In this tongue-in-cheek tale, Debbie Callaghan shares what happened when a school print room turned into a sauna – and why it’s more than just a sweaty inconvenience
I’ve seen a lot of school print rooms in my time. Some are pristine little hubs of efficiency. Some look like a filing cabinet exploded. But none has ever hit me like the one I walked into last July in the Midlands. It was, and I don’t use this word lightly, sizzling.
The moment the door opened, it felt like I’d been shoved into a tumble-dryer. The air was thick. The print room manager (a lovely, long-suffering man named Dave) looked like he was midway through a Bikram yoga session. His shirt had surrendered entirely. The machines were humming, groaning, occasionally whirring, but mostly just radiating heat like a row of poorly insulated ovens. I half expected to see trays of lasagna baking on top.
Heating Up the Issue
What struck me most was how normal this all seemed to the staff. “Yeah,” Dave shrugged, “it gets a bit warm.” I was one degree away from hallucinating. And yet, this wasn’t considered a health and safety concern. It was considered Tuesday. At the time, the school had raised the issue, to their credit. They tried using fans. Doors propped open. One particularly desperate solution involved freezing two-litre bottles of water and placing them on a chair next to the copier like sacrificial cooling stones. But none of it worked. And Dave was just getting on with it.
Of course, prolonged heat in a workplace isn’t just unpleasant it’s regulated by government guidelines, and this room was pushing them to the limit. It wasn’t just productivity wilting. It was people. And the printers weren’t faring much better.
Cool Heads and Productive Printing
An air conditioning overhaul wasn’t an option, so instead the school switched their main printers to a cold-printing inkjet solution, no heated fuser, no baking cycle, no post-lunch sauna fog. RISO’s heatless technology, designed around speed and efficiency, slotted in seamlessly. It didn’t just solve the heat.
When we returned a few months later, the difference was immediate. Same room. Same fluorescent lighting. But now, it felt livable. Dave was no longer glistening. The printers were cooler, quieter and visibly less rebellious. There was actual airflow. One TA even commented that the place “didn’t smell like a toasted mouse anymore,” which we chose to take as a compliment.
But here’s where it gets interesting: fixing the heat fixed other things too.
The Right Temperature for Success
Where previously machines had a habit of jamming at the worst possible moment. They now seem to be operating far more smoothly. Far fewer breakdowns. Print quality improved. The laminator, now operating at a reasonable room temperature, stopped curling like a party streamer. Even the IT department noticed fewer support tickets. Turns out when you stop boiling your infrastructure, it starts behaving better.
And that’s the real lesson here: a printer isn’t office furniture. It’s infrastructure. It’s as fundamental to a school’s daily operation as plumbing or broadband. If you treat it like a £49.99 desk chair, you’ll get £49.99 outcomes, and a room you could poach an egg in.
This is a sponsored article, brought to you by RISO
To find out more about RISO products and services, visit https://www.riso.co.uk/
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