[HN Gopher] An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine
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An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine
Author : ohjeez
Score : 194 points
Date : 2025-12-13 22:38 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.positive.news)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.positive.news)
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Feel like replacing my piece of shit LG with this. It can only
| soak for a predetermined amount of time and if I try to pause it
| to soak longer it drains the water in 3 minutes. Plus, scrud!
| araes wrote:
| It sounds kind of sarcastic, yet that was actually the personal
| thought also. Really sounds like its comparable to the amount
| of work with modern machines anyways. Couple minutes of hand
| cranking, and otherwise, approximately the same. Owned a modern
| washing machine for years, and not sure if I've ever used
| almost any of the settings or features other than, "load
| clothing on default, push start".
|
| Probably sell well in a lot of developed world markets for
| people who just want to limit their electricity use, live away
| from the grid, have less reliance on complicated electronics,
| or minimize money use in an expensive society.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You should use the bedding setting for large quilts and
| blankets, and the towels setting for towels, it really does
| work better. Experiment with the other settings so you can
| see the difference in wash time, water levels, spin speed and
| then you know which one to choose based on what you want for
| that load.
|
| Oh and separate your laundry. Don't throw towels, blankets,
| and clothes in all at the same time.
| bgbntty2 wrote:
| Why separate laundry? I've tried it in the past, but don't
| do it anymore. Same result. The stains that can be cleaned
| get cleaned. The stains that would persist, persist. The
| only difference is the temperature setting.
|
| As for separating colors - in my life I've had a piece of
| clothing stain other clothes 2 or 3 times. Once I put some
| white shirts and they came out pink because of another red
| shirt. Funny thing is, the pink was very uniform, so it
| looked as if the shirts were originally pink.
|
| If my washing machine breaks, I'll get a second hand one.
| If I get a brand new washing machine, it will have to have
| a manual mode where I can set the desired program manually.
| For example, what is "towel setting"? If I can't see and
| modify the setting (e.g., A temperature for B minutes at C
| RPM, then D temp for E min for F RPM, etc.), I wouldn't use
| it.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| It depends. My clothing doesn't (typically) need to
| tumble for long whereas towels might and bedding needs to
| go for much longer. In general it's probably better for
| fabric to be washed for less time if possible. It wears
| out.
|
| Also if you pay close attention you'll notice that things
| don't come fully clean (old machines didn't either) just
| "clean enough". Throw some well used dog bedding in with
| your shirts and this fact might become more readily
| noticable. So it makes sense to wash like-use with like-
| use for that reason alone.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Less time != less wear. Some of the longest programs just
| let the laundry sit with occasional agitation, similar to
| how the machine in this article works, in the name of
| energy saving.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| True. However, my fantastically modern machine from this
| marvelous version of the future we're living in doesn't
| offer any programs that soak for a noticable length of
| time. My bedding gets set to a cycle that constantly
| agitates the drum for the better part of 2 hours which my
| shirts definitely won't benefit from being subjected to.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Colors don't bleed much these days. Some might, e.g. on
| handmade clothing such as tyedye but most commercial
| colors don't.
|
| If you wash items of different weights, fabrics, etc.
| together the load can get unbalanced more easily. Such as
| as single heavy towel or jacket in with a bunch of light
| synthetic items.
|
| The "towels" setting uses warmer water and faster spin
| speed but an overall shorter cycle (at least on my
| washer) compared to the "normal" cycle. This probably
| presumes that towels usually are made of cotton and
| aren't very dirty.
|
| I agree that a fully manual mode would be nice. My washer
| (LG) doesn't have that but by knowing what the various
| cycles and optional settings (e.g. soil level, extra
| rinse) do you can get pretty close to what you want.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > I agree that a fully manual mode would be nice.
|
| Enter "why wifi on your washing machine makes sense"
| butvacuum wrote:
| Not needed. Pure software change, cycle programs aren't
| difficult, and there's plenty of buttons to use to input
| them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Colors don't bleed much these days. Some might, e.g. on
| handmade clothing such as tyedye but most commercial
| colors don't.
|
| Sadly, with fast fashion, we've regressed to the point
| places like Shein/Fashion Nova sell pool attire vs swim
| suit that is not meant to get wet due to the dyes not
| holding when wet.
