How to Wash Your Laundry . . . With Your Bicycle
Loading ...Posted on: October 28, 2009
Posted in: Appliances & Gadgets, Featured, Materials, Video, Water Conservation
Photos Courtesy of Dave Askins
If you want to save some energy, one of the first appliances to target is your washing machine. You could buy yourself a high efficiency front loading washer and really save some energy and water. Or, if you’re as committed as Dave Askins, you could build your own washer out of some reused parts and power the washer with your own calories.
Dave's Amish Handcranked Washer
This is not some proof of concept or some demonstration project. This is actually how Dave does his laundry. On his website, HomelessDave.com Dave has tracked every bicycle powered load of laundry he’s done since July 2007 (149 and counting).
To be fair, Dave doesn’t use his bicycle to power his entire wash, spin and rinse cycles. He gets a little help from the Amish. For the wash cycle he uses an Amish-style “James Handwasher.” It washes clothes, not hands.
The bicycle helps Dave spin the clothes dry without using a labor-intensive, and inferior, hand-cranked wringer.
Once he realized his system worked, Dave added an electric power generator so that he could watch TV or DVDs while he does his laundry. 
For answers to all your questions about building your own pedal-powered washer visit Dave’s website . Dave Askins is the publisher of the Ann Arbor Chronicle.
How Dave Did It . . .
From www.HomelessDave.com
Additional documentation is organized based on these three elements. [Click here for details on electric power generation. This is how Dave can watch "J.J. The Jet Plane" while he does his laundry]
Modifying the Washer (unbolting stuff)
(1) Remove the white metal shell from the washing machine.
(2) Remove the electric motor from the washing machine frame.
(3) Remove the pulley from the motor shaft.
(4) Detach the drain hose that leads from the tub to the pump.
(5) Remove ‘brakes’.
(6) Save the belt from the pulley.
Discussion:
Tension Roller
(1) Notes (Remove the white metal shell from the washing machine): Just unscrew every nut/screw you can find. Most of them are pretty accessible. Be prepared to cut some electrical wires. What you want is the part you see pictured above. Or something like it.
(2) Notes (Remove the electric motor from the washing machine frame): This will require navigating a wrench into very tight spaces. It pays to have a very small socket driver. When you’re tearing out the motor, preserve the tension roller arm [cf. picture]. This is important for keeping the drive belt on the pulley under high rpms.
(3) Notes (Remove the pulley from the motor shaft) The motor I dealt with was attached to the shaft with a tension pin. I knocked it out with a nail set. There may be two pulleys on the same motor shaft, one driving the washer and one driving the pump. The one you want is the one driving the washer.
(4) Notes (Detach the drain hose that leads from the tub to the pump) The automatic washer is set up to feed the draining water to a pump, which is then typically pumped up into one of those large laundry sinks. You’re not going to be pumping anything, so you want the water to run straight out of the tub into the bucket you will eventually set up, something like this:
Drain Detail
(5) Notes (Remove ‘brakes’): Mounted under the tub, there may be little wedges designed to ‘brake’ the tub in the event things get out of control. Get rid of these and anything else that obviously interferes with the free rotation of the tub. The washer I modified had little brake pads housed as indicated in the photo:
Brake Detail
Modifying the Trainer (drilling stuff)
(1) Get some tension pins.
(2) Get a drill bit to match.
(3) Drill three evenly spaced holes through the pulley.
(4) Position the drilled pulley onto the flywheel so that it’s perfectly centered.
(5) Drill through the flywheel.
(6) Hammer in the tension pins
Discussion:
(1-6) Notes: Take the pulley you’re going to drill to your local hardware store (in Ann Arbor, my choice is always Stadium Hardware) and say something like: “I’m going to drill through this three times and I need to put tension pins in there.” You will leave with a drill bit and three matching tension pins. Buy four pins if you plan to drop one where you can’t find it. There’s probably some quick and dirty way to lay out three evenly spaced holes on the pulley using some trick from middle-school geometry that I don’t know. I used Photoshop and printed it out. The pulley might have a flat side and a curved side. Because the flywheel to the bike trainer resistance unit is likely flat, use the rule: flat goes against flat. CRUCIAL: the holes can’t go through the ‘flangey’ part of the pulley … that’d put pins in the way of the belt. As you can see from the detail shot below, you might break off a drill bit, if you’re not careful (look at the right side). It’s important that these holes be ‘straight’, that is to say at a 90 degrees angle to the surface of the pulley. I used a drill guide attachment to my hand-drill for this. A drill press would be better. Probably the best strategy is to drill the holes through the pulley first, then go for the holes through the flywheel, using the pulley as a template.
