Clothes Washing While Off Grid

2023-03-27 thogl

Introduction

When we initially designed the floor plan for the tiny house, we included the normal 30″ space for a modern and “normal” sized clothes washer. However, we overlooked that mystical third dimension factor: The Murphy bed box, which is in line with the row of cabinetry in the kitchen that contains the clothes washer, will not sit flat against the outer wall because the ceiling is low at the outer walls. The picture below is the tiny house when roughly built and you can see a door. The Murphy bed attaches to the wall to the left of the door you see in the picture, but: The Murphy bed is rather tall, and will hit the ceiling before it goes flat against the wall.

Murphy Bed Protrusion

The Murphy bed will need to come forward about 16″ in order for the back corner to clear the ceiling, which poses one problem about how to mount the bed solidly against the wall; this problem is discussed in the Murphy bed articles. So, while framing, we built out a box, which cleverly becomes our linen closet, that “bumps” out the wall and just barely gives the Murphy bed enough room to attach to the box. In this context, we’re dealing with a decrease in the space between the bed and the range when the bed is down for sleeping. On this same axis, in order: bed — walkway — range — counter/cabinets — clothes washer. Because we’re losing space on the axis, do we make the cabinets/counter shorter, or eliminate the washer? This triggered the conversation about what our real needs are for a washer and what do we really want. Can we make the range or washer smaller, or should we?

Some initial thoughts are:

We only need a washer and not a dryer. Why? Using electricity for resistivity loads, especially to make heat is the worst form of energy consumption in terms of efficiency – fossil fuels are much more efficient, especially in terms of cost. We are willing to use a clothes line outdoors and we have a clever idea for an indoor clothes line (more on that later).
Go with a full sized washer, because we’re sacrificing a normal residential dryer.
Get a combo unit, one machine with wash/dry built in.
Get a stacking unit.
Get a smaller unit, for small apartments

Sandy found front loader washers developed a nasty odor over time because they did not completely dry out between uses and we eventually tossed our Maytag front loader for this reason. Nick wants a washer with the minimal power consumption. Upon discussion, we decided to “try” to compare wash load volume in cubic feet with power consumption. Sandy’s current washer is a top loader, with an impeller, which is a very short agitator. The machine seems to do well with washing clothes, but the auto-water sensing feature, to determine how much water to fill does not fill above the clothes level on normal loads. Sandy therefore most often uses the heavy duty cycle.

At some point, we will post about better detergent choices we’ve experimented with, including soap nuts, Dr. Bronner, and magnets.

Old Timey Maytag

We found an old Maytag wringer washer in a local traders’ magazine and purchased the unit for $50. The plan is to completely refurbish the unit, and use it outdoors for our secondary fair weather washer. You can follow that project elsewhere in this blog.

Result?

Through our discussions, our choices are: 1) Our primary clothes washer is a typical, but efficient household 120VAC unit; 2) Our secondary choice is the Maytag Wringer/Washer (on a 12 Volt DC motor; and 3) our tertiary choice is the conical plunger manual device.