| jopsen wrote:
| Consider getting a European model..
|
| I was always confused doing laundry in the US. Warm cycle
| or cold cycle?
|
| I have 30C, 40C and 60C depending on what I'm washing. I
| probably have more programs, but never use them. For
| pillows and stuff I adjust spinning, from 1200 to 400
| RPM. And I use special short, low rpm handwash program
| for wool.
|
| (Side loaded ofcourse, that way the dryer can be on top)
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > Consider getting a European model..
|
| Top loader uselessness is my pet peeve.
|
| Front loaders (just like one in video) wring clothes as
| they spin. The result difference is day and night.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Top loaders don't have seals that can fail (and smell),
| and they also wrong clothes when they spin at the end.
| The clothes experience about 200g, the extra 1g isn't a
| big difference.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'd love to, but doubt it would work. US washers meant
| for home use run on 120V and that's what the electrical
| outlet will be delivering. I would assume Euro are 220V
| or maybe higher? Also the 50/60Hz difference might
| matter.
| noosphr wrote:
| How much free time do you have to do this?
|
| Wash.
|
| Is clean?
|
| Yes: put in drier.
|
| No: GOTO wash.
| ornornor wrote:
| Check the user manual. The default program is usually not the
| most energy and water efficient one but rather the mandatory
| one for certifying the machine.
|
| Same thing for dishwashers, the "eco" program is often not
| the best especially if you have an "auto" one.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I try to explain this to people, but they are so convinced
| by the 'eco' branding/rethoric that even when you
| demonstrate they still disbelieve, or more acuratly do not
| _want_ to believe.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Eco modes save water and generally take a little longer,
| albeit same temperature (ergo a little bit more energy).
| I am missing something?
| ornornor wrote:
| Yes, check the power and water usage table in the manual:
| all the ones I've checked (in Europe), the eco program is
| not eco when compared to others (especially auto if it's
| there)
|
| Eco is just the standard program they have to ship and
| must use for the energy efficiency rating.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Why would they not use the most efficient one for the
| energy efficiency rating?
| dmurray wrote:
| Because everyone would cheat and include a program that
| sprays cold water for a few seconds, using minimal energy
| but not actually getting your dishes clean.
| ornornor wrote:
| My understanding is that the standard program doesn't
| allow for the optimizations that other programs do. It's
| something like "must wash at 60C for 2h and perform a
| rinse cycle for 30 minutes" or something to that effect,
| so that everyone runs the same program and can compare
| ratings.
|
| Whereas with other programs they can adjust the settings
| and times to make it wash better AND use less
| water/energy.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| For my new Bosch Benchmark dishwasher, "normal" actually
| uses 2.4 gallons and 1.25 kwh a load, is most efficient,
| and is quietest. There is no "eco" mode. "Auto" mode uses
| about twice the gallons no matter what's inside and
| slightly more kwh.
| ornornor wrote:
| Maybe it's a European thing. The eco program is the one
| mandated by law and the one they use for the energy
| rating.
|
| But for machines that have a table showing power and
| water use, it's never the most efficient one (in all the
| ones I checked). There is always a better program, it's
| usually called "auto".
|
| Maybe it's different in North America, idk what the rules
| are there.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Seems like the companies think we're too dumb in North
| America. My machines didn't come with any sort of tables.
| Someone else was saying their washing machine has actual
| temperature settings and RPM settings. None of the ones
| I've seen here tell us that, not even in the manual.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| I've heard this before (and I don't have any reason to
| doubt your research) but I'm struggling to figure out
| _why_ it would be the case.
|
| Regulation 1016/2010 (https://eur-
| lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2010/1016/oj/eng) is the thing that
| establishes the various requirements for home
| dishwashers. It's pretty straightforward (most of the
| content establishing how efficiency is calculated). It
| basically just requires the default program to be
| "suitable to clean normally soiled tableware and that it
| is the most efficient programme in terms of its combined
| energy and water consumption for that type of tableware".
|
| I could imagine some issues with how these numbers are
| calculated that reward "less efficient" devices or
| something like that, but it's pretty hard to figure out
| what that could be. Bit of a mystery!
