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Topic: So I found this 160 dollar mini-fridge size washing machine.  (Read 3182 times)

SuperTrainStationH

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The washing machine in my house has been broken since 2009 and going to the laundromat every few days has been a big time and money sink for me.

I found out about this thing and decided to try it out since I had money saved for something like this and considered it a reasonable purchase.



Its very small, like the size of a mini-fridge which i guess is great if you a small apartment or something like that, and its very easy to move around.

Basically you fill the left side with water and detergent, run the wash cycle, drain the wash tub, move the clothes over to the spin tub, spin the clothes, and then put them up to dry on a clothes line or clothes horse or use an electric or gas dryer if you have one.

There's an "intake valve" on top of the washer you're supposed to use an included hose to attach the washer to a sink faucet, but not only is the hose very short, but I don't think the other end could possibly fit on any sink faucet I've ever seen, but the thing glows with Asian-ness in its design philosophy and its basic (well translated, but still basic) English instruction manual so its probably designed for Asian faucets or something.

I found it easier to use a 5 gallon bucket to transfer water from my bathtub faucet straight into the wash tub.

There's a drain hose that ideally should also go in the kitchen or bathroom sink, but its kind of short, so unless you have a floor sink it probably won't reach.

I ended up using a second bucket for the water to drain into. It has a rigid u-bend in it so you can detach the hose from the side of the machine and feed the water through so you dont have stagnant water sitting in the hose after you're done using it. So you might want to get a couple of 5 gallon buckets to go with this thing, one to feed in fresh water, and another for the waste water hose to sit in.

It can wash about an armful of clothes at a time, but the spin tub holds only 2/3rds of what the wash tub can, so you'll be doing clothes in cycles.

The rinse cycle is basically just running the spun clothes through the washer again with fresh water, but without adding detergent. One rinse cycle gets the job done okay enough, but honestly, it takes two or three rinse/spin cycles before the water comes out looking clear enough to make me feel confident that the soap and old water are thoroughly purged from the garments.

The spin cycle is incredibly effective, the clothes come out dryer than they do when coming out of the washing machine at my local laundromat, and those machine's motors are damn powerful too.

The machine in general is incredibly quiet, but the spin cycle can make the machine bang around loudly if its not deliberately loaded as evenly as possible.

This process takes time, but getting to stay at home rather than the crowded, noisy laundromat, and saving quarters on coin washing machines, not to mention possibly lugging the clothes on board public transportation, is worth it to me.

Once again the main drawback is that due to its size (which is in itself a desirable aspect of the unit anyway) it can't hold a lot of clothes at once, but if you spend most lot of your time in the same retail work uniform and use the machine every other day to mostly do socks underwear and a pair of pants and a polo shirt or two, you can avoid getting a huge backlog of unwashed clothing that necessitates a larger coin op machine.
 
The agitation of the wash cycle is surprisingly very dynamic, much more so than this video makes it appear, I just happened to catch it at one of its less exciting moments.

The only serious con so far for me is that I've had "mystery fluff" appear after spinning the clothes, the effect is like I'd washed the clothes with a forgotten tissue or napkin in the pockets, but its happened twice in the two times I've used the machine so far, with no apparent source for where this fluff came from.

This may be something due to the machine being new and this will stop happening soon, but for now, I happen to have an electric dryer in the house, so the lint trap catches all of this and its a non issue, but if I had to put it straight on a clothes line or a clothes horse it might be a bit of a problem.

Ideally the power cord, and both intake and outtake hoses could be longer, but the power cord is long enough for me, my intake hose goes unused in favor of a bucket anyway, and the outtake hose would be a problem in reaching the sink if not for the fact that I use a bucket for drainage. I really do recommend the purchase of two 5 gallon buckets with this thing.

I'll tell you how this works out long term.

Hopefully this could help a resource challenged person who's interested in going to the laundromat less often.

« Last Edit: July 03, 2016, 11:20:31 am by SuperTrainStationH »

Emperor Jack Chick

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like you found it on the street?

was it at the same garage sale you got that apple II?

SuperTrainStationH

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Nah I got it off the amazon link. I'd be kind of afraid to use a washing machine off the street.

And the Apple II was recused from an elementary school that decided it wasn't cool enough for Number Munchers and Oregon Trail anymore.

It even has the original pencil tracings around the Apple emblems on the disk drives but that's another story.