Using a washing machine with no plumbing available?

[xena]

I want to use an old washing machine that is in our barn for washing all the dirty horse/dog towels and other dirty stuff. We have electricity in the barn, but no plumbing.

Would it be possible to rig up some sort of system like having 2 black dustbins either side of it - one for clean water and one for discharged water? Does the machine suck in water or does it need to be pressurised? Any ideas what sort of pressure (if required) - I have a 1000 litre IBC outside the barn which can produce a fair bit of pressure when full - would I be better using that as the supply? Can I use rainwater for washing (it's breaking the machine I'm worried about - not the cleanliness of the rinse)?

What about the discharge - can I put that into the ditch? We have a septic tank system, so not sure if our surface water goes into that, or straight into the ditch. Or should I put it down an internal "dirty water" drain?

Many thanks for any comments!

[Phil L]

Yes, providing the head of water doesn't drop too low it should be fine...bad things might happen if it drys up completely though, so you may want to top it up from time to time

Yes, although I would filter it first

If you can get the waste into a drain, then use that, if not, the septic tank...don't have it going directly into the ditch or the EA may want a word in your shell-like

[Phil L]

Forgot to add here>

it doesn't require a fantastic amount of pressure, the machine simply opens a valve for a set length of time, it can't 'know' how much water has passed through in that time, unless it uses some sort of float valve, in which case it doesn't matter how high or low the pressure is.

[Andy Burns]

I think Hotpoints (maybe others too) have a pressure tube to sense fill level ...

[Sparks]

The machine almost certainly won't suck water if it is a normal domestic washer.

The manual will tell you the pressure required, if you don't have it, try to get a manual from the web (or post the make and model here, someone may have one the same)

As long as the water is clean, then I can't see rainwater damaging the machine, however, if there is crud in it, it may damage the solenoid inlet valve, so if you can filter to some degree, this would be preferable.

I don't think just connecting the IBC to the machine will work as the water inlet is usually via the soap draw, which is usually at the top of the machine, so unless the water level in the IBC is higher than the top of the machine, you are not going to get any flow at all.

A way round this would be to either raise the IBC, install another water supply higher (you need to look at the manual to see how high you need to go, I think 10 meters is 1 bar) or install a negative head pump to the system (you could also install a sink while you are at it if you like, but make sure you clearly mark the tap as being untreated rainwater, not for drinking!)

As for your discharge, I would expect it would depend on the detergent you use - not too sure about this!

Sparks...

[Roger Mills]

It *must* use a level sensor of some sort, because it can't possibly know at what rate the water will flow in when the valve is open - it may be mains, or just fed from a domestic gravity feed. The flow needs to be 'reasonable' though - it may just abort if the required level isn't achieved within a certain time. Most washing machines will work ok when gravity fed from a storage tank whose water level is 3 metres or so above the inlet valve.

As others have said, the output *must* go into something capable of receiving foul water - *not* into a ditch!

[Harry Bloomfield]

on 07/01/2007, xena supposed :

A small solenoid valve opens, to permit entry of mains pressurised water. The lower the pressure, the longer it would take to fill up. At a guess, I would suggest the fill water level would need to be at least a couple of meters above the washer to get a sensible fill time.

Another way would be to install and automatic flow controlled pump, to provide the pressure needed.

If the rain water is reasonably clean, yes.

The outlet does pump, in fact the outlet pipe has to be raised some way above the water level in the machine to prevent it syphoning itself out.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Phil L pretended :

They don't open for a set time, the valve opens under the control of a switch which detects the water level - basically a pipe leading to a diaphramn, the pressure in the pipe as the water rises turns off the valve and signals the controller to continue the wash process.

[Sparks]

I beg to differ, most machines use a solenoid valve to control their water intake, these valves do have a minimum pressure to open. I just picked a random machine and downloaded a manual... AEG Lavamat 1260 needs a minimum of 7PSI, that is .48 Bar, or 4.8 meters of head.