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| As it's the one for certifying the machine, it usually _is_
| the most energy and water efficient one. For washing
| machines the downside is that it takes 3 hours (or longer,
| if the machine was built before the EU capped it to 3h),
| for dishwashers the downside is that it stops being
| efficient once you realize that you have to run it a second
| time to actually get clean dishes.
| f6v wrote:
| You guys are delusional. Try serving even a small family with
| this, it's a nightmare. I can clearly see people
| romanticizing dull hard labour.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| A big difference is that this can't properly centrifuge your
| clothes, while a normal washing machine can. This also needs
| manually filling and emptying, while a normal washing machine
| handles all that, including multiple rinse cycles.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't even get into how poorly it seems to actually
| wash the clothes. Been thinking lately that it would be cool
| to get a washboard that fits nicely in its tub that I can use
| to scrub the clothes by hands and then remove for the rinse
| cycles.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Get a speed queen. Famous for being reliable because it's a
| "dumb" machine (in a good way).
| frompdx wrote:
| They are also very heavy duty compared to a normal washer and
| dryer, even a basic one. I've had mine since 2017 and they
| just work.
| adiabatichottub wrote:
| It's only $1700! And would also last 30+ years, like a 1980s
| Maytag
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Destroys your clothes and is mega inefficient in exchange.
| You can buy better washers than LG washers that are modern.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Nah, maybe the TC-5 could be argued to be relatively
| inefficient and pretty aggressive on delicate stuff (and
| loud), but the TR-7 is both efficient and gentle on
| clothing while being quiet. Have had one for a while and
| love it. No machine is perfect but this feels pretty close.
| bob1029 wrote:
| The TC5 is fine by me. I've never had a washer that
| worked this well. The noise level is the last thing I'm
| worried about when a meaningful cycle completes within 30
| minutes.
| AngryData wrote:
| Does being "inefficient" really matter for a washing
| machine if you don't live in the desert? Its not like they
| go through 100+ of gallons of water or ridiculous amounts
| of electricity even in the worst possible case scenarios.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Actually old top loaders aren't so far off of that
| number. Maybe 40+ gallons per load.
|
| But still I'm inclined to agree with the general
| sentiment of not micro optimizing things in ways that
| make people's lives more difficult.
| prirun wrote:
| My Mom had a washer that did this. I told her to unplug it to
| soak overnight. That worked, but she hated that thing, sold it,
| and took my sister's older washer that didn't have any "we know
| better than you do" features.
| firebot wrote:
| Many washers will pause if the lid is open.
| temp8830 wrote:
| Most washers outside of Asia are horizontal, not vertical,
| so there is no lid to open. And the ancient tech ones in
| North America that load from the top don't have any
| electronics and are already immune.
| 20after4 wrote:
| The top load washers in the US all have lid locks and
| safety switches with anti-tamper devices to prevent you
| from disabling the lock mechanism.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| I do this if I really need to soak something but the cycle
| after I turn back it on is weird because it's not "resuming"
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| My favorite modern "efficiency" feature has to be the machine
| refusing to unlock the door for me after it's been "too long".
| Okay, fine. Reset cycle, add some random item, whoops there
| went a bunch of water and detergent. Not my problem I guess.
| Say goodbye to those EnergyStar figures.
| noosphr wrote:
| At this point with having to read the manual to open the damned
| door I'm seriously thinking about attaching a belt drive,
| motor, driver circuit and esp32 running an http with spin/stop
| commands.
| bryanbuckley wrote:
| I was diagnosing my washer (drum balance issue; many annoying
| minutes unlocking the lid multiple times) earlier today and
| had the same thought.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| It is easy to understand the impact this will be in people's
| lives.
|
| I think within no time it will be modded with motors, maybe
| salvaged from broken electrical appliances and it will come full
| circle.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| You'd need electricity for that and a lot of places don't have
| it.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You'd be surprised at the places that have electricity, like
| houses in middle of nowhere, central asia. One of the
| challenges with engineering technology for the global south
| is that poverty is wildly different for different people. I
| met a professor working on flatpack windmills to pump
| water/electricity. The major challenges he kept seeing in the
| the Andes weren't the sorts of longevity/efficiency/logistics
| issues we usually solve with standard engineering, but how
| the products interacted with local politics and society.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| To add to AlotOfReading's point, many places have some
| electricity, just utterly unreliable.
