X7 displayed in a room with ample space to avoid the issue of overheating

The Importance of Ambient Temperature in your Salon

Our Goal
To provide you with the knowledge and tools needed to manage an important issue that may affect the laydown sunbeds in your salon.
 
We will address a recurring issue that salon owners often face: overheating. While this problem can occur at any time of the year, it is particularly problematic during the summer months when outside temperatures can soar to thirty degrees and beyond. The temperature inside your salon will impact the performance of your sunbed. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure proper ventilation to prevent overheating. By doing so, you can avoid this issue and keep your salon operational even during the hottest months.
Most of our sunbeds have a set temperature that they will cut out at to avoid overheating and damaging the essential internal mechanisms. If this temperature is reached, then your sunbed will cut off, avoiding damages, allowing itself to cool down and potentially saving you repair costs. This problem is more apparent in salons where the following are present;  
 
– Small sized rooms
– Little airflow
– Sub-par ducting
– Continuous use/multiple use
– Excess dust
 
The above factors will have a varying effect on the ambient temperature in your salon, which we know impacts  your sunbeds. We will explore these problems further and share our knowledge and expertise to combat them. Be aware a lot of the problems and solutions are related to each other and will have similar solutions to solve them. You may wish to employ multiple solutions to your problem as this could pre-emptively tackle a future overheating issue, as well as helping to lower your salon’s ambient temperature.   
Issues Impacting Your Salons Ambient Temperature
Room size
Problem

To maximize square footage and profits, salons create small rooms to house more sunbeds. Our engineers are always very appreciative when they come across these salons…. Nevertheless, this can be a very attractive prospect for salon owners. As a result, we have found that these rooms can reach very high temperatures which causes problems for the bed. Due to the small space, the air will heat up very quickly and be trapped cycling through the bed. This means that the temperature in the salon increases which can cause sunbeds to overheat. 

This problem can be exacerbated as a result of poor airflow as the bed must work harder to pull air in to cool down.

Additionally, the heat produced from the sunbed will continuously cycle through the sunbed if there is insufficient ducting removing this air.

Solution

The solution is not as simple as increasing the size of your rooms as this is rarely possible. However, for new salon owners who may not have built rooms or cubicles yet, we would recommend creating a larger space for your sunbed. This will pre-emptively combat this issue. You would also be making our engineer’s lives a lot easier!

To solve this problem, ask yourself, ‘If I can’t make the room bigger, how can I make it feel bigger?’. If you haven’t already, you can cut the top and bottom two to three inches off your door. This will allow for much better air flow into your room. Your sunbed will be able access more air and more importantly, not be fighting to do so.

To help even further, duct your sunbed straight out the back. The majority of the heat produced comes from the base of your sunbed, rarely will you need to duct the canopy out. If your sunbed is position up against an outside wall, the best thing to do would be to cut a hole in this wall behind the sunbed and duct outside. This will blow the hot air outside and not back into the room itself. If you can’t duct straight outside, straight up into the ceiling is the next best option.

Employing these solutions will drastically decrease the ambient temperature within your salon, keeping your sunbeds running.  

Airflow
Problem

Think of a sunbed like a giant hover, it will suck in all the air around it to prevent it from overheating. Therefore, air must be readily available to your sunbed to ensure it can operate as normal. If your salon has minimal windows or has fire doors this may mean that your sunbed will be working harder to try and suck in air. It can become a physical challenge to close the door to your room when the sunbed is running as it is trying to pull in air. This will have an adverse impact on the temperature in this room, which in turn will affect the ambient temperature of your salon. With constant use this can cause the sunbeds to overheat more often.

The ducting can have a factor to play with the airflow and if it isn’t correctly installed then it won’t be removing the hot air properly.  

In salons with small rooms this problem will be worse than those with larger rooms. As mentioned previously, small rooms will have less air and more likely to cycle hot air through their sunbeds. 

Below shows a brief cycle of airflow in a room. Without ducting, you can expect air to be recycled by the bed, in time, this could cause overheating issues.

Airflow cycle in small room without ducting
Solution

Briefly mentioned in the previous problem, cutting the top and bottom of your room door will vastly improve the airflow that your sunbed can utilize. This will help your sunbed cool itself with more ease. If you have a fire door installed, you should be able to grate/vent the bottom of it which will allow for air to enter. Another way you can help to increase airflow would be to leave any doors or any windows open in your salon, especially during summer months. This will help to reduce the ambient temperature in your salon as there more openings and exits for air to follow through. This will help provide more than enough air for your sunbed.  

Ducting your sunbed as briefly mentioned in the previously solution will also increase the natural flow of air. This is because it will remove the hot air produced by your sunbed and force cooler air to take its place. It is a cycle. 

