Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with a heart radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech, including washing machines. Yep,
Speaker 1: it's time for a classic episode. This episode originally published
Speaker 1: on April twenty one, two thousand fourteen. It is called
Speaker 1: how Washing Machines Work? And it seems simple, but it
Speaker 1: turns out this is one of those topics that has
Speaker 1: a lot more going on than you might imagine. So
Speaker 1: let's roll up our sleeves and dunk our arms deep
Speaker 1: in that soapy water and find out how washing machines work.
Speaker 1: All right, Lauren, Yes, Jonathan, have you ever had to
Speaker 1: clean any of your clothes without the benefit of a
Speaker 1: machine to do it for you? Actually sink wash a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. It takes some effort done it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sucks. Yeah, it's not fun. It is not a
Speaker 1: fun thing to do. It is the opposite of fun.
Speaker 1: I have also done this. I Lauren and I have
Speaker 1: both in the past, not together. Warren costumes for various occasions,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's Thursday, and so Thursday is my
Speaker 1: favorite costumes someday. Some costumes you just they're not washing
Speaker 1: machines safe, they're delicate. Yeah, so you get a kind
Speaker 1: of not so delicate that you don't have to put
Speaker 1: in a ton of effort to get them clean. Though.
Speaker 1: So here's how Washington's to work. You get some water,
Speaker 1: You put some soiled clothing in the water. Then you
Speaker 1: agitate the soiled clothing. And I don't mean you'd say
Speaker 1: nasty things about its mother. You actually have to physically
Speaker 1: move that clothing around in order to shake loose the dirt.
Speaker 1: If you really want to say nasty things about its mother.
Speaker 1: I mean, it pretty much naturally happens. It's not going
Speaker 1: to hurt. Yeah, it might actually make you feel better
Speaker 1: as you're as you're scrubbing up to your elbows and
Speaker 1: make your roommates think you're really weird. That ship sailed
Speaker 1: a long time ago. So yeah, you have to put
Speaker 1: in all this physical work to kind of shake loose
Speaker 1: the dirt. And then you take the water away, You
Speaker 1: take the clothes away from the water, You take the
Speaker 1: water away from the clothes. However you do it, and
Speaker 1: then you rense it off, and then you try and
Speaker 1: wring it out, and then you hang it up to
Speaker 1: dry or however you want to dry it. So what
Speaker 1: we needed to do was find a way of making
Speaker 1: this process which used to be that that used to
Speaker 1: be the way we cleaned everything didn't matter if it
Speaker 1: was delicate or not. We need to find a way
Speaker 1: to make that less of a chore. So we want
Speaker 1: to talk about the history of washing machines as well
Speaker 1: as how they worked. And to begin with, the history
Speaker 1: is not all that clear because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: a lot of people just didn't really bother, you know,
Speaker 1: recording all the developments in washing machine technology. Well, the
Speaker 1: thing is that most of the time the washing was
Speaker 1: being done by um, by people in the lower classes
Speaker 1: who were not also writing scientific papers about advancements in
Speaker 1: this kind of text. So so there's there's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of disagreement on when stuff happened, where it happened, um,
Speaker 1: what the terminology was, because the terminology varied from town
Speaker 1: to town. Yeah, yeah, whether or not you had a
Speaker 1: stomp bucket or not. Yeah, Like, those are some great
Speaker 1: terms that we're going to talk about here. But so
Speaker 1: excited we're going to We're going to do our best
Speaker 1: to wade through the confusion and lead you to the
Speaker 1: other side where the light will be seen by all,
Speaker 1: and we'll have clean clothes there. That's my goal. So
Speaker 1: first we're gonna start with ancient Rome because this has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with washing machines, but it was so
Speaker 1: cool I had to bring it in. So the ancient
Speaker 1: Romans were among the earliest people's to offer public laundry services.
Speaker 1: They had an entire class of people who whose job
Speaker 1: it was to clean clothes, and those those people were dudes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were dudes. This was this was men's work because
Speaker 1: it was heavy duty, hard work. You see, back in
Speaker 1: Roman times, all the clothing was made out of wool. Wool,
Speaker 1: that's heavy. Yeah, cotton didn't exist yet. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've been to Italy or various other
Speaker 1: regions that were part of the Roman Empire, it's warm,
Speaker 1: you know, and people people get a little uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a little little sweaty, little stinky, little stinky, and so
Speaker 1: you need to clean those clothing. So they had these people,
Speaker 1: these men called foulonis now foulons, where they they were
Speaker 1: the in charge of cleaning the clothes. You would pay
Speaker 1: them and they would take the clothes they put them
Speaker 1: in a vat. It would be a vat that you know,
Speaker 1: go up to like say the waiter so has some
Speaker 1: water in it. And then they'd stomp on the clothing
Speaker 1: and stomp and stomp and stop. And this is that
Speaker 1: physical agitation action we're talking about that shakes loose the dirt. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then they would end up pulling that out, ringing
Speaker 1: out the clothes, laying them on the ground or hanging
Speaker 1: them up. They would also use other materials to try
Speaker 1: and whiten anything that needed to be white, They try
Speaker 1: and bleach it. They would also use the sun to
Speaker 1: bleach the stuff. So this is the way the earliest
Speaker 1: clothes here. You know, we're talking about Roman times, how
Speaker 1: they were washing them all the time. And uh, like
Speaker 1: we said associate with men, that would be about the
Speaker 1: last time we say that. So to my house, I
Speaker 1: do the laundry. So I do the laundry and I
Speaker 1: do the cooking. You know, we're not we're not tied
Speaker 1: down by gender roles at any rate. Medieval Europe. So
Speaker 1: this is where we start getting into some interesting terminology.