|
| It might be down a few hours every day, or completely cut for
| days after storms or infra degradation, or the current
| fluctuate too much for delicate electronics. Many places
| could also get hold of a gasoline generator.
|
| These kind of variations could require more thinking on the
| design, but being able to use electricity when available and
| hand power when needed would be the best.
|
| Ideally the people on the ground thinking about their
| specific issues and having open ways to adapt the machine for
| it opens the door for many kind of evolutions.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Checks all the boxes but why no TEDx talk?
| aljgz wrote:
| Love seeing this.
|
| For many reasons, I expect to see a lot of new products and
| solutions going against the main trends of locking down the user,
| planned obsolence, rent seeking from buyers, and limiting their
| choices.
|
| Imagining a company shipping the home appliances equivalent to
| Frame.work laptops: open, reparable, hackable, and upgradable. I
| would happily connect them to my home wifi, program them the way
| I want, and have one hub that allows me to monitor health,
| upgrade firmware, control functionality.
| christkv wrote:
| Wait does it not need a rise as well to get the soap out of the
| clothes?
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| I noticed that too. Does anyone know what happens if you don't
| rinse the clothes?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I was glad to see this because I had the same exact question,
| but then I realized that given this machine seems to be
| designed for manually loading the water into it, a dedicated
| "rinse cycle" probably wouldn't help much because it's probably
| easier to just manually rinse the clothes after.
| adiabatichottub wrote:
| I love it. I used to work for a company targeting markets in the
| developing world. It's really easy to take for granted the supply
| chains that exist all around us. I always like to see the
| creative solutions people come up with when resources are
| constrained.
|
| PS: As an example, note the sheet-metal construction. In an
| industrialized country we would laser-cut all these parts. If you
| wanted to make this in an area with less infrastructure you might
| use a template and carbide gas torch to cut out the large shapes,
| then a hand punch to make the screw holes. More labor intensive,
| but still doable.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| In an "industrialized" country we encase the real drum in a
| glued tight unopenable plastic enclosure to prevent the drum
| seals from being service replaced when they fail so that what
| used to be a small low cost repair now results in a forced new
| machine purchase.
| Spivak wrote:
| I have found that "low end" appliances avoid a lot of this
| nonsense since there's no money for extraneous parts and
| they've been using the exact same designs for decades.
| 20after4 wrote:
| Even on the low-end models, Whirlpool (and probably other
| brands as well) have managed to add at least one failure-
| prone and overly expensive feature:
|
| The lid safety switch which prevents you from disabling the
| lid lock. It has a complex design with lots of anti-tamper
| circuitry. It's highly prone to failure and very expensive
| to replace compared to the price of the whole machine.
| jayanmn wrote:
| I could not find if the team makes design open
|
| https://www.thewashingmachineproject.org/
|
| That alone will be revolutionary.
| infinet wrote:
| I am interested in unit cost for mass production. It needs to
| be significantly cheaper than an old style top-loading washing
| machine to be affordable. The design of old style washing
| machine is mature and priced at around $100 for 8kg model. I
| suspect it can be stripped down further, remove water pump,
| remove program controlled inlet valve et al. to reduce the cost
| to below $50. Granted, washing machine like that needs
| electricity, but solar panel may be cheap enough.
|
| One more thing, the water is not always easy to get in poor
| places. It is often much easier to carry laundry to a well,
| creak, or river than transport water to home. The path to the
| water sources may be a narrow trail often going up and down
| hills, so even with wheels on the machine, it is impractical to
| drag the machine to the water.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Extremely simple washing machines already exist, and I
| suspect on the order of 30-40 dollars. They are top-loading.
| No pumps. Turn one dial to let water in through the inlet.
| Turn another dial to let water out through the outlet valve.
| All manual, no pumps. Then flip switch to start spinning with
| electric motor, flip it back to stop spinning (no timers).