IBC's are about 1m high, so when they are full the pressure at the tap is 0.10 bar - The washing machine's inlet is probably about 80cm off the ground? so if the IBC and the washer are on the same level, you need a pump or you need to raise the water source as the static pressure would be 0.02 bar - in fact, if you wanted to pump the water, you would need a pump and a pressure vessel, as when the WM opens it's valve, you wouldn't get any flow for the pump to see at that pressure, so it would never start.

Also, all machines I have seen do have a sensor to detect the water level, otherwise if you were washing towels one day and a few t-shirts the other day, the water level would not be the same (the towels will absorb a heck of a lot more water!)

Sparks...

[David Hansen]

On Sun, 7 Jan 2007 21:38:12 -0000 someone who may be "xena" wrote this:-

Not legally.

The typical septic tank can cope with a limited amount of clothes washing chemicals, but not too much as that would kill off some of the little things that do the work. It would be worthwhile doing more research on how big your existing installation is and how it is loaded. There may well be chemicals more suited to septic tanks too.

Hopefully not. If it did it would reduce the capacity of the septic tank and there is no reason to put surface water into a septic tank anyway.

What comes out of a washing machine is not surface water.

Hopefully the surface water goes into something suitable for it, which may be a ditch.

[Andrew Gabriel]

You could perhaps bypass the inlet valve, and use the power to it to drive a pump instead (probably need a relay as they are often driven by low current triacs with no heatsink).

Some have a timer too, so that if the machine doesn't fill up within a certain time period, the inlet is cut off and the wash abandoned, in case this is due to the water spewing out somewhere. (On Hotpoints, E10 error code is machine taking too long to fill.)

[Tony Williams]

I tested a few w/m valves for a job once and have a vague memory that they do need a minimum pressure but it is needed to do a proper closing of the valve.

[meow2222]

You'll need to hook up a pump to the solenoid terminals on the machine so when it wants water it gets pressure. Do this via a relay rather than direct loading.

I dont know about water out, but there are some environmentally friendly detergents such as ecover which may or may not resolve some problems. Also its not too hard to make a small simple sand treatment plant. Waer goes through sand containing plants, bacteria breakdown detergent and lants sterilise it all.

Rainwater in would need to be filtered properly, it only takes a tiny bit of grit to clog a valve and cause a flood. Also will need to be non-whiffy if you want good cleaning results, so maybe UV treatment for the holding tank. Perhaps running a plastic hose to the shed might be easier.

NT

[xena]

I'll see if I can find out - it's something I've been wondering for a while, but we share the tank with the farm next door (it's on his land) and both properties have changed hands several times since the installation.

I always thought that there were two water systems in a house - grey water (everything from inside) which goes for treatment, and surface water (outside drains and roof gutter water etc) that went into a ditch or summat without treatment.

Then I got confused, cos a few posts further down in "Washing machine waste pipe across the kitchen", loads of people told the guy to stick his washing machine outlet into the surface water drains. This is the only reason I was asking about discharging into a ditch, I'd never do it otherwise, guv, honest!

Ok, it's not too difficult to get it into the septic tank as there's a manhole cover near the barn entrance that is en route to the septic tank.

Thanks to everyone for their comments and advice - I'm off to dig out the manual and find out what pressure is required for the water, and how much dirty water I'm going to have to cart around after!

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 09:14:50 -0000 someone who may be "xena" wrote this:-

They actually told him to put it into what is undoubtedly a combined drainage system. The confusion is in the use of terminology.

[John Phillips]

The manual for my seven-year-old Bosch says it needs >1 bar (10 metres). Actually it worked fine on the 0.4 bar or so I had on the hot water fill until I changed it over last year to cold feed only.

However the trigger for me changing it over was that the 0.4 bar hot fill started to occasionally fail through the valve not opening. Although a cleanup fixed this problem I converted it to mains pressure cold fill anyway.