Speaker 1: So people would use things called washing bats, also called
Speaker 1: beetles or battle doors. Yes, raise the battle door and
Speaker 1: watch that tunic. Yeah, it's essentially it's something that you
Speaker 1: would use specifically to again agitate the clothing while it's
Speaker 1: in flowing water. So usually this was done for most
Speaker 1: people literally along the side of a river. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd use it as kind of a I think that
Speaker 1: washing bats referred to like the scrubbing related devices, like
Speaker 1: it was used in conjunction with the scrubbing boards, right right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the scrubbing boards you also had there, and
Speaker 1: you had to go to where the water was. I
Speaker 1: mean some people had water come to them, but not
Speaker 1: very many. H and again use that physical motion to
Speaker 1: loosen dirt washed away by water. You can do this
Speaker 1: in a tub with a handheld agitator if you weren't
Speaker 1: near any sources of running water. And that's uh, that's
Speaker 1: kind of how things how things went for centuries. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do we get to the eighteenth century and uh, at
Speaker 1: this time, this is when we start to see the
Speaker 1: concept of laundry being quote unquote women's work. The idea
Speaker 1: of being that women, since you know, they don't have
Speaker 1: to go out and farm all day, they can stay
Speaker 1: at home and do the easy work, you know, like
Speaker 1: the back breaking laundry that has to be done by hand.
Speaker 1: It really was a very tough job. I mean, especially
Speaker 1: in places where you have to go run out and
Speaker 1: get the water. What does the washing. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: a quote here from a Nevada housewife from the The
Speaker 1: Kind of the Pioneer Days. Really her name was Rachel Haskell,
Speaker 1: and she said that doing laundry was the herculean task
Speaker 1: which women all dread, and also described it as the
Speaker 1: great domestic dread of the household. Because this is I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just that it was back breaking work. I
Speaker 1: mean you had to really put effort in it if
Speaker 1: you wanted clean clothes. Also, the materials you used could
Speaker 1: be kind of rough on skin. I mean we're talking
Speaker 1: about some caustic materials. Yeah. For a long time, whites
Speaker 1: and natural fabrics were soaked in pure lie instead of
Speaker 1: being washed with soap because soap was really expensive. So
Speaker 1: so that's really fun. Um. A recent study out of
Speaker 1: the University of Montreal suggested that advances in household technology
Speaker 1: during the twentieth century was partially responsible for a jump
Speaker 1: in the number of of married women being in the
Speaker 1: workforce from five percent sc nineteen hundred to circ nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty UM and a decrease in time spent per week
Speaker 1: on household chores from fifty eight hours to just eighteen
Speaker 1: hours in the same approximate period of time, so dropping
Speaker 1: forty hours a week. A full time job worth of
Speaker 1: chores dropped in a week because of devices of convenience
Speaker 1: like the like the washing machine. Yeah, you know, if
Speaker 1: you didn't have that river handy, you would uh, you
Speaker 1: would have have your have your bucket and a tool
Speaker 1: called depending on where you were. And I had to
Speaker 1: add this note because all of these tool names make
Speaker 1: me so happy. H a poser, dolly, dasher, punch or punch.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'd want to punch if I had to
Speaker 1: do this. And something that at any rate looked a
Speaker 1: little bit like a plunger with like holes or events
Speaker 1: in the base um to let water squeeze through, and
Speaker 1: you just stand over a tub on the floor and
Speaker 1: and manually agitate the laundry. Yeah. By the way, you
Speaker 1: guys are really missing out because Lauren and I are
Speaker 1: both expressive people, and when we talk about how this happens,
Speaker 1: we acted out. So it's too bad this isn't a
Speaker 1: video podcast. No no, no, no, it's really good that
Speaker 1: it's not a video podcast. So moving on, we now
Speaker 1: get to seventy two. Now over in Great Britain, a
Speaker 1: fellow named H. Sidgier invented what we think was the
Speaker 1: first washing machine. And what this was was essentially a
Speaker 1: cade of wooden rods and a handle to turn those rods,
Speaker 1: and turning the handle move the rods which would agitate
Speaker 1: clothes within a VT. So you're still using hand power
Speaker 1: to do this, but you're no longer like actively in
Speaker 1: the water moving clothing around. Yes, so that that was
Speaker 1: a slight advantage, and other people started making similar sorts
Speaker 1: of washing machines. Now most of these were not really
Speaker 1: convenient for like home use. This was stuff an industrial level,
Speaker 1: and this is just too big and too clunky and
Speaker 1: too expensive for most people. It just wasn't practical for them.
Speaker 1: But it was showing where things were moving. The first
Speaker 1: patent wouldn't show up though, until about eighteen forty six. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when you've got a pattern in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Patent office for a washing machine that cleans closed by
Speaker 1: rubbing them between two curved surfaces. And once again you
Speaker 1: mechanically move this yourself. You had a lever, and the
Speaker 1: lever is what made these curve surfaces move against each other.
Speaker 1: And it was that rubbing motion within water with these
Speaker 1: curved surfaces that would actually clean the clothing. Uh. It
Speaker 1: ended up being a the popular design and in fact
Speaker 1: would last well into the well the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: so nearly a century, even after other alternative methods were introduced.
