TechStuff Classic: How Washing Machines Work

a lot more going on than you might imagine. So let's roll up our sleeves and dunk our arms deep in that soapy water and find out how washing machines work. All right, Lauren, Yes, Jonathan, have you ever had to clean any of your clothes without the benefit of a machine to do it for you? Actually sink wash a lot of stuff. It takes some effort done it. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, it's not fun. It is not a fun thing to do. It is the opposite of fun. I have also done this. I Lauren and I have

both in the past, not together. Warren costumes for various occasions, like you know, it's Thursday, and so Thursday is my favorite costumes someday. Some costumes you just they're not washing machines safe, they're delicate. Yeah, so you get a kind of not so delicate that you don't have to put in a ton of effort to get them clean. Though. So here's how Washington's to work. You get some water, You put some soiled clothing in the water. Then you

agitate the soiled clothing. And I don't mean you'd say nasty things about its mother. You actually have to physically move that clothing around in order to shake loose the dirt. If you really want to say nasty things about its mother. I mean, it pretty much naturally happens. It's not going to hurt. Yeah, it might actually make you feel better as you're as you're scrubbing up to your elbows and make your roommates think you're really weird. That ship sailed

a long time ago. So yeah, you have to put in all this physical work to kind of shake loose the dirt. And then you take the water away, You take the clothes away from the water, You take the water away from the clothes. However you do it, and then you rense it off, and then you try and wring it out, and then you hang it up to

dry or however you want to dry it. So what we needed to do was find a way of making this process which used to be that that used to be the way we cleaned everything didn't matter if it was delicate or not. We need to find a way to make that less of a chore. So we want to talk about the history of washing machines as well as how they worked. And to begin with, the history is not all that clear because, as it turns out, a lot of people just didn't really bother, you know,

recording all the developments in washing machine technology. Well, the thing is that most of the time the washing was being done by um, by people in the lower classes who were not also writing scientific papers about advancements in this kind of text. So so there's there's a whole lot of disagreement on when stuff happened, where it happened, um, what the terminology was, because the terminology varied from town to town. Yeah, yeah, whether or not you had a

stomp bucket or not. Yeah, Like, those are some great terms that we're going to talk about here. But so excited we're going to We're going to do our best to wade through the confusion and lead you to the other side where the light will be seen by all, and we'll have clean clothes there. That's my goal. So first we're gonna start with ancient Rome because this has nothing to do with washing machines, but it was so

cool I had to bring it in. So the ancient Romans were among the earliest people's to offer public laundry services. They had an entire class of people who whose job it was to clean clothes, and those those people were dudes. Yeah, they were dudes. This was this was men's work because it was heavy duty, hard work. You see, back in Roman times, all the clothing was made out of wool. Wool,

that's heavy. Yeah, cotton didn't exist yet. Yeah. So I don't know if you've been to Italy or various other regions that were part of the Roman Empire, it's warm, you know, and people people get a little uh, you know, a little little sweaty, little stinky, little stinky, and so you need to clean those clothing. So they had these people, these men called foulonis now foulons, where they they were

the in charge of cleaning the clothes. You would pay them and they would take the clothes they put them in a vat. It would be a vat that you know, go up to like say the waiter so has some water in it. And then they'd stomp on the clothing and stomp and stomp and stop. And this is that physical agitation action we're talking about that shakes loose the dirt. Uh, And then they would end up pulling that out, ringing out the clothes, laying them on the ground or hanging

them up. They would also use other materials to try and whiten anything that needed to be white, They try and bleach it. They would also use the sun to bleach the stuff. So this is the way the earliest clothes here. You know, we're talking about Roman times, how they were washing them all the time. And uh, like we said associate with men, that would be about the last time we say that. So to my house, I do the laundry. So I do the laundry and I do the cooking. You know, we're not we're not tied

down by gender roles at any rate. Medieval Europe. So this is where we start getting into some interesting terminology. So people would use things called washing bats, also called beetles or battle doors. Yes, raise the battle door and watch that tunic. Yeah, it's essentially it's something that you would use specifically to again agitate the clothing while it's in flowing water. So usually this was done for most

