's why I would vent through a trap with chlorine in it.

The wall tanks at work are *supposed to* be cleaned and refilled every 30 days. I don't think it has been done in two or three years. But, on the other hand, dirty water is better than battery acid.

That's kind of what I was thinking. Swimming pools have quite a bit of chlorine, some community water systems have so much at times you can smell the gas when you turn on the tap. How much is a lot, I dunno. Like you say, water from a slimy stock tank would work for me in an emergency. :)

[Mitch Kelly]

Ouch,

looks like you're going to have to bite the bullet and stump up the money! It's going to hurt like hell and this sin't going to help, but it's (probably) cheaper than being dragged through the courts (I don't know how it works in the US, but here in the UK, the competent authority in such cases, the HSE, *ALWAYS* wins its cases...), and it will certainly be cheaper than losing an eye.

Zap, if I had a pound (about $1.80-ish) for every time I've seen stuff go over, under or around safety glasses, I'd have a nice big pot of money. A *SERIOUS* pot of money. 99 times out of 100 safety glasses will save you, but on that 100th time, you NEED the eye wash, and you need it right then. And, unfortunately, it's a numbers game - no matter how careful you are, sooner or later, it happens. If it hasn't happened to you, then I'm glad for you. But it still can, and that's what the eyewash is for. And it doesn't even need to be your fault. Someone behind or to the side of you can ruin your day, even if you have safety glasses on. I speak from bitter personal experience.

M

[tresi]

If it was up to me we'd buy a heated unit. The boss has p***ed away more money than that on a tanning bed for the office girls. I today he bought a self contained unit (unheated) off of ebay. He's going to have us make a cart for it so that we can wheel it into the heated shop at night.
As for keeping the water fresh there are several preservitives available that keep the water fresh for up to 120 days. Other units use expensive sealed bags of solution that last up to 2 years.

[Sandy]

As for keeping the water fresh there are several preservitives available that keep the water fresh for up to 120 days. Other units use expensive sealed bags of solution that last up to 2 years.

Find out what they put in twinkies for preservative and use that. :)

[zapster]

Zap, if I had a pound (about $1.80-ish) for every time I've seen stuff go over, under or around safety glasses, I'd have a nice big pot of money. A *SERIOUS* pot of money. 99 times out of 100 safety glasses will save you, but on that 100th time, you NEED the eye wash, and you need it right then. And, unfortunately, it's a numbers game - no matter how careful you are, sooner or later, it happens. If it hasn't happened to you, then I'm glad for you. But it still can, and that's what the eyewash is for. And it doesn't even need to be your fault. Someone behind or to the side of you can ruin your day, even if you have safety glasses on. I speak from bitter personal experience.


True..
Very true..

I must be really luckey..
(I wear glasses all day every day)
And in 29 yrs of fabrication
Maybe I had to dig stuff out of my eyes twice!

I put more irritating stuff in my eyes with my fingers half the time..:laugh:
Grease...Oils..Etc..

...zap!

[h2oboy]

Please be careful if you add any bleach to an eyewash. Don't add chlorox or even the chlorine that is used for pools. The chlorine that needs to be added needs to be NSF certified. If you use household bleach it has additives that can harm the user. The chlorine residual in tap water is for most city's .5 PPM, that is one million drops of water to a half a droplet of actual chlorine. anything more could also harm the user. The best thing is to drain and refill the water every month.

[tresi]

The widely available preservitive is only $6-$8 bucks for a bottle. 1 bottle per fill. As cheap and easy as that is I wouldn't even try making my own solution.

[Kalroy]

They make wall mount eyewash stations that will fulfill your needs, except for the heated part. We use them in our welding shop, and use anti-fungal/anti-bacterial additive made for such stations. We use the Fend All Porta Streams (like this one, http://www.fendall.com/products/product_details.asp?ID=3 ). 15 minute stream, low maintenance, and compliant.

Kalroy

[billettbob]

Just a Thought.
A small stainless steel hot water heater for the reservoir. Insulate the hell out of it and heat it with a small salamander when in use, but not over about 70 degrees f. About what you would squirt on your inner wrist at the babys feeding time.
Billetbob

[tresi]

Well, for anybody that might be interested I got an unheated self contained eyewash station off of Ebay for $80. I took a 3 tray tool cart an made a plywood top for it. 3 layers of 3/4 plywood brought it above the ansi 33 inch minimum mounting height. A backrest for the eyewash was made from a few scraps of unistrut. I secured the eyewash to the back rest with 1/8 wirerope. A small tractor counterweight in the bottom tray insured that the cart wouldn't be top heavy.
I push the cart into my heated shop for the night and push it out on the facility for in the morning. I place it in air flow of a cooling radiator for a 100 horsepower hydraulic pump. Even with a morning low of 5 degrees I had no freezing problem. The cart is a bit crude by my standards but I received the eyewash at 4pm on the day of the deadline to have it completed. The landlord's inspector came by the next day and was pleased with it and many other plant improvements.

