Borg & Overström for peace of mind

Refreshments within the workplace should provide the perfect complement to the office environment, hydrating employees at the touch of a button. However, with bottle top watercoolers, products can often inconvenience as much refresh employees. In this blog, we’ll be discussing the logistical difficulties of bottle top coolers, and the solution to these issues.

Firstly, what is the difference between a bottle-top watercooler, and a point of use, or plumbed in, watercooler? The clue is in the name. The bottle top watercooler is fed by a large bottle, that feeds water through a faucet. A point of use watercooler extracts water directly from the source or mains. 

The replacement headache

The key characteristic of the bottle-top cooler can be the most inconvenient – the bottle itself. Once the contents of the bottle have been used, the bottle requires replacing. On average, these bottles contain between 15 -19 litres of water. When a bottle replacement is required, the bottle must be removed, and the new, full, bottle lifted and fitted in its place. This is no easy task, each bottle weighs between 15 and 19kg. Often during this process, spillages occur with the bottles are swapped over due to the gravitational effect of the heavy weight of the water.

As well as water spilling from the main bottle reservoir, the drip tray underneath the dispenser taps can fill very quickly, and staff can be unaware that it needs emptying until it is too late. Once staff have realised, they must carry the open tray to the designated deposit point. This is no easy task when the tray is filled with water, often causing spillages onto the office carpet – and on the employees themselves!

This issue of spillages is often overlooked, but the consequences can be very serious indeed. Water within carpet surfaces can create ongoing moisture problems within the workplace. This can cause bacteria to build up within the carpet, emitting odour, and causing mould to form. This mould can lead to poor indoor air quality, affecting those with asthma, children, and people with compromised immune systems.

 In order to prevent such issues forming, carpet water damage must be remedied quickly, however, the build up of water within the carpet can be cumulative, and staff may not realise the scope of the problem until it is too late. Once water has been allowed to linger within the surface of the carpet, it may penetrate into building structures and common building materials and become trapped.

Borg & Overström are here to help

Here at Borg & Overström, we know that what you want from your watercooler, is peace of mind and reliability, and we design our products with this in mind. Our point of use watercoolers extract water directly from the source, cool it within a chilling coil, and dispense it directly into your receptacle. This does not require any heavy lifting, and saves you the price of constantly replacing large water bottles. The unit in which the water is transported and chilled is sealed, unlike bottle top water coolers, providing you with the assurance that, not only will you avoid leakages, but the germs on fingers and hands are kept far away from your water source.

So, we’ve solved the issues of inconvenient bottle logistics, but what of your overflowing drip tray? We have that covered also. Our accessory range offers a variety of water waste kits to ensure that your carpets remain protected – and your employees remain dry! These waste kits collect the overflow from your drip tray, and store it within a high capacity tank.  These are also available with level sensors, which emit an alarm when the overflow reaches a certain level within the waste tank. If you’d like to investigate our waste kits further, you can find them in our accessories page here.

Contact us today

If you’d like to discuss upgrading your workplace hydration from a bottle top watercooler to a point of use watercooler, contact us today, here.