Speaker 1: So eighteen fifty one we get James King who invented
Speaker 1: the revolving drum. Now that's the basis of most washing
Speaker 1: machines and even dryers today. Yeah, that's that's what you've
Speaker 1: got to come probably. Yeah, although an improvement was made
Speaker 1: just a few years later in eighteen fifty eight you
Speaker 1: had Hamilton's Smith who invented the revolving drum, with reversing
Speaker 1: action being the drum could actually revolve in either direction. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this would allow lots of different washing machines to
Speaker 1: use that kind of back and forth motion as a
Speaker 1: form of agitation. So if you have to help do
Speaker 1: some of the work for you of moving all that
Speaker 1: water exactly, so like the front loading uh types of
Speaker 1: washing machines we see today, most of those can turn
Speaker 1: in either direction. So they're really descendants of Hamilton's Smith's work.
Speaker 1: Then in eighteen seventy four, I had to add this in,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to include the starting he joke I
Speaker 1: wrote in the notes, which is that William Blaxton, who
Speaker 1: was a corn planter and manufacturer, created a washing machine
Speaker 1: and gave it to as a gift to his wife
Speaker 1: for her birthday, and then she threw corn at him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so while I make a joke about the guy
Speaker 1: buying his wife another appliance for her to do work with,
Speaker 1: in reality it actually was simplifying her life quite a bit.
Speaker 1: At that point. It could probably be considered a sweet gesture. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it means taking hours of time off of all
Speaker 1: the chores that she would have to do. I mean
Speaker 1: hopefully there was like chocolate involved two or something. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was that. Maybe it was partially made from that,
Speaker 1: in which case it was probably not not very effective.
Speaker 1: But no, no, actually a lot of washing machines, like
Speaker 1: he actually started to offer to sell them because she
Speaker 1: did like this. It did make it easier for her
Speaker 1: to wash clothes. And again this was mechanically operated. There
Speaker 1: was a hand crank. It wasn't like it was some
Speaker 1: sort of automated Yeah, he wasn't pouring steel drums in
Speaker 1: his corn field, not steam powered washing machine or something.
Speaker 1: So she she would turn it by hand, but still
Speaker 1: made it easier. And because it was so practical, he
Speaker 1: started to sell them. And the price tag on a
Speaker 1: washing machine a William Blackston washing machine, according to the
Speaker 1: sources I saw, and keep in mind, this is another
Speaker 1: one of those things where I am skeptical, but every
Speaker 1: source I found said it two dollars and fifty cents
Speaker 1: for a washing machine. That's a bargain. Uh four. The
Speaker 1: calculators don't even go back that in four two dollars
Speaker 1: and fifty cents would buy you the Nevada territory, but
Speaker 1: or a washing machine. Listen, I'm no scrub, but we
Speaker 1: do have to take a break and listen to these ads.
Speaker 1: We'll be back to talk more about washing machines after
Speaker 1: this quick break. In eight we had Ellen Eglwy who
Speaker 1: invented a ringer to sit a hop washing machines and
Speaker 1: helped dry out the laundry. She sold the rights to
Speaker 1: her idea for eighteen dollars. The story goes that she
Speaker 1: only sold the idea because of being a black woman.
Speaker 1: She didn't think that white women would buy the product
Speaker 1: if they knew who had created it. Um and I
Speaker 1: guess eighteen dollars really wasn't too shabby at the time.
Speaker 1: Though the fellow that she sold it to wound up
Speaker 1: making a good deal of money on it. Although more
Speaker 1: on that in just a moment. So in we have
Speaker 1: the Maytag Corporation being founded. Yeah, now, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: until seven that they would come out with a washer
Speaker 1: because Maytag did more than just washing machines, and and
Speaker 1: that was still mechanical. Yes, that is true. It still mechanical,
Speaker 1: was not electric washer at that time. Well, which makes
Speaker 1: sense because only um eight percent of US homes at
Speaker 1: the time had electricity, only had running water. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: you know, if you're going to market it to a
Speaker 1: large group, and if you want to actually help people,
Speaker 1: then you have to design something that's going to work
Speaker 1: for the most people. Right. I do think that the
Speaker 1: Maytag repair guy probably got called out for more repairs
Speaker 1: back in the mechanical days. He doesn't get a lot
Speaker 1: of according to the commercials. He doesn't do very much
Speaker 1: these days, although although at the time, since since telephones
Speaker 1: weren't very popular thing just stand outside. Also, it's Colin
Speaker 1: Ferguson who's the Maytag guy now, which is kind of weird.
Speaker 1: That's very strange. He's seeing the guy from Eureka as
Speaker 1: the Maytag repair guy. In nineteen o five, we have
Speaker 1: Alva J. Fisher who produces the first electric washing machine. Now,
Speaker 1: the motor at that time was bolted to the side
Speaker 1: of the washing machine and was unshielded. An electric motor. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but I've been taught
Speaker 1: that two things you don't necessarily want to mix together
Speaker 1: are water and open electronics. Apple has told me many
Speaker 1: times that if I do introduce those two things, that's
Speaker 1: totally my fault. Um. Yeah, So it turns out that
Speaker 1: water from the vat could sometimes come out and hit
Speaker 1: the motor and cause a short circuit. Sometimes this would
Speaker 1: result in damage to the advice. Sometimes it would result
Speaker 1: in a jolt of electricity hitting a person. But it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be until the nineteen thirties, presumably after one too
Speaker 1: many laundry workers got zapped that they would start to
Speaker 1: shield the motor from the rest of the washing machine,
Speaker 1: thus preventing water from actually hitting the motor. Uh kind
Speaker 1: of funny that it took nearly three decades for that
Speaker 1: to happen. We have the Hurly Machine Company of Chicago
Speaker 1: introducing the first electric power washing machine, which had the
Speaker 1: name of four According to one source, it was actually
Speaker 1: called the Mighty Thor And this was based off of
Speaker 1: Alva J. Fisher's design. So Fisher was working for the
Speaker 1: Hurly Machine Company at that time. So Thour hits the market,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen eleven we have developments with the oscillating cylinder,
Speaker 1: which and also with domestic washing machines using sheet metal
Speaker 1: tubs mounted on angle iron frames to be the basic
Speaker 1: design of your washing machine. That same year, the Uptown
Speaker 1: Machine Company, which would later become the Whirlpool Corporation, formed
Speaker 1: and produced electric motor driven ringer washers. You know we
Speaker 1: we mentioned ringers, you said, the ringer on the other one.
