off grid manual washer

Slappy
Slappy Solar Expert Posts: 251 ✭✭✭✭✭✭
in General Solar Power Topics #1
Just posting this link on manual clothes wahers. Some are as old as 1886. It might give some off gridders some ideas. If not it is pretty cool. It is a clothes washer museum.. http://www.flixya.com/video/4752792/Washing-Machine-Museum-manual-machines
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  • Ralph Day
    Ralph Day Solar Expert Posts: 1,022 ✭✭✭✭
    #2
    Re: off grid manual washer

    Some truly impressive engineering. Makes you yearn for the days of reasonably local manufacturing (on shore at least).

    Ralph
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  • waynefromnscanada
    waynefromnscanada Solar Expert Posts: 3,009 ✭✭✭✭
    #3
    Re: off grid manual washer

    Awesome to see some of these old machines. I particularly liked the German rotary unit - - the ancestor of today's front loaders perhaps?
    Wonder how many of today's ladies would like to have one of those many machines? :D
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  • icarus
    icarus Solar Expert Posts: 5,436 ✭✭✭✭
    #4
    Re: off grid manual washer

    We still use a vintage Maytag wringer, powered with a Honda engine (originally with a
    B&S. Works great uses little water, since you can do several loads with the same water, then use the rinse water for another wash. Uses about a cup of gas per laundry session. You can still get them from Lehmans.

    Tony
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  • Slappy
    Slappy Solar Expert Posts: 251 ✭✭✭✭✭✭
    #5
    Re: off grid manual washer

    I liked the one that had the "over-under" gear. On how it worked. But they was all real neat.
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  • waynefromnscanada
    waynefromnscanada Solar Expert Posts: 3,009 ✭✭✭✭
    #6
    Re: off grid manual washer
    icarus wrote: »
    We still use a vintage Maytag wringer, powered with a Honda engine (originally with a
    B&S. Works great uses little water, since you can do several loads with the same water, then use the rinse water for another wash. Uses about a cup of gas per laundry session. You can still get them from Lehmans.

    Tony

    I remember seeing a similar machine as a kid, a neighbor who didn't at that time have electricity had a gas engine driven "Wringer-washer" and I thought it weird it was kept outside on the back steps to the house where it was subject to weather conditions. Remember the little B&S engine sticking out on the side of it near the bottom of the tub. Never saw it operating other than in my mind. Looked identical design to my mothers except mother's was run by electric motor and was kept in the kitchen and wheeled over to the sink when used. Can still remember the "clunk" when the agitator was put in gear, and the two levers on the side, one for the agitator, other for the pump. And how mother used to warn me to keep my fingers away from the ringer rollers, of how it would grab my fingers and drag my whole arm in. Also remember seeing the engine powered models in the Sears (Simpsons-Sears) catalog. How the world has changed.
    And only recently did I get rid of my grandmothers warn out 1947 Bendix front load automatic after it washed clothes for 4 generations.
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  • Grinnin
    Grinnin Solar Expert Posts: 39 ✭
    #7
    Re: off grid manual washer
    icarus wrote: »
    We still use a vintage Maytag wringer, powered with a Honda engine . . .

    I put a 12V motor with 6 AWG cord in a Speed Queen wringer washer and added a 30A circuit for only that. The bathroom is near the batteries/panels so I wheel the washer up to the bathtub and wash there.

    A neighbor has simlar panels but far larger inverters so uses a Speed Queen with the original AC motors. There are many of these old Speed Queens kicking around here.

    I'd really like to have a lower-power agitation, something I'm comfortable letting run for longer -- I keep thinking that a drum with the axis tilted up 45 degrees (and some small fins inside) could agitate like a front loader but still be an open tub. Instead of the big motor, some serious reduction gearing/belt and a small motor spinning away.
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