people literally along the side of a river. Yeah. Yeah, you'd use it as kind of a I think that washing bats referred to like the scrubbing related devices, like it was used in conjunction with the scrubbing boards, right right, right, Yeah, you know the scrubbing boards you also had there, and you had to go to where the water was. I mean some people had water come to them, but not very many. H and again use that physical motion to

loosen dirt washed away by water. You can do this in a tub with a handheld agitator if you weren't near any sources of running water. And that's uh, that's kind of how things how things went for centuries. Yeah. Do we get to the eighteenth century and uh, at this time, this is when we start to see the

concept of laundry being quote unquote women's work. The idea of being that women, since you know, they don't have to go out and farm all day, they can stay at home and do the easy work, you know, like the back breaking laundry that has to be done by hand. It really was a very tough job. I mean, especially in places where you have to go run out and get the water. What does the washing. Yeah, I got a quote here from a Nevada housewife from the The

Kind of the Pioneer Days. Really her name was Rachel Haskell, and she said that doing laundry was the herculean task which women all dread, and also described it as the great domestic dread of the household. Because this is I mean, it wasn't just that it was back breaking work. I mean you had to really put effort in it if you wanted clean clothes. Also, the materials you used could be kind of rough on skin. I mean we're talking

about some caustic materials. Yeah. For a long time, whites and natural fabrics were soaked in pure lie instead of being washed with soap because soap was really expensive. So

so that's really fun. Um. A recent study out of the University of Montreal suggested that advances in household technology during the twentieth century was partially responsible for a jump in the number of of married women being in the workforce from five percent sc nineteen hundred to circ nineteen eighty UM and a decrease in time spent per week on household chores from fifty eight hours to just eighteen hours in the same approximate period of time, so dropping

forty hours a week. A full time job worth of chores dropped in a week because of devices of convenience like the like the washing machine. Yeah, you know, if you didn't have that river handy, you would uh, you would have have your have your bucket and a tool called depending on where you were. And I had to add this note because all of these tool names make me so happy. H a poser, dolly, dasher, punch or punch. I'm sure I'd want to punch if I had to

do this. And something that at any rate looked a little bit like a plunger with like holes or events in the base um to let water squeeze through, and you just stand over a tub on the floor and and manually agitate the laundry. Yeah. By the way, you guys are really missing out because Lauren and I are both expressive people, and when we talk about how this happens, we acted out. So it's too bad this isn't a video podcast. No no, no, no, it's really good that

it's not a video podcast. So moving on, we now get to seventy two. Now over in Great Britain, a fellow named H. Sidgier invented what we think was the first washing machine. And what this was was essentially a cade of wooden rods and a handle to turn those rods, and turning the handle move the rods which would agitate clothes within a VT. So you're still using hand power to do this, but you're no longer like actively in

the water moving clothing around. Yes, so that that was a slight advantage, and other people started making similar sorts of washing machines. Now most of these were not really convenient for like home use. This was stuff an industrial level, and this is just too big and too clunky and too expensive for most people. It just wasn't practical for them. But it was showing where things were moving. The first

patent wouldn't show up though, until about eighteen forty six. Right, Yeah, that's when you've got a pattern in the U. S. Patent office for a washing machine that cleans closed by rubbing them between two curved surfaces. And once again you mechanically move this yourself. You had a lever, and the lever is what made these curve surfaces move against each other. And it was that rubbing motion within water with these

curved surfaces that would actually clean the clothing. Uh. It ended up being a the popular design and in fact would last well into the well the early nineteen hundreds, so nearly a century, even after other alternative methods were introduced. So eighteen fifty one we get James King who invented the revolving drum. Now that's the basis of most washing machines and even dryers today. Yeah, that's that's what you've

got to come probably. Yeah, although an improvement was made just a few years later in eighteen fifty eight you had Hamilton's Smith who invented the revolving drum, with reversing action being the drum could actually revolve in either direction. Uh. So this would allow lots of different washing machines to use that kind of back and forth motion as a

form of agitation. So if you have to help do some of the work for you of moving all that water exactly, so like the front loading uh types of washing machines we see today, most of those can turn in either direction. So they're really descendants of Hamilton's Smith's work.