Speaker 1: That was one of the patents that they bought in
Speaker 1: order to build this machine. There you go. So you
Speaker 1: if you wonder what a ringer actually is, it's think
Speaker 1: of two rollers that are really tightly space together, and
Speaker 1: you ring the clothing by putting it between the two rollers.
Speaker 1: You turn a crank. This kind of pulls the cloth
Speaker 1: through and it squeezes that excess water out. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like imagining to steam rollers right next to each other.
Speaker 1: And also you don't want to put your fingers anywhere
Speaker 1: near there because they will get squish. All right. So
Speaker 1: then we get up to the nineteen twenties, that's when
Speaker 1: some manufacturers begin to introduce electric or gas water heaters
Speaker 1: that are part of the washing machine itself. Because while
Speaker 1: we started to see running water entering in more homes,
Speaker 1: not all homes had water heaters. If you had water,
Speaker 1: there was a chance it was just going to be cold.
Speaker 1: So in order to make more effective washing machine, hot
Speaker 1: water tends to wash clothes a little better than cold
Speaker 1: water does. That we'll get we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. With the modern ones as well, some machines
Speaker 1: had on board water heaters. Yeah. So but then once
Speaker 1: we start seeing water heaters going into homes, this became
Speaker 1: less important and you stopped seeing models with their own
Speaker 1: onboard heaters. For the most PARTO Maytag introduces a washing
Speaker 1: machine with an agitator. Um, it doesn't use an agitator
Speaker 1: to introduce a washing machine. That would just sound irritating
Speaker 1: some guy coming to your house and saying, hey, you're
Speaker 1: closer dirty, you need to wash them. Now we're talking
Speaker 1: about an actual component within a washing machine. Lauren is
Speaker 1: doing her head shaking thing. Thirties we have manufacturers who
Speaker 1: begin to include a drain pump motor to remove water
Speaker 1: from a washing machine once the cycle is over. Because
Speaker 1: if you're thinking, these early washing machines meant that water
Speaker 1: magically entered into the machine, then you did your washing,
Speaker 1: you turn some cranks or whatever, and then the water
Speaker 1: atically went away. No, you had to put the water there.
Speaker 1: You had to take the water back out, you know,
Speaker 1: you had to find some way of of you know,
Speaker 1: some of them had like a little drain spout type
Speaker 1: thing that you would drain at the end of the day. Whatever.
Speaker 1: This was an actual pump that would use mechanical motion
Speaker 1: to pump water back out. So again using electronics to
Speaker 1: kind of simplify work. Uh. Nineteen thirty seven, we have
Speaker 1: the Bendex Corporation introducing the first fully automated washing machine. Now,
Speaker 1: this involves using a clock timer that's connected to the
Speaker 1: washing machine controls. It tells the machine essentially what stage
Speaker 1: it's in and therefore switches. Because before that you had
Speaker 1: a manual switches that were that were operated by a human. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had to actually sit there and and or come
Speaker 1: back even more frequently to your washing machine, right right,
Speaker 1: You have to sit there and say, oh, you know
Speaker 1: that that the timer says that the time has passed
Speaker 1: for it to do the wash cycle. Now need to
Speaker 1: go and switch it over to do a spin cycle
Speaker 1: or something along those lines. So, yeah, this this is
Speaker 1: another big advance. In the nineteen forties, washer production in
Speaker 1: the U S would largely stop as supplies and factories
Speaker 1: were bent to the war effort, because that was when
Speaker 1: World War Two was happening. For example, Whirlpool, which was
Speaker 1: then under the name nine Corporation, produced some two million
Speaker 1: components for P forty Warhawk aircraft, from like propeller pitch
Speaker 1: controls to carburetor parts. Yeah, I hear. They were the
Speaker 1: cleanest parts in all of the war effort. She's shaking
Speaker 1: her head again. I'm just going to move on. Seven.
Speaker 1: General Electric claims that they invented the first fully automated
Speaker 1: washing machine. Now we assumed that they mean fully automated
Speaker 1: washing machine that actually had an an agitator, right. The
Speaker 1: previous one did not have an agitator. The agitator's job
Speaker 1: again is to to provide that motion within the washing machine,
Speaker 1: within the tub. That's that's moving the water. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really it's really meant to simulate an ancient Roman
Speaker 1: stomping on your clothes. That's really what agitators meant to do.
