This idea is fairly simple. When you throw your clothes in the washer, the tank will fill up initially with clean water and mixes with the detergent. Once this cycle is through, it empties the tank and proceeds to the rinsing cycle. The tank fills up with clean water and rinses the detergent off to clean the clothes. Instead of this water going down the drain, it will be filtered to a reservoir for the wash cycle of the next load. The load will spin dry like normal, and be manually placed into the dryer. The next load will be mixed with new detergent and the water remaining from the prior load’s rinsing cycle. When the cycle is complete, clean water fills the tank and performs the magic of the rinse cycle. The water is once again filtered and stored until the next load. The process will continue as many sequential loads that there may be. Instead of using 2 new full fills of water for a load of laundry, only one will be required.-- Wetlollypops, Oct 22 2005 Two words: grey water.
Thousands of uses. +-- reensure, Oct 22 2005 Regardless of how much bleach, detergent or filtering that is done on site, I would still prefer "clean" water from the source. I mean who would really want to be down stream from some guy washing his socks who might have a very nasty fungus infection? Or what if someone had a nasty STD and they were washing their underwear in the machine before yours- Would you rather recycle that water or would you prefer new water?
It would also be cost prohibitive. In most municipalities 10 gallons of water costs less than 50 cents.-- Jscotty, Oct 22 2005 What [Jscotty] said. It might be ok for some if it was your own washer though.-- ixnaum, Oct 22 2005 What if you wash your filthy, hair matted, dungcaked, horrible undershorts, and then the rinse water from them goes to wash my tuxedo, egyptian cotton shirt and seal gray ascot??-- bungston, Oct 23 2005 [bungston]: You've got a seal grey ascot too?
What are the chances?-- Cedar Park, Oct 23 2005 Ok, well all of you are refering this idea to public laundry facilities. Shit I absolutely agree with you that I wouldn't want someone's nasty residue coming on my clothes. Sell it to households.-- Wetlollypops, Oct 27 2005 How often do you work your washing machine? I'm not sure I want to keep water swilling around for a week before I reuse it for cleaning my clothes again. Having said that, I think there's plenty of room for an entire grey water system (including various water filtration and other treatment processes) in every household.-- zen_tom, Oct 27 2005 Besides, some of my clothes get so nasty that I wouldnt want to reuse the water even if I used it at home.-- Jscotty, Oct 28 2005 Of course you could choose as an option on the machine itself as to weather or not you use the grey water wash. If several sequential loads are done, the wash water will be warm too, so saves water heating energy.-- wittyhoosier, Mar 08 2007 random, halfbakery