Does anyone have experience using one? I have been toying with the idea of getting one, but there are still so many unanswered questions!
If your talking about wringer washing machines they will take you back to the day when washing your clothes was a chore day. Grew up with one, had one during my early homesteading days without power, it ran in a Maytag 2 cy. engine.
My lady friend (who passed in 2014) used one until her dying day. It was an old Maytag from the 30s or 40s and she loved it. It was electric.
My Mum had one when I was a young kid. It was good at breaking buttons. If you don't like automatics , how about a twin tub?
I can remember cranking the mangle in my younger days. Needless to say, I was not allowed to feed the laundry in for fear of getting my fingers caught. The term "getting mangled" goes back to these machines and they were very popular among the London gangsters prior to the 1940's, since they could crush every bone in your hand. Their was an old rhyme.....Don't put your ******** in the mangle, or some silly fool will turn the handle. A few top loading washing machines had a wringer that folded up, but as I remember the BEAB (British Electrical Approvals Board) never approved an electrical version, due to the 200 volt motor potentially being in contact with wet hands. Mangles went on until they were replaced by spin dryers. The problem was that being in the yard mangles froze up in the winter. Ours was twice the size of the one in the picture and weighed a quarter of a ton. I remember being told that my father had owned it since about 1898
we had one on the back porch. had to dig a dry well for it, because the gray watter with the dead soap suds in it was killing the bacteria in our septic system. waste water disposal was one grid we were not on, being half mile outside of a village of less then a thousand, and that more then 30 miles from the nearest larger town. we had a water supply that came from an irrigation district that had been built by prospectors to wash their sluces, we had to purchase those five gallon bottles of spring water, or boild and filter it. wringer has several possible meanings. my first thought was somthing that is also called a mangle. at the heart of every washing machine is an agitator.
I have been hand washing for a couple of months now. To dry my clothes hang on the line like normal. Just takes a couple of days to dry.
They do get a lot of water out of the clothes. But they also tend to leave winkles in the clothes doing so.. Back in my childhood I can remember my mother being tickled pink getting rid of that washer. It cut down on a lot of the ironing that she used to have to do.
Most modern low temperature detergents have antibacterial additives that are a nightmare if you have a septic tank. Fortunately here in London, the amount of fryer fat and oil that people pour down their drains seems to have a sort of balance that neutralises then. However it all precipitates, leaving the famous "fatbergs" in the sewers that cost millions to clean out every year. One of these that was removed near the Becton treatment plant last year weighed a total of 3 tons. They collect where the pipes are larger and the velocity is low.
