On 2007-01-07, Sparks wrote:
xena wrote:
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?

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)

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.

--
John Phillips