Then in eighteen seventy four, I had to add this in, and I'm going to include the starting he joke I wrote in the notes, which is that William Blaxton, who was a corn planter and manufacturer, created a washing machine and gave it to as a gift to his wife for her birthday, and then she threw corn at him. Okay, so so while I make a joke about the guy buying his wife another appliance for her to do work with, in reality it actually was simplifying her life quite a bit.

At that point. It could probably be considered a sweet gesture. Yeah, yeah, because it means taking hours of time off of all the chores that she would have to do. I mean hopefully there was like chocolate involved two or something. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was partially made from that, in which case it was probably not not very effective. But no, no, actually a lot of washing machines, like he actually started to offer to sell them because she did like this. It did make it easier for her

to wash clothes. And again this was mechanically operated. There was a hand crank. It wasn't like it was some sort of automated Yeah, he wasn't pouring steel drums in his corn field, not steam powered washing machine or something. So she she would turn it by hand, but still made it easier. And because it was so practical, he

started to sell them. And the price tag on a washing machine a William Blackston washing machine, according to the sources I saw, and keep in mind, this is another one of those things where I am skeptical, but every source I found said it two dollars and fifty cents for a washing machine. That's a bargain. Uh four. The calculators don't even go back that in four two dollars and fifty cents would buy you the Nevada territory, but

or a washing machine. Listen, I'm no scrub, but we do have to take a break and listen to these ads. We'll be back to talk more about washing machines after this quick break. In eight we had Ellen Eglwy who invented a ringer to sit a hop washing machines and helped dry out the laundry. She sold the rights to her idea for eighteen dollars. The story goes that she only sold the idea because of being a black woman. She didn't think that white women would buy the product

if they knew who had created it. Um and I guess eighteen dollars really wasn't too shabby at the time. Though the fellow that she sold it to wound up making a good deal of money on it. Although more on that in just a moment. So in we have the Maytag Corporation being founded. Yeah, now, it wouldn't be until seven that they would come out with a washer because Maytag did more than just washing machines, and and that was still mechanical. Yes, that is true. It still mechanical,

was not electric washer at that time. Well, which makes sense because only um eight percent of US homes at the time had electricity, only had running water. Yeah. So you know, if you're going to market it to a large group, and if you want to actually help people, then you have to design something that's going to work for the most people. Right. I do think that the Maytag repair guy probably got called out for more repairs back in the mechanical days. He doesn't get a lot

of according to the commercials. He doesn't do very much these days, although although at the time, since since telephones weren't very popular thing just stand outside. Also, it's Colin Ferguson who's the Maytag guy now, which is kind of weird. That's very strange. He's seeing the guy from Eureka as the Maytag repair guy. In nineteen o five, we have Alva J. Fisher who produces the first electric washing machine. Now, the motor at that time was bolted to the side

of the washing machine and was unshielded. An electric motor. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I've been taught that two things you don't necessarily want to mix together are water and open electronics. Apple has told me many times that if I do introduce those two things, that's totally my fault. Um. Yeah, So it turns out that water from the vat could sometimes come out and hit the motor and cause a short circuit. Sometimes this would

result in damage to the advice. Sometimes it would result in a jolt of electricity hitting a person. But it wouldn't be until the nineteen thirties, presumably after one too many laundry workers got zapped that they would start to shield the motor from the rest of the washing machine, thus preventing water from actually hitting the motor. Uh kind of funny that it took nearly three decades for that

to happen. We have the Hurly Machine Company of Chicago introducing the first electric power washing machine, which had the name of four According to one source, it was actually called the Mighty Thor And this was based off of Alva J. Fisher's design. So Fisher was working for the