Speaker 1: It's the way I like to put it. So we
Speaker 1: then have very slow evolution and washing machine technology. It
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly one of those areas that required h a
Speaker 1: lot of of of advances to keep it, to keep
Speaker 1: the industry healthy. For one thing, once you buy one,
Speaker 1: you pretty much stick with it for a really long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't need one for a good bit. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I mean they're expensive and uh and they generally last
Speaker 1: a pretty long time. So we didn't see huge advances,
Speaker 1: but we did see some. And then we're gonna skip
Speaker 1: to n that's when a certain James Dyson, British inventor
Speaker 1: creates a washing machine that has two cylinders rotating in
Speaker 1: opposite directions, which actually reduces the washtime and supposedly it
Speaker 1: actually washes clothes more effectively than traditional machines. Wouldn't surprise me,
Speaker 1: Dyson has made a lot of interesting stuff. Two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: it's the last thing we have in our timeline. That's
Speaker 1: when engineers at the University of Leeds created a washing
Speaker 1: machine that uses just one cup of water to wash
Speaker 1: a full load of clothing. Wow. What Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: want to understand that when we talk about how much
Speaker 1: water are normal washing machines used, one cup is right?
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about using less than two per
Speaker 1: cent of the water and energy required by conventional machines
Speaker 1: to wash clothing. And also the clothes are pretty much
Speaker 1: dry after you wash them. You haven't used that much water.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, I don't have any more details on
Speaker 1: that about what is actually happening. I suspect laundry. Gnomes.
Speaker 1: I always suspect laundry. Now do to that. They're suspicious
Speaker 1: little jerks. All right, well, you know what, it's time
Speaker 1: to turn this episode on the rinse cycle. But to
Speaker 1: do that, we're going to take another quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about how modern washing machines work. And
Speaker 1: we're gonna start with top loading machines. So these are
Speaker 1: the machines where there's a little door at the top
Speaker 1: of the machine. Seen, you lift it up, you put
Speaker 1: all your clothing in. Most of them, almost all of
Speaker 1: them have an agitator inside. That's the kind of the
Speaker 1: central post that sticks up from the bottom of the
Speaker 1: of the washing machine. Although from now on, if you
Speaker 1: really want to, you could probably call it a poster Dolly, dasher,
Speaker 1: punch or punch. Okay, so if you're using your poster
Speaker 1: Polly punch, dasher paunch, it's like Rudolph, but the agitator
Speaker 1: has Usually it has some fins on it and some
Speaker 1: other uh like protrusions on the bottom of it. Now,
Speaker 1: these serve a purpose. When it's turning in the water.
Speaker 1: It actually has this action upon the clothing that's that's
Speaker 1: also inside the machine. It will either pull it down
Speaker 1: towards the bottom of the machine or push it back
Speaker 1: up toward the top. And that's the agitating movements you
Speaker 1: get to shake loose all that dirt. So again, trying
Speaker 1: to replicate all the other means we've used to clean
Speaker 1: clothes over the years, that inner drum that the clothes
Speaker 1: are sitting in itself may or may move as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually you have one that will uh spin because it
Speaker 1: has to drain up the water. But during the actual
Speaker 1: agitation process. It's pretty common that there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: breaking system on that thing, and it holds it in place.
Speaker 1: So the agitator is doing all the moving, because if
Speaker 1: the drum were rotating the same time the agitator's rotating,
Speaker 1: it would reduce the effectiveness of the agitator. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: most of these are going to have an inner drum
Speaker 1: that's going to be steady. It's connected to an outer drum.
Speaker 1: The outer drum is water tight. It has to be,
Speaker 1: or else you have a huge mess every time you
Speaker 1: attempt to make clean clothes. The inner drum has holes
Speaker 1: in it that allow the water to drain out and
Speaker 1: then it usually it's been picked up by a drain
Speaker 1: pump that pulls it out of the machine itself. But
Speaker 1: with your top loading washers, you've got intake valves that
Speaker 1: allow water to come in, and you have a cold
Speaker 1: water and a hot water one. Right, So generally speaking,
Speaker 1: most of these washing machines, uh they If you set
Speaker 1: a washing machine to wash cold, it will only allow
Speaker 1: water from the cold intake to come in. If you
Speaker 1: want it hot, it will only allow water from the
Speaker 1: hot intake. So the machine itself for most of these
Speaker 1: doesn't have its own discrete heating element. It's just relying
Speaker 1: on the temperature of the water from your house to
Speaker 1: provide the heat or the cold water if you want warm.
Speaker 1: It does a mixture of both, right, so, uh, not
Speaker 1: too complex there. Now some some washing machines do have
Speaker 1: a little heating element and they will allow uh warm
Speaker 1: or hot water to go across it to make it
Speaker 1: even hotter. Uh. That tends to be more common in
Speaker 1: front loaders that I've seen than top loaders. But it's
Speaker 1: possible that you could find a top loader that also
Speaker 1: has its own discrete, little electric heating element. It kind
Speaker 1: of looks like the sort of thing you would see
Speaker 1: an electric stove. So and then water just goes over
Speaker 1: it and that heats up. So then you've got a
Speaker 1: a water level sensor that's inside the machine itself. So
Speaker 1: when the water hits the right level, the sensor is
Speaker 1: triggered and that sends a me message to the control
Speaker 1: center in the washing machine to say, hey, stop letting
Speaker 1: water in. It sends a signal to the intake valve.
Speaker 1: Has a little solenoid there that when you trigger it,
Speaker 1: it'll shut that intake valve so no more water will
Speaker 1: come in so you don't have to worry about a
Speaker 1: huge overflowing mess. And solenoid valves of course being the
Speaker 1: kind of thing so that there cannot be a exchange
Speaker 1: of water back out from You can't get the dirty
Speaker 1: wash water going back out into your neighborhood. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: into the pipes. Yeah, because that would be that would
Speaker 1: be really bad. So yeah, the valve has two purposes.
