New-Build Care Home, Haddington
A bespoke laundry chute system engineered into a brand-new Haddington care home from the first-fix stage, with fire-rated, interlocking keypad-access doors on every floor.
When a new care home was built in Haddington, the management team wanted to avoid the time, safety and hygiene problems that come with manual laundry handling in a multi-storey building. Easyline designed and installed a bespoke laundry chute system as an integral part of the build, routing the chute from the upper floors directly down to the ground-floor laundry room. The main chute sections were fitted during the construction phase, with fire-rated intake doors completed just before the home opened — ready to use from day one with no disruption to operations.
The chute is constructed from high-grade 316L stainless steel for durability, hygiene and a smooth, snag-free interior. Safety was built in throughout: fire-rated intake doors on every floor, a fire-resistant chute structure, and an automatic fire damper that closes at around 79°C to seal off the chute in the event of a fire. Intake doors use electromagnetic, keypad-access, interlocking controls, so only one door can be opened at a time — preventing laundry being dropped on anyone loading the chute from another floor — and each door can be locked off for maintenance.
The results have been significant: staff now carry laundry only as far as the nearest intake door, removing the need to haul heavy bags through corridors or down stairs. This has cut manual handling injury risk, saved time on every laundry cycle, and kept soiled linen out of resident corridors entirely — improving hygiene, comfort and the home-like atmosphere for residents. The installation also ensures full compliance with UK fire safety regulations, giving the care home a future-proofed system with capacity to handle growing laundry volumes.