|
| What you do is fill it with water. Add soap. Then put in
| first load of clothes and run it for 15 minutes. Then take
| out the clothes and put them in a tub. Repeat with second
| load of clothes in same soapy water. Once, all loads are
| done, then put in fresh water. Run all loads through it to
| get the soap out. You are done.
|
| (Relatively) richer people might have another machine that
| acts as a spinner. Otherwise, you just hang up the wet
| clothes outside.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > (no timers).
|
| The automatic timer part is almost certainly the cheapest
| part of any washing machine.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Likely just to keep the device simpler - on/off switches
| should last for lots of duty cycles, timers introduce
| another point of failure.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Of the stuff I've repaired recently it's been mechanical
| switches that have caused problems, where a
| microcontroller and bloody great MOSFET would have kept
| on forever.
| 20after4 wrote:
| Like the cursed lid lock safety switch?
| codedokode wrote:
| That sounds like Soviet washing machine to me. However,
| they had a mechanical timer.
| bgnn wrote:
| There are much lover cost washing machines with electricity.
| This one for example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eo4CIHpp28 . It's just a
| motor, you just need a big bucket or a tub to fill it with
| water and detergent. Let it turn the clithes in water for
| half an hour and rinse. It's also handy during rinsing.
|
| Growing up in a developing country in 90s we used to use this
| type of machine for bigger loads because our normal front
| loader machine was only 6kg capacity. This + a bathtub was
| the way to go for washing the blankets, bedsheets etc. It
| costs now sth like 20-30 usd.
| superultra wrote:
| But can it really clean clothes if it doesn't have 802.11ac with
| AI spot cleaning and a 750mv iOS app??? /s
| lostlogin wrote:
| No, but if it has access to your contacts it can.
| mystraline wrote:
| Deleted cause I was wrong.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Can you give one example of someone you know or have heard of
| who could benefit from one of these as opposed to a really
| cheap rental grade 120vac modern washing machine? You'd have to
| not have electricity to need one of these and rural
| electrification was a thing over 100 years ago here.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Maybe some of the prepper crowd?
| denkmoon wrote:
| TFA states units have been shipped to the US.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the US ones weren't mostly used by
| people with camp sites. Even the poorest people have
| elctricity. But affluent people have remote camps.
| tomcatfish wrote:
| The THIRD sentence in the article explains that they ship to
| the US. You are tone-policing your hallucinated version of the
| article!
|
| > Enter Navjot Sawhney, who founded the UK-based social
| enterprise The Washing Machine Project (TWMP) to tackle this,
| and has now shipped almost 500 of his hand-crank Divya machines
| to 13 countries, including Mexico, Ghana, Iraq *and the US.*
| markbao wrote:
| This is very cool. Great that it's built out of metal for
| longevity and repairability. Wonder if they could make the radius
| of the rotation smaller since that seems like the most likely
| ergonomic improvement I could see from the demo.
| xnx wrote:
| Previously (2021): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168460
| Tarsul wrote:
| He started in 2018. In 2021 he had shipped 30 (to Iraq). Wanted
| to ship 7500 in the next 3 years. Fast foward to 2025: he has
| shipped 500 in 13 countries. Hopefully, with his partnerships
| and local production (in India) his ramp-up will fasten up. I
| wish him luck.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > We went back to the drawing board and really listened to the
| people we were designing for, for the context in which they
| lived. That research changed everything,"
|
| I understand they had a very good idea to begin with, and more
| importantly their heart in the right place And then further made
| it better with more input.
|
| Reading the comments here the better solution for us is probably
| not to go back to "dumb" washing machines, but to regain control
| of how these machines are designed, for who and for what.
|
| I'm thinking about Linux, which can be stripped down as small and
| nimble as needed to run a single board micro controller, or be
| large as needed to have everything to run an enterprise service.
| Being able to do the same with a washing machine would absolutely
| change their usefulness and place in our society.
|
| I don't know how it could start, perhaps with an IKEA washing
| machine that actually needs assembly, for users to then tweak the
| parts, start comminities so we get at least in a KALLAX situation
| ?
|
| https://ikeahackers.net/2025/07/ikea-kallax-hacks-2.html
| xbmcuser wrote:
| This is not targeted for people on hackernewz
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I really like the practicality and simplicity of this.