Speaker 1: One to stop more water coming in and to stop
Speaker 1: all the dirty water going back out. You only want
Speaker 1: the dirty water to go out through the exhaust. Solenoid
Speaker 1: is like a one way thing. Yeah. Yeah. A lot
Speaker 1: of pinball machines, solenoids. That's what all the little triggers
Speaker 1: are used. Solinoids are using those just a little little
Speaker 1: trivia there. People will listen to. Uh current geek have
Speaker 1: heard me bust out that trivia in the past. So
Speaker 1: now you've got the water has hit the right level,
Speaker 1: the mode goes into wash cycle. That's when. By the way,
Speaker 1: for these top loader ones, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys are familiar with this, but generally speaking, you have
Speaker 1: to put the soap in manually, like you don't put
Speaker 1: it into a dispenser or something. It doesn't go on automatically. Now,
Speaker 1: now you just you pour it on top of the clothing.
Speaker 1: Whether you're using liquid detergent or or a solid detergent
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. You put it in with the clothing. If
Speaker 1: you forgot to put it in there, you are not
Speaker 1: going to have that, you know, Daisy Fresh scent or
Speaker 1: whatever brand you happen to get. So the agitator begins
Speaker 1: to turn and it usually will what you guys, you've
Speaker 1: got to drive motor. Normally it's on the bottom of
Speaker 1: the washing machine. It also tends to act as a
Speaker 1: counter balance, a counterweight, which, by the way, you've got
Speaker 1: several counterweights in your washing machines because you've got lots
Speaker 1: of motion going on, and if you didn't have them there,
Speaker 1: you're washing machine would be dancing all over the place. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anyone who's ever had an unbalanced load and a washing
Speaker 1: machine and you start hearing that thumping noise, if you
Speaker 1: didn't have the counterweights in there, it would become catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. There's there's actually a really complex suspension system.
Speaker 1: Um It involves like a like a inner frame, a
Speaker 1: cable and pulley suspension and these little like disc brake
Speaker 1: like mechanisms that connect that inner frame to the corners
Speaker 1: of the outer walls. UM. And that's so that when
Speaker 1: the frame, that interframe shakes, they slow it down softly
Speaker 1: so that it doesn't hit against the outer wall of
Speaker 1: the washer. And then because otherwise you would just be
Speaker 1: convinced that your house had been invaded by a horde
Speaker 1: of extremely loud ghosts, you know, who apparently are mad
Speaker 1: that you're doing laundry. Really clumsy robots who are also
Speaker 1: anti land could be ghost robots. That's yeah, terrible. So
Speaker 1: next you have the once the dry motor gets going
Speaker 1: and it starts moving the agitator. Uh. Once the agitator
Speaker 1: is done, it's done oscillating, which is that that rotating
Speaker 1: motion where it goes in one direction, stops goes in
Speaker 1: the other direction. Uh. That's what's actually moving the clothes
Speaker 1: around getting them washed. Then you have the drain pump
Speaker 1: pulling all that wastewater out from the tub of the
Speaker 1: washing machine and through the drain pipe. Uh. That's uh,
Speaker 1: it's actually the same pump that circulates the water into
Speaker 1: the tub during the wash cycle. UM. Thanks to the
Speaker 1: pump motor being reversible, it spins one way when you're
Speaker 1: driving a wash cycle, and the opposite way when you're
Speaker 1: draining the tub exactly. Yeah. And so after this, then
Speaker 1: you've got the the those brakes that are on the
Speaker 1: inner drum that keep it from rotating while the agitator
Speaker 1: is moving, they release, and the inner drum begins to spin.
Speaker 1: Uh And and that that removes the water from the clothes.
Speaker 1: It can It can spin a lot faster than the
Speaker 1: agitator does because the although the motor itself usually only
Speaker 1: has one speed, and that's the fast speed, a gear
Speaker 1: reduction mechanism will translate the motion to to the gentle
Speaker 1: agitators speed. It's kind of like a washing machine version
Speaker 1: of a transmission Yeah. Yeah, because and and there's even
Speaker 1: more than that involved, because hey, the pump and the
Speaker 1: agitate spin mechanisms are both driven by the same motor.
Speaker 1: In some machines, there's in fact an actual transmission system
Speaker 1: with this automatic clutch that that spins free with the
Speaker 1: inner drum during the agitate spin cycles and then locks
Speaker 1: into the outer drum and the pump system during the
Speaker 1: water related cycles. Um Or, alternately, the motor can hook
Speaker 1: in via a pulley system, which I understand less well,
Speaker 1: and thus we'll not talk about essentially uses pulleys where
Speaker 1: you have different sized disks to to translate the motion
Speaker 1: either as fast and and frantic or more you know,
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense, makes sense. But yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: when you've got all the counterweights draining away when when
Speaker 1: that thing is in spin, it's really there's some serious
Speaker 1: g forces coming out of that spinning drum. So that's
Speaker 1: why you have to have those counterweights to keep that
Speaker 1: washing machine from bursting out and killing your family. Frequently,
Speaker 1: they're made of concrete because why not. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever thought, oh, this machine is so heavy, yes, for
Speaker 1: a reason. It's filled with concrete and crazy crazy mechanics. Um,
Speaker 1: if anything goes wrong during this entire process, there's usually
Speaker 1: an overflow port that will pipe water directly out onto
Speaker 1: your floor. Yes, that was not a design flaw. It
Speaker 1: was intentional because if it goes up over the sides
Speaker 1: of the inner tubs, um, it could get those electronics
Speaker 1: wet and then we're right back to that old bolting
Speaker 1: the motor directly to the side of the washing Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bad times. So we talked about how that that uh,
Speaker 1: that special uh leads team gut one that would wash
Speaker 1: a load of clothing with one cup of water, and
Speaker 1: we talked about how that was less than two percent
Speaker 1: of what your average washing machine is able to do.