Tension Pin Detail
How do you position the pulley on the flywheel so that it’s perfectly centered? Long story short, I eyeballed it. I helped myself out by spinning the flywheel and using a Sharpie permanent marker to scribe several concentric circles onto the flywheel for additional visual reference points. I also gently rotated the flywheel (after turning the flywheel on its side) with the pulley resting where I thought it looked centered, and evaluated if it seemed centered under slow rotation. I epoxied the pulley in place, so that I didn’t have to worry about slippage during drilling of the flywheel.
Preparing the Interface (positioning stuff)
(1) Position the bicycle training-stand and the washer in a configuration you estimate will work.
(2) Take a piece of string as an ersatz belt to get an estimate of how long your belt will need to be.
(3) Take the old belt and your measurement (or just the string) to your hardware store and ask for one just like it but longer.
Drill Plywood
(4) Place the two back feet on predrilled plywood pads.
(5) Drill spaces for the washer feet and place big plywood under the washer.
(6) Install the belt with the training stand resting on the big plywood.
(7) Test out the configuration a bit.
(8) Drill holes for the training stand feet.
Discussion (1-8):
The belt drive requires a fixed distance between the two pulleys. The idea here is to engineer a plywood base to keep the bicycle training stand and the washer at a fixed distance. The washer feet furthest away from the training stand need not be a part of the rigid mechanism, but they need to be padded so that the washer isn’t off balance. The rotation of an automatic washer’s spin cycle is, as best I can tell, directional. Figure out which direction it’s supposed to go. Put the twist in the belt (necessary to convert vertical spin into horizontal spin) accordingly.
The Dirty Laundry (the downside of this project)
I initially used this configuration for about 10 loads of laundry over the course of two weeks (that’s 30 spin cycles, as I spin the clothes out between each of two rinses in the hand-cranked washer). I was quite enthusiastic about the results and I still am. I imagine I’ll keep doing the majority of our household laundry with this method long into the future. Before embarking on a similar DIY project, I advise others to consider:
(1) It takes above-average strength and conditioning to pedal the original configuration of gears I set up. Over the course of about a minute, I was able to accelerate to 50 rpms, and then sustain it for 3-4 minutes. The bicycle gearing was roughly 2:1. The ratio of the circumference of the roller contacted by the bicycle tire to the tire itself is roughly 1:25. The ratio of the drive pulley’s circumference to the working pulley is around 1:4. So the rough aritmetic for the laundry tub is (50 x 2 x 25) / 4 = 625 rpms. I don’t know what the original rating for this particular model was (I don’t know what model is was, for one thing), but when I called GE’s customer service phone line, the representative looked up a few different motor ratings for me (and by the way, that customer service rep really impressed) and from that I concluded that the range of spin-cycle rpms is something like 450-650 rpms. So this configuration spins on the high side of average. Ideally, you’d want to be spinning the pedals closer to 90 rpms, so that it’s an aerobic effort, stressing the joints less, etc. With the gearing on the original configuration, spinning the tub at a normal spin cycle speed required slow grinding of the pedals. [Update: swapping the double-ring crankset with a triple ring sporting a very small inner ring, allowed a gear ratio of close to 1:1, resulting in a pedaling rpm of close to 90.]
(2) The rider of this configuration needs to try for a super-smooth pedal stroke. Violent accelerations within the pedal stroke lead to slippage between the bicycle tire and the resistance roller. Cycling shoes that clip to the pedals (you pull up as well as push down) help to smooth this out. Still, extra concentration is required.
(3) The resistance unit itself, even on its lowest setting (if it’s a magnetic unit) will sap energy from your pedaling that could go into spinning laundry. At least the resistance on a magnetic unit (which mine was) is typically adjustable. A fluid-resistance unit would typically offer no such adjustment. [Update: I completely removed the magnetic resistance unit and replaced it with an additional drive pulley to power an electric generator.]
(4) The resistance unit will pretty much be ruined for regular indoor bicycle training even if you leave it in place. This comes from the fact that the pulley mounted to the flywheel is likely going to be off-center enough that under the higher rpms typical of an indoor training session, it will cause the unit to emit an unholy noise. Mine did, anyway.
April-Fresh Goodness: (the upside of this project)
(1) Gray water recycle-ability: I empty that bucket from the spun laundry into a toilet tank.