|
| Designing stuff for real humans to use, is really difficult, and
| really humbling.
|
| In my experience, defense contractors really have to take the
| user context into account. It can be life or death. I used to
| work for one, and seeing the stuff come back from the field, was
| a lesson in humility.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Had the feeling someone must have made a similar design in Japan.
| And yes:
|
| https://youtu.be/iMOkxrdP6kY?si=HWf_Sb-zwk5Vi8ES
|
| (sold for about 10,000 yens
| https://item.rakuten.co.jp/thanko/000000003846/)
|
| The metal design in the article is still more flexible and
| durable. I also assumed the Japanese version would be targeted at
| disaster situations and/or remote mountain areas and be more
| repairable, but the cost saving part seems to be a major selling
| point.
| supportengineer wrote:
| I don't see an agitator, how does it get the clothes clean?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Gravity.
|
| The clothes falling down from the upper half is described on
| the slides, so I assume the rotation isn't fast enough for
| the clothes to stick to the walls, or it has an elliptical
| rotor to make sure there a speed difference ?
|
| (edited as I'm not sure how it exactly works)
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Tumbling, just like a generic front-load washing machine.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| That video is three years old, although the item in question
| might be older of course. I remember reading about the Washing
| Machine Project a decade ago or so.
| Animats wrote:
| There are lots of little hand-crank washing machines on Alibaba
| and Amazon. Most are plastic and rather fragile looking. Many
| seem to use the mechanism of salad spinners. The Sears WonderWash
| seems to be popular.
| cocoto wrote:
| Sadly arm strength and endurance is way worse than legs, this
| should obviously work with pedals like a bicycle. I would even be
| ready to buy one to replace my daily commute when working from
| home.
| nataliste wrote:
| >It works like this: after loading the clothes, detergent and
| water, and letting it sit for 10-15 minutes, users can close the
| lid and turn the handle for two minutes, repeating this twice
| more after ten minutes of letting the clothes sit in between
| spins. And voila -- the machine can then be drained using the tap
| at the front.
|
| I lived off-grid and did all of our laundry, a family of four
| (including a baby in cloth diapers), by hand, even in the winter
| (below -20F).
|
| You know what works as well? A wash tub and a stick. Or a bucket
| and plunger. Or a posser if you're really fancy. I used a 30
| gallon garbage can and a hand-carved posser. In mild or hot
| climates you can just stomp on it.
|
| Same principle: Draw water, add cleanser, agitate for a couple of
| minutes, let it soak, return at some time in the future, agitate
| again. Remove laundry and let drip dry while you draw fresh water
| (mangles and spinners speed this up and are more effective, but
| not necessary). Squeeze wet laundry at lowest point where water
| has gathered. Repeat entire process with clean water, then lay it
| out in the sun prioritizing any sides with stains.
|
| The secret sauce of clean laundry isn't how you agitate the
| laundry. It's just time and chemistry.
|
| Water access, cleansing agents, and patience are fundamentally
| more important than providing "revolutionary" contraptions. It's
| the same difference between teaching people about no-knead bread
| and giving them hand-cranked stand-mixers. One solves the need
| for intensive manual labor and the other doesn't, but introduces
| a new point of failure.
|
| And even importing enzyme-containing detergent is unnecessary.
| Plant ash (a source of alkali) and aged urine (a source of
| ammonia) are all you need to create what's known as bucking lye
| which cleans just as effectively and uses byproducts that they
| themselves produce by default. Residual stains are removed via UV
| from sun drying.
|
| There's absolutely no need to complicate this.
| nchmy wrote:
| This is the sort of comment I was hoping to find. I have
| focused in this area - improving lives of the poorest as
| efficiently as possible - for a long time and my immediate
| thoughts about this washing machine was that it was
| overcomplicated and definitely far too expensive (for many
| reasons) to ever really make a difference. Though, that won't
| stop these folks from doing this and receiving donations for it
| into perpetuity.