Below shows a brief example of an airflow cycle if your doors have two to three inches off the bottom and ducting that goes straight up and out into the ceiling. There will be a constant flow of new air into the room.

airflow cycle of bed if it were ducted
Ducting
Problem

Ducting can be a leading cause of beds overheating. A number of factors can play apart including, having too much ducting, having poorly installed ducting or simply the wrong ducting. When we install your sunbed, we will give you our best advice whether you will need to duct your sunbed, and we will explain how best to do so. 

Some salons duct multiple beds into their ceiling, which then connects to one pipe that leads outside. Problems arise here when the air is not effectively being removed. This is usually due to the pipe in the ceiling being the same/smaller than the ducting from the beds. This can cause air coming back down their ducting, which will cut your bed off.

Ineffective ducting is associated with a higher ambient temperature as hot air is simply not being removed. Again, as with the previous problems, this can cause of your sunbed to overheat.

Below is a genuine photo of ducting in a salon that has been run behind an X7. As you can see it is run immediately to the left. That is not necessarily an issue, however you can see that it is run up and down, left and right on its journey to the outside. This is an example of an unnecessary amount of ducting, they have used the entire kit. Don’t do this! This creates a challenge path for the air to exit from which will cause overheating problems.

Solution

Effective ducting is simple. It must not have kinks or sharp turns, it must be run straight out of the bed and either out your wall or into your ceiling. It can also be run along your ceiling if you are not able to have it hidden inside. 

Almost all of the ducting we provide will be far too long. The length comes as standard and it can be easily cut down. We recommend using no more than three meters of the ducting kit provided.

If you are running multiple beds to one pipe in your ceiling it must be joined to a much larger pipe. This acts as a funnel which will help prevent air returning. It is recommended to install an anti-hot air return value to prevent air returning down a different duct. Additionally, having an extractor will help pull the air outside especially when running multiple sunbeds to one pipe.

You must ensure that the exit of your ducting is not blocked. We have heard pigeons nesting where the ducting exits because there are no covers/vents. Any blockage will disrupt the airflow out of your salon.

Ducting is especially important in small rooms where the heat will easily increase after one session.

Correctly ducting your sunbed will ensure that the heat produced is effectively removed from the room. This in turn will reduce the ambient temperature of your salon reducing the risk of your sunbeds overheating.

You can see in the photo below how the ducting is run straight up behind the bed. This will effectively remove hot air produced and prohibit it from cycling through your sunbed. 

Ducting being correctly installed. this one goes straight up into the ceiling
Dust Build-up
Problem

Dust build-up in sunbeds can be a cause of unnecessary heat during operation. This is because there is less air able to enter through clogged filters which impacts the cooling capabilities. Salons on busy high streets or roads tend to experience more dust build up that others and are more vulnerable to this problem.  

This is your filter mat that is located underneath your base. You can see that it is clogged and very dusty. This is overdue a clean. Look after your sunbed!

Solution

To combat this, cleaning your filters EVERY two weeks might not be enough. You may need to clean them each week to make sure they are not getting clogged up. Hovering your salon and rooms to get rid of excess dust will vastly improve the running of your sunbed. This is by no means the sole cause of a overheating however, it will certainly add to the issue. 

An engineer cleaning the filters of a laydown sunbed

Here you can see one of our engineers cleaning the filter mat. All you need to do is lift your acrylic up, followed by your front panel and then you can pull the filter mat trays out using the handles. Then simply take them out of the tray and give them a hoover before placing them back in place. REMEMBER, there is one under the right-hand side and one under the left!

Constant/ Multiple Use
Problem

Salons that experience a high volume of clients may find their beds are overheating. This could be because multiple beds are running at once and so the ambient temperature in the salon can become very high. This means that the sunbed will reach its cut off temperature quicker than a salon with fewer running sunbeds.  

Solution

If you have employed all of the aforementioned solutions and are still experiencing problems to do with overheating, our engineers can increase the duration of your sunbeds cooldown period. This will give your sunbeds more recovery time before your next customer will be able to use them.

Although it will mean a longer wait time for customer, it will definitely help to prevent overheating and allow for the ambient temperature to decline before reuse.

Conclusion

As established throughout this article, the Ambient Temperature in your Salon is VERY important in respect to how well your sunbed(s) will perform. Our priority is to keep you happy and satisfied, whilst keeping your sunbed up and running which is the entire point of this article. To share our experience and our solutions with you. The key takeaway from this is that each salon is different, what works for one may not correlate to another. There are varying factors that will impact the ambient temperature of your salon and you may find that one singular solution may or may not be enough. You may need to opt for multiple solutions. I hope this will help anyone experiencing a problem this summer and help you come to a solution so that we can prevent any issues in the future. 

If you have any issues or queries, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will be more than happy to help.