(2) Zero electricity for entire laundry load if you dry on a rack.
(3) Drying puts moisture into the indoor air (good in winter).
(4) Exertion on the cycle is a good workout.
(5) Exertion on the cycle throws off heat into the indoor environment (good in winter, not great in summer.)
Bear in mind for future adaptation of indoor training resistance units:
(1) Precise centering of pulley.
(2) Elimination of resistance unit resistance.
(3) Use bicycle with a granny gear to increase pedaling rpms.
Ideas:
(1) Manufacturers of resistance trainers: build V-belt groove into flyweel.
(2) Mount pulley on the bicycle wheel on the opposite side of the gear cluster.
(3) Pedal-powered laundrette in student dormitories.
Related Posts
Highest Rated Videos
- Deciphering Eco-Labels: 3 Certifications You Can Trust
- Renovating a 110-Year-Old Folk-Victorian to Net Zero Energy
- Big Kitchen in a Small Space (and Eco-Friendly Too!)
- How to Make Your Own Rain Barrel: Mustache Not Included
- LOL for ROI: Dumb Blonde Gets FREE Energy Efficient Windows
- How to Save Water and Not Have to Wait for it to Get Hot
- 50-Watt Lights Made With Water & Use No Energy
- Geothermal Heating & Cooling: How it Works
- How to Wash Your Laundry . . . With Your Bicycle
- Obama Says “Insulation is Sexy” – Behind the Scenes Video of the President
November 11th, 2009 at 6:37 am
[...] lavatrice sia un “macchingegno” assolutamente alla portata di tutti; sul sito Greenovation Tv sono infatti disponibili le istruzioni per realizzarne una passo passo inclusa di generatore [...]
November 19th, 2009 at 6:50 am
[...] gewinnt. Die selbstproduzierten Filmbeiträge sind jedenfalls ein hervorragender Anfang. Ideen wie eine fahrradbetriebene Waschmaschine umzusetzen benötigt nicht nur eine ordentlich Portion Wahnsinn, sondern auch entsprechendes [...]
June 9th, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Hi there! I happened upon your washing machine modification above (fab idea, btw) and it is very similar to a design we are trying to accomplish with our grain mill/bike trainer modification. Can’t seem to get the mill to turn, no matter the size of the pulley we’ve attached to the trainer (and our good friends at Stadium Hardware in A2 also provided us with hands-on assistance and a LOT of guidance! We can’t thank Skip enough…and Mike didn’t harass us too much for making a “hippy contraption”).
At any rate, we’d love any suggestions you might have on how you managed to turn a very heavy object with the trainer-pulley system. Our bike either turns the pulley (with no movement of the v-belt) or we lose a lot of tire rubber on the trainer! We are thinking of resorting to a cassette from a bike mounted onto the grain mill, using a chain to drive it…
June 9th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Sounds awesome! I’ll bet Dave would love to give you some advice on this. You can contact him directly through his website http://www.homelessdave.com – I’ll pass along your comment to him too.
June 9th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
A couple of thoughts.
Chain-drive versus belt-and-pulley. I used belt-and-pulley mainly because the washing machine already had a pulley, and I needed to convert from rotation in a vertical plane to a horizontal plan. That conversion is easily accomplished with a belt – it’ll survive a half twist.
Grain mills versus washing machines. I’d imagine turning grain mill is quite different from turning a washing machine. When you spin a washer, getting it from a standstill to those first couple of turns is pretty tough. There’s sometimes some slippage of the tire on the training roller. But after it develops some momentum, you settle in and maintaining the rotation is not too hard. With a grain mill, you’re not going to have any momentum at all, right? It’ll constantly be maximum resistance, and it won’t ever get any easier.
So, for a grain mill, you’ll just want as tiny a ratio as you can cobble together. The strategy of tapping the rotation of the roller on a bike trainer works against you here — it’s a relatively large wheel spinning against a small cylinder, which increases your ratio dramatically. If you can figure out a way to drive the grain mill directly off a rear cog (for example, by using a flip-flop fixed gear rear wheel hub, which has one cog on each side) that would take that unnecessary multiplier out of the equation. I think you might be able to source a granny ring for the front chain ring of 16 teeth. That would be a good start to achieving a smaller gear ratio.
November 14th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Great idea-but can you show us how to do it?
November 14th, 2011 at 8:37 pm
Yes Megan. Here’s all the info you’ll need to make one of these bicycle washers yourself: http://homelessdave.com/hdwashingman.htm