|
| So much is possible if you just look at how nature, in one way
| or another, can do the work for you. No knead bread (or,
| better, periodic stretch and folds over the course of a few
| hours) is a perfect example. Or making a composting
| toilet/latrine by just adding sawdust, ash etc. Or simple and
| cheap rocket stoves that burn the smoke. Or cover crops and
| cultivating soil structure and microbes. Etc
|
| The key for what you shared (and, i suppose this machine) is
| how little agitation you actually need, and how there's plenty
| of ways to do it with no fancy equipment. Can you share more
| about your experience, or even share some links, about the
| amount of agitation needed, how "cleaning" actually works (you
| said time and chemistry - but how?), and how to make effective,
| low-cost detergents anywhere?
|
| Thanks!
| nataliste wrote:
| Your heart is in a better place than the NGO-contraption
| market, but what you also need to understand is that when you
| change a local optima in minimal ways, you also disrupt the
| rest of the local economy inadvertently.
|
| Take the rocket stove as an example. It's an "improvement"
| over three stone and hearth fires, right? Less particulate in
| the air, less smoke, less ash, and more efficient use of
| fuel, all good things, right? Everyone has to work less to
| gather fuel, everyone's lungs are happier, and so on.
|
| But not quite.
|
| The rocket stove reduces ash yield, reducing one universally
| useful by-product. The rocket stove minimizes smoke
| production, so instead of creosote deposits on the walls
| acting as a general biocidal agent and lowering air humidity,
| there's now high humidity with exposed walls, an ideal
| climate for mold growth. Ever wonder why traditional pit-
| houses and earth-lodges rarely had issues with mold and damp
| and typically annually fumigated their entire homes with
| smoke? Or why women in some Northern and Eastern Europe
| peoples gave birth in saunas even prior to the advent of germ
| theory? The answer is smoke is _useful_ , not only for
| creating relatively sterile environments, not only from
| molds, but also bugs.
|
| Chronic smoke exposure imposes real respiratory costs, but
| traditional societies tolerated those costs because smoke
| simultaneously provided insect control, food preservation,
| fumigation, and moisture regulation. Interventions that
| remove smoke without deliberately replacing those functions
| often trade one health burden for several others. And the
| simplest way to achieve all of those functions is the same
| way humans have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of
| years.
|
| The rocket stove minimizes fuel use, so instead of heating
| _and_ cooking, you just end up with cooking (and note that
| the rocket mass heater doesn 't solve this problem, which is
| just banking heat rather than using it more efficiently).
| This separation "works" in hotter climates, but at that
| point, why are you cooking indoors to begin with? And again,
| the reduction in smoke makes insects (namely mosquitoes) much
| more likely to discern where breathing humans are and able to
| reach within biting distance.
|
| Generally, traditional practices often encode systems-level
| knowledge that modern interventions ignore. Diffusion of
| traditional practices will generally be better than trying to
| invent a better mousetrap.
|
| As far as cleaning goes, as in the saponification and
| misculation of fats, the gist is to treat a fat with an
| alkali with agitation and time. Heat speeds up the process
| (hot process), but enough time completes the reaction (cold
| process). Soap and detergents are just rapid versions of this
| process, but aren't at all necessary, so long as you have
| water and ash.
|
| This understanding is called the sinner's circle:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinner%27s_circle
|
| It's the same reason when washing your hands you're "supposed
| to" sing happy birthday twice while agitating your hands. The
| soap is engaging in a chemical reaction with the fats on the
| your hands that takes more time because the human body can
| only tolerate so hot a temperature of water. You can use cold
| water and wait longer and have the same effect. The same
| thing is true of washing clothes, dishes, or whole bodies.
|
| The Romans understood this. The baths were alkaline. They
| rubbed themselves with olive oil, used a stirgil (something
| like a frosting knife) to squeegee off the oil, then went in
| the pool. The alkali in the warm water combined with the
| residual olive oil and basically creates soap on your skin
| that is then rubbed off.
|
| It's the same reason that Romans were able to have lily-white
| togas despite not having modern enzymatic cleaners and
| chlorine-based bleaches. They had lant and wood-ash alkali:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lant
|
| In short, my experience is that I've improved my own life by
| observing what the time-rich resource-poor peoples of the
| world do rather than the inverse.
