Do washing machines want to tell us something?

ok, it sometimes so happens that our washing machine with an unbalanced load will start to wander… [a disguised attempt to flee the house?] - but obviously the umbilical cords of water and electricity will eventually scuttle any such notions of escape… but consider, does the direction of movement not indicate which of its four footrests is not extended far enough? - please read the pdf story first before enlightening us with your thoughts :grin:
dragon seismo smaller.pdf (502.6 KB)

Or just reposition the lump inside …

I replaced my washing machine a week ago.
Over here, they take away the old one as a service.
I got my strapping brute of a son to pull out the old one, ready for the delivery men.
I asked my son to fit the new one back in the hole when it arrived.
He was well on the way to doing when I suggested he read the instructions, which he duly pooh-poohed.
( As you do).
He would reverse what he had done with the old machine.
That’s logical, …duh, Dad.

However, I read the instructions (followed the pictures, actually).

A washing machine is full of some heavy cement-like material to give it counterweight stability. When it is made (in Turkey), this lump of cement is fixed to the frame with some heavy-duty coach screws and thick rubber washers. This cement block is stable in transit until it is fitted in a kitchen.
Then the coach screws must be removed so this cement counterweight can dampen vibrations while the machine runs.

I had done this on the old washing machine, but I had completely forgotten about this in the interim.

I wonder how many washing machines out there are shaking themselves to bits because, (men especially), tend to ignore reading the instructions.
I would often be guilty of this myself.

well, being from Mars myself I eventually end up looking for instructions on YouTube :see_no_evil:

regarding my original question, i have noticed that the machines tend to wander the path of least resistance - a human trait :crazy_face: - in other words they tell you which footing is not fixed correctly - as you state; i wonder how on earth the thing might behave if you do NOT remove those [transport] bolts…

I bought a machine like that once. It was brand new, so it was advertised. It was used once. And they were selling it because it did not fit in the bathroom where they wanted to install it.

When I got home I saw the transport bolts were still in. And removed it. I’ve often wondered if that was the real reason it was immediately sold on (at a tiny discount).

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Washing machines being the midgets that they are, dont really tell us something, old school, new school, doesnt really matter… it not like the 4kwh vs 1,8kwh, old vs new tumble dryers…

washing machines, almost never comes into play when i design a system…

4kwh, that’s worse than most geysers -would there not be a chance of burning the load?.. and 1.8kwh is somewhere between a toaster and a kettle… thanks @JacoDeJongh for getting the discussion more in line with the forum… notwithstanding us weedeaters :laughing:

Heat pump tumble dryers are now under 1KW. Not cheap though

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I think it is a bad idea. Firstly, it doesn’t have access to lots of “new” air. Secondly, you use it in winter… And you extract all the heat from the air to warm up your clothes? Sounds like a cold house to me!

Friends with a Siemens heatpump tumbledryer actually complains about how long it takes. I’ve not actually asked them about the effect on the temp of the surrounding area. If you run it in the garage, it might actually not be that bad an idea, but our scullery is in the house, which is (in winter) normally a “closed” system.

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If you think of your house as a closed system and you are adding 1kW to it…
The dryer basically acts like a de-humidifier, the net effect is going to be warming up the house, but much less than the alternative.

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How I think of it (and this might be flawed) is that you might need say 6kWh of energy (in the form of heat) to evaporate the water from the clothes (which then typically condenses in the reservoir). Running a heatpump of 1kW that effectively extracts 3kW of energy from the air (say) for two hours would extract about 4kWh of heat (assuming the 1kW on the pump cause pure heat, which it probably doesn’t)?

So yes, maybe 4kWh isn’t that much, but the scullery/kitchen is a small area typically. Anyways, probably not a big deal.

Wow, you’re right. It is going to make the air in the room colder, but the heat (put into the clothes) also eventually end in the same room, and since no conversion is 100%… you’re actually heating the house. I really love all you technical people around here.

Hmmm isn’t the energy used (in a large part) for evaporating the water? The clothes are warm, but not nearly as warm as if it would have been had you no water to evaporate (which is why you really shouldn’t run a tumble dryer with dry clothes in it).

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Yeah, but the problem is the air becomes saturated and you also cannot extract anymore water from the clothes. So to combat that, you use the evaporator of the heat exchanger to condense the water vapour, so the net phase change of the water is nil (or at least that’s the aim) and so is the energy.

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Our dryer, a Bosch, is in the bathroom. Got it for a bargain. R7k

Does not even need a pipe, it has a big tank for the water. Can drink it if you really need to.

That water gets HOT … as does the bathroom, and the passage.

And it senses the wetness, so it can take longer, very big very wet … or faster. Sommer chop chop.

It runs off the solar system, draws way less than a 2k geyser, and does not even always draw power. Goes one, gets on heat, and then cleverly keeps the heat, on/off as needed.

The old one, MF, when it starts, 4k. Just before it ends, 4kw … Nee.

Ah okay, so effectively the inefficiency of the system will end up heating the room?

I have read that these tumble dryers requires rooms to be 18-24 degrees to be function adequately, so perhaps the bigger issue is rather heating the room to at least 18 in the winter so that the drying cycle wouldn’t be too long.

We have a condenser dryer (the non-heatpump variety) but I’ve never tried drinking the water… If it is anything like distilled water, I don’t expect it to be a good idea.

Ours is a Bosch too. Condenser dryer. Has a 2kW element, but it is also set up in two halves: Sometimes it will run on just half of it, and it has a thermostat: It turns the heat off, and keeps it in. The drum actually has a layer of rubber insulation around it to help with that. In terms of energy, it certainly uses much less than a geyser. About 1kWh to do a load, maybe 2kWh if it is a large load.

The only thing that is quite irritating about ours: It frequently stops to complain that the lint trap needs cleaning. It does this even if the trap is clean, because how it does it, is to check the moisture in the air, and if the moisture level doesn’t drop as fast as it wants it to, it assumes the trap must be blocked.

I have not been able to figure out how to fix that.

We bought our condenser before we had a house (and loadshedding being a big thing). We stayed in an apartment and I didn’t want to dampen the whole thing up with a regular dryer. This is a Defy one, not fancy like yours! On its maximum power it uses 3.6kW though, which is a disaster. I sommer want to sell it and buy one that uses less power!

At least it gives as no issues, but if the load is full, fairly good chance that the clothes ball up and the stuff inside the ball are still damp when the machine shuts down due to it not extracting much moisture anymore… That I’ve not been able to find a way around. It also doesn’t help that we only really use it for bedding, which has a tendency to have large sheets.

There is another filter in the front, bottom right if we have the same model.

Had to have the belt replaced twice, the one around the drum. It is quite a thin belt. Fragile even.

The first time, the Bosch repairer said, it was a hot day in the braai room, he asks, do you use it in this heat. Sometimes … don’t, he says, it is too hot for the machine to operate. So we moved it.

The second time, he says, you are overloading it … I checked, and indeed, someone did overload it, ignored the warnings, forcing the machine to dry.

They are quite sensi, these new things. But ok, they do a lot!

How do you get that thing off? I’ve always assumed it’s permanently affixed.

I did clean it out from behind when I replaced the belt earlier. It wasn’t very dirty.