Speaker 1: So top loading washing machines, if you're using a high
Speaker 1: efficient top loading washing machine, we're talking one that is
Speaker 1: as efficient as they come. You're talking still talking about
Speaker 1: using around twenty gallons of water per washing. A typical
Speaker 1: non high efficiency top loading washer is closer to forty
Speaker 1: gallons a k A hundred and fifty one leaders and
Speaker 1: older ones are even thirstier than that. Some use as
Speaker 1: many as five gallons eight liters of water sou And again,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about how this technology doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: develop that quickly, and that there's not a pressing need
Speaker 1: necessarily to upgrade because these are expensive purchases for most people.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where you're like, unless it
Speaker 1: breaks down, we're keeping this going as long as we
Speaker 1: can keep it. Oh yeah, and they're they're they're even
Speaker 1: expensive enough. I mean plenty, plenty of households do not
Speaker 1: own their own washer drivers. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was it was quite some time before I
Speaker 1: had my own. I often was doing one of those people.
Speaker 1: I had to go to the laundromat pretty recent for me.
Speaker 1: So so so yeah, if you if you end up
Speaker 1: having one of these things, then it can be it
Speaker 1: can be tough to make the move to say, let's
Speaker 1: go to something that conserves more water. But the nice
Speaker 1: thing is that even if you take the environmentally friendly
Speaker 1: stuff and you say that I can't consider that because
Speaker 1: it's it's my price range, if you look at the
Speaker 1: long term, and I'm I'm talking like a few years here,
Speaker 1: you can save more money with one of the more
Speaker 1: EFFICI ship machines just from the water and energy use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because front loading machines and these high efficient machines, the
Speaker 1: high efficient top loaders use less water and less energy
Speaker 1: and therefore the ongoing expense decreases. Uh. It's it's lower
Speaker 1: than what you would use for a traditional top loader,
Speaker 1: and you will save money in the long run. But
Speaker 1: that's the long run. Not everybody has. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about front loading machines. They're pretty similar. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you've got a door that opens in the front as
Speaker 1: opposed to on the top. Uh, and there's a spinning
Speaker 1: drum inside them, and there's no agitator so the drum
Speaker 1: does all the agitating on its own. You have water
Speaker 1: coming in along with soap. In fact, the early process
Speaker 1: is identical to top loading. The water comes in through
Speaker 1: intake valves. It may move over a heating element, it
Speaker 1: might not. Uh, it actually comes in through the drum.
Speaker 1: The drum, the inner drum has holes in it that
Speaker 1: allow the water to pass through, rather than a spout
Speaker 1: at the top of the machine, which it's flat mess exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also an outer drum, just like with the top
Speaker 1: lottery of the inner drum. That's where all the clothes
Speaker 1: are and that's where the water comes through. The outer
Speaker 1: drum is again watertight, all else to just be a
Speaker 1: big mess um. And then the the inner drum will
Speaker 1: spin one way and then the other will have this
Speaker 1: oscillating motion, very much like an agitator, and that's doing
Speaker 1: all the agitating for your clothing. Again, you have to
Speaker 1: have counterweights on the drum, the outer drum itself in
Speaker 1: order to stabilize it, and there's some counterweights also in
Speaker 1: other parts of the washer to make sure it doesn't
Speaker 1: go walking. Um. Now, once the water comes in, a
Speaker 1: lot of these front loaders have a detergent drawer. You
Speaker 1: put the detergent inside the drawer and then you close it.
Speaker 1: When the water comes in, it'll actually flow through that
Speaker 1: drawer first and then pull that all the soap and
Speaker 1: stuff into the inner drum itself. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: this is one where you don't put the soap in
Speaker 1: after you put in the clothing. You put it in
Speaker 1: on the drawer, and then you close the drawer and
Speaker 1: then you start the washer. Uh, presonably put the clothes
Speaker 1: in there already, Otherwise I would hope at some point
Speaker 1: you would put the clothing, because otherwise you just have
Speaker 1: soapy water. It's fun to watch. I get bored and not.
Speaker 1: Netflix doesn't always have something I want to watch. So anyway, again,
Speaker 1: you have the hot and cold water, You've got the
Speaker 1: you know, the same store stuff as top loader. It's
Speaker 1: got a water level sensor just like the top loader does,
Speaker 1: so it knows when to shut it off. That basically
Speaker 1: is taking its cues from either whatever setting you've said,
Speaker 1: like whether it's a light load, a moderate load, or
Speaker 1: a heavy load, or some of them can actually detect
Speaker 1: how many, how how much clothing is in there based
Speaker 1: on weight or other parts of the water sensor and
Speaker 1: we'll just shut off automatically. So it's ridiculous. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: also you can put in more clothing in a front
Speaker 1: loader than you can of a comparable size of a
Speaker 1: top loader because there's no agitator there, so so you've
Speaker 1: got more space, right, so you might be able to
Speaker 1: put in a few pounds of clothing more than you
Speaker 1: could with a top loader, so fewer loads of laundry.