[safetyfirst]

Here's the problem. I need to put an eye wash station in a location with no running water. That's no big deal but the location is also unheated. I know that there are self contained eyewash station that have an optional heating/insulation jacket but the only ones that I've found are in the $1500 price range. Anybody know of a more affordable solution?

There are plenty of gravity-fed portable eyewash stations out there (below $200). You wouldn't need to worry about plumbing/running water with those type of eyewash stations. I recently bought two of them from this site: http://safetybee.com

[William McCormick Jr]

Zap I am forty seven years old and I have never worn goggles, and I never had an eye wash. Except at the hazard waste plant where I worked, and goggles were mandatory in some extreme areas.

When having to wear goggles, I had them snap back into my eye, when my gloves had some kind of slimy stuff on them. That hurt. And only God knows what the slimy stuff was. Ha-ha.

Another time I had just taken them off, and put them above my brow, and an object that I had in a box, fell deeper into the box, and created a puff or air. The air had cyanide dust in it. I felt the air and moved out of the way, rather calmly. Like I would normally. But because I was wearing goggles, the air swirled in a funny way, and shot the cyanide into my eye.

And the last time I ever wore one of those full face masks was when I lifted the visor, something fell into my eye. That was it for me. The visor was causing stuff to deposit on my head. Because of the strange air movement caused by the visor. I say take all that safety stuff and OSHA and......XXXXXXXX

I say pay attention and you won't need the goggles or the eye wash. If you don't pay attention, you might need both, and perhaps new appendages and eyes.

But how are you doing Zap? I am just spouting off about safety stuff, that they usually do not even design well.

All my tool guards have to go into the garbage. All of them endanger me. Last couple of times I almost got hurt it was from guards in the way, I was either holding them out of the way to measure, or climbing into a weird position so that I could see with the guard down.

I just spent an hour with the Metabo representative, AWISCO invited them down. He showed me about ten different designs of the 4.5 inch right angle grinder.

Each time I told him what was wrong with one of them. He showed me another. And the funniest one was the one that seemed the safest.

As soon as I picked it up and tried to turn it on, I said it was garbage. He said it is the safest. I said watch this. I held it and did not even touch the trigger, and I just let is slip downward and touch his bumper, it turned right on. I did not even have a hand on the trigger. It was probably the hardest to turn on for normal use, and the easiest to accidently turn on.

They did have one model that looked promising. But he did not have that model with him.

My dream is to get all of the college engineers into a room, and let them decide to go into the work force as apprentices and use the tools they designed or take the cyanide pill in front of them. My money is on the cyanide pill.


Sincerely,


William McCormick

[William McCormick Jr]

It depends on what kind of a system you would like to build. You might be able to get away with a little BillB ™ thermostat and relay for under twenty dollars, to control the silicon heating pad.

These silicon blankets are a very low watt, never even know they are there type of a heater. Safe on a plastic surface, if designed to run at the right watts per square inch.

You have to go to one of Watlows distributors, I use Hilton Sales in Lindernhurst N.Y.. They will know the type of application you are looking to get a heater for. Because they do this all day long. They design custom heaters for individuals unique application.

http://www.watlow.com/literature/specsheets/files/heaters/1701_1100.pdf

This is the site. http://www.watlow.com/products/heaters/ht_flex.cfm

Another method as someone else mentioned is to use a container or cabinet. If you do use a cabinet, a small 100 watt light bulb will in fact keep it from freezing. A neighbor of mine used to put a 100 watt bulb in the bilge of his house boat, for the winter. And unless we had many days of subzero weather, it would keep the boat floating free. Back by the engines.

Hilton Sales.
(631) 226-3331

71 Heling Blvd
Lindenhurst, NY 11757

If they do not know how to help you they will send you to someone that does.


Sincerely,


William McCormick

[tresi]

Well, since this old thread got revived I'll give an update. The eyewash station still remains the same way that I built it but after about a year it got moved to my heated shop, it's cleaner there too. The new group of inspectors have seen it in its new location and have said anything about it. It got play with way too much inthe general plant area.
It has been used once for it's intended purpose. We are a recycling plant and one of our customers makes seasoning packets for other food plants as well as those packets you might buy at the store. They have a lot of empty 50# sacks of spices to recycle. One day a sack of powered cayanne pepper had a few pounds of ground peppers left in it. When it got dump on the floor a guy caught the ground pepper in the face.saftey glasses would have done it no good. Nothing short of a gas mask or space suit would have help him out. He was glad to have the eye wash station.