| nchmy wrote:
| I really thought that cookstoves would be safe from hacker
| news' erroneous self-importance and condescension, but here
| we are.
|
| You've evidently never left your ivory tower to live in a
| sheet metal (or worse) shack, which a significant
| proportion of the world's poorest try to eek out an
| existence in.
|
| And especially haven't carried the load of smoke-fueled,
| sleep-deprived women who exist to serve as household
| appliances.
|
| There's so much so disgracefully wrong with what you said
| that i don't even know where to begin with setting the
| record straight.
|
| I'll simply point out the absurdity of saying that there's
| wisdom in filling homes, eyes and lungs with creosote (and
| worse) when more people die from smoke inhalation than
| malaria and aids combined. And saying people shouldn't
| reduce their biomass consumption 4-fold, which saves
| forests, erosion, co2, and extremely limited and time/money
| - just so they can have a bit more ash to make some lye
| with.
|
| Go live in extreme poverty somewhere for a while - it'll do
| you some good.
| hiddencost wrote:
| 500 machines in 7 years? Seems questionable.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What's old is new again. It's surprising to see how surprised
| people get about this sort of thing - as if we skipped straight
| from hand-washing to computerized washing machines. One
| generation of living with technology and we forget how to live
| without it.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Reminds me strongly of a program by Tim Hunkin from the 1980s:
| the Secret Life of the Washing Machine. Highly recommend.
|
| https://youtu.be/SgWh-5DsiQM?si=ILozBq9QPSEHd1W2
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| what a great demo too. Feel like a lot of companies could learn
| from him!
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Fairer future?
| constantcrying wrote:
| Maybe off-topic, but what is going on with this website?
|
| "Step forward the 'fully biodegradable' shoe that leaves no
| footprint" - Hilariously awful idea. Which sane person wants
| shoes which are designed to literally disintegrate?
|
| "The smartphone for children that blocks porn" - AI being used to
| surveil children phones for nudity. (???)
|
| "Solar project reimagines railway network as clean energy
| lifelines " Literally Solar roadways again. Which is a idea
| worthy of so much ridicule.
| mythrwy wrote:
| When I lived in an apartment with no washer I got sick of using
| the laundrymat because it was expensive and kind of nasty. So I
| set up my own washing setup after some research.
|
| I got something called a "breathing washer" which looks kind of
| like a toilet plunger and a big tote which I put in the bathtub
| for use. These breathing washers work really well and in my
| opinion get your clothes much cleaner than agitating and
| spinning.
|
| Then I got something called a "spin dryer" that is basically a
| small centrifuge that spins a lot faster than a regular washing
| machine and leaves fabrics like light polyester nearly dry coming
| out.
|
| Finally I got an inflatable plugin dryer.
|
| This setup was more work than a regular washing machine but maybe
| not more work than bundling up clothes and taking to the
| laundrymat and sitting there for an hour or two. One thing I
| really liked about it was short time to process. I could have
| washed and dried clothes much faster than a conventional
| washer/dryer setup.
|
| I've been in a house for a long time now and admittedly having a
| washer and dryer is much nicer and less work, but that setup was
| acceptable and much better than laundromats for whatever it's
| worth if someone is in a similar situation.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Meanwhile, anti-repairable corporate washing machines:
|
| _Washing Machine SCAM EXPOSED! The Truth About SEALED Drums:
| Naming & Shaming_
|
| https://youtu.be/crzZEvFf_L4
|
| Multiple manufacturers (i.e., Bosch, Miele, Siemens, AEG,
| Zanussi, Beko, Hoover, Hotpoint, Indesit) no longer offering
| split drums and individual components, instead sealing drums with
| heat welding and bolts, and selling only very expensive
| assemblies that cost almost as much as a new appliance.
|
| Video is by an independent appliance repair shop owner in the UK
| who tears apart old and new appliances showing the difference in
| parts.
| worik wrote:
| I hate this.
|
| Good people in the UK spending their time dreaming up solutions
| to "problems" far away
|
| The people who live "far away" have agency and can solve their
| own problems, if given the chance.
|
| Westerners do not know better, are not better, and generally
| should mind their own business. It would be much be much better
| to work on local problems in their own societies
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