Speaker 1: It's another way of being more efficient. Yep. So then
Speaker 1: you've got a motor that's bolted to the tub. It's
Speaker 1: been acting as another counterweight just with the top loader,
Speaker 1: and it's job is to turn that drum, to turn it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, make it oscillate, and then also to spin
Speaker 1: it when it gets to the spin cycle that you
Speaker 1: know it's already drained the water. There's also a drain pump,
Speaker 1: just like with a top loader, and then the whole
Speaker 1: drum spins wicked fast until it pulls most of that
Speaker 1: water out. So the brains of it is a control module.
Speaker 1: This is the same for both machines top loaders and frontloaders,
Speaker 1: and it usually will be send signals to all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff like when to allow one phase of the
Speaker 1: the washing process to go to the next. It also
Speaker 1: will maintain information about the door because unlike a top loader,
Speaker 1: which often you can open the door while the top
Speaker 1: loader is working and it will continue working. Depends different stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had an old one at my my parents had
Speaker 1: an old one where if you opened it in the middle,
Speaker 1: it was just going away. So you can still you
Speaker 1: could add more stuff to it. In fact, in some
Speaker 1: cases that you had to manually add in, like if
Speaker 1: you want to put in fabric softener, you had to
Speaker 1: wait for it. It was not fully automated. You had
Speaker 1: to wait for the right time and then pour it
Speaker 1: in manually. Um frontloaders are different. They have a locking
Speaker 1: mechanism and it's good. Yeah. Yeah, And it's only if
Speaker 1: that mechanism has since that the door has actually closed
Speaker 1: it will allow it to start. Otherwise you could end
Speaker 1: up with lots of leaking. Yeah, I know that that
Speaker 1: sounds much messire potentially. Yeah. Granted, if the sensor is
Speaker 1: not working, then it may think it's closed when it's
Speaker 1: not really closed, and then you get water everywhere. But
Speaker 1: assuming everything is working correctly, you should be fine. In
Speaker 1: any case, it's slightly less water than you would be
Speaker 1: using for a top loader generally. Yeah, yeah, it's normally
Speaker 1: somewhere around the twenty gallon or seventy six liter amount.
Speaker 1: So that's the same as that high efficiency top loader. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it tends to use less energy, So it tends
Speaker 1: to be both more energy efficient and water efficient. And
Speaker 1: you can find some that are even more efficient than that,
Speaker 1: and it all depends upon things. Is like the angle
Speaker 1: of the drums. Some of them are not angled directly horizontal.
Speaker 1: Some of them are angled so that they're kind of
Speaker 1: like there's a deep end and a and a shallow
Speaker 1: end in a way from when you're looking at it
Speaker 1: in the front, it's like tilted downward a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some of them are just it's based upon how
Speaker 1: the water comes in and how efficient it is. Uh.
Speaker 1: You still see lots of of advances, Like whenever I
Speaker 1: go to C E S there's always some companies that
Speaker 1: have like the cutting edge washer dryers, and they talk
Speaker 1: about how their technology has has improved to the point
Speaker 1: where you're you're using less water than ever and less
Speaker 1: in electricity than ever. So we're still seeing those advances,
Speaker 1: and of course we're also seeing this come into the
Speaker 1: Internet of Things side, you know, you get push notifications
Speaker 1: when your laundry is done, or you'll be able to
Speaker 1: have it work in tandem with other electronics in your
Speaker 1: home for reasons I don't fully understand. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: if I if I could just get my dryer to
Speaker 1: dry my clothes without me haveing to run back up
Speaker 1: the three flights of stairs to where my laundry room
Speaker 1: in my house is. And I'm not I'm complaining here.
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of people have it a
Speaker 1: lot harder, and I'm overall really glad that I don't
Speaker 1: have to do this in a river. Yeah. By the way,
Speaker 1: if if someone does covet you a little bit about
Speaker 1: about having to take a little extra effort, that does
Speaker 1: not automatically mean that person feels that they are in
Speaker 1: a worse position than anyone else on the Facebook planet.
Speaker 1: So let's all just accept that. So I just because
Speaker 1: some people on the internet, uh do feel that way
Speaker 1: that they are in a worse position than anyone else
Speaker 1: on the planet, let's not let's not make the assumption
Speaker 1: that everyone isn't dead, because once in a blue moon,
Speaker 1: I do complain about things, but I do so with
Speaker 1: the full knowledge that yes, indeed, I inhabit a very
Speaker 1: privileged position in multiple ways. So at any rate as
Speaker 1: someone who does the laundry in my home and our
Speaker 1: our laundry machines are not on the same floor as
Speaker 1: our bedroom, which means that there's lots of hauling up
Speaker 1: and downstairs. I also feel that I want my electronics
Speaker 1: to be interconnected so that when I go to cook something,
Speaker 1: it tells me, Hey, your cooking shirt is clean. You
Speaker 1: want to put that one on because that's the one
Speaker 1: You don't care if you get grease stains on it. Yes, slob,
Speaker 1: I would like it if it were more polite, but
Speaker 1: I don't have high expectations of my electronics in that regard.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed that classic episode of text
Speaker 1: Stuff how washing machines work from. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff that may know, the best way to do that
Speaker 1: is to pop on over to Twitter and we use
Speaker 1: the handle tech stuff hsw over there. I'll tell to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. YEA. Text Stuff is an I
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