Hurly Machine Company at that time. So Thour hits the market, and in nineteen eleven we have developments with the oscillating cylinder, which and also with domestic washing machines using sheet metal tubs mounted on angle iron frames to be the basic design of your washing machine. That same year, the Uptown Machine Company, which would later become the Whirlpool Corporation, formed

and produced electric motor driven ringer washers. You know we we mentioned ringers, you said, the ringer on the other one. That was one of the patents that they bought in order to build this machine. There you go. So you if you wonder what a ringer actually is, it's think of two rollers that are really tightly space together, and you ring the clothing by putting it between the two rollers. You turn a crank. This kind of pulls the cloth

through and it squeezes that excess water out. It's kind of like imagining to steam rollers right next to each other. And also you don't want to put your fingers anywhere near there because they will get squish. All right. So then we get up to the nineteen twenties, that's when some manufacturers begin to introduce electric or gas water heaters that are part of the washing machine itself. Because while we started to see running water entering in more homes,

not all homes had water heaters. If you had water, there was a chance it was just going to be cold. So in order to make more effective washing machine, hot water tends to wash clothes a little better than cold water does. That we'll get we'll talk a little bit about that. With the modern ones as well, some machines had on board water heaters. Yeah. So but then once we start seeing water heaters going into homes, this became less important and you stopped seeing models with their own

onboard heaters. For the most PARTO Maytag introduces a washing machine with an agitator. Um, it doesn't use an agitator to introduce a washing machine. That would just sound irritating some guy coming to your house and saying, hey, you're closer dirty, you need to wash them. Now we're talking about an actual component within a washing machine. Lauren is doing her head shaking thing. Thirties we have manufacturers who begin to include a drain pump motor to remove water

from a washing machine once the cycle is over. Because if you're thinking, these early washing machines meant that water magically entered into the machine, then you did your washing, you turn some cranks or whatever, and then the water atically went away. No, you had to put the water there. You had to take the water back out, you know, you had to find some way of of you know, some of them had like a little drain spout type thing that you would drain at the end of the day. Whatever.

This was an actual pump that would use mechanical motion to pump water back out. So again using electronics to kind of simplify work. Uh. Nineteen thirty seven, we have the Bendex Corporation introducing the first fully automated washing machine. Now, this involves using a clock timer that's connected to the washing machine controls. It tells the machine essentially what stage it's in and therefore switches. Because before that you had

a manual switches that were that were operated by a human. Yeah, you had to actually sit there and and or come back even more frequently to your washing machine, right right, You have to sit there and say, oh, you know that that the timer says that the time has passed for it to do the wash cycle. Now need to go and switch it over to do a spin cycle or something along those lines. So, yeah, this this is

another big advance. In the nineteen forties, washer production in the U S would largely stop as supplies and factories were bent to the war effort, because that was when World War Two was happening. For example, Whirlpool, which was then under the name nine Corporation, produced some two million components for P forty Warhawk aircraft, from like propeller pitch controls to carburetor parts. Yeah, I hear. They were the cleanest parts in all of the war effort. She's shaking

her head again. I'm just going to move on. Seven. General Electric claims that they invented the first fully automated washing machine. Now we assumed that they mean fully automated washing machine that actually had an an agitator, right. The previous one did not have an agitator. The agitator's job again is to to provide that motion within the washing machine, within the tub. That's that's moving the water. And yeah, it's really it's really meant to simulate an ancient Roman

stomping on your clothes. That's really what agitators meant to do. It's the way I like to put it. So we then have very slow evolution and washing machine technology. It wasn't exactly one of those areas that required h a lot of of of advances to keep it, to keep the industry healthy. For one thing, once you buy one, you pretty much stick with it for a really long time. Yeah, you don't need one for a good bit. Yeah, because I mean they're expensive and uh and they generally last

a pretty long time. So we didn't see huge advances, but we did see some. And then we're gonna skip to n that's when a certain James Dyson, British inventor creates a washing machine that has two cylinders rotating in opposite directions, which actually reduces the washtime and supposedly it actually washes clothes more effectively than traditional machines. Wouldn't surprise me, Dyson has made a lot of interesting stuff. Two thousand eight,

it's the last thing we have in our timeline. That's when engineers at the University of Leeds created a washing machine that uses just one cup of water to wash a full load of clothing. Wow. What Yeah, I don't want to understand that when we talk about how much water are normal washing machines used, one cup is right? I mean we're talking about using less than two per cent of the water and energy required by conventional machines to wash clothing. And also the clothes are pretty much

dry after you wash them. You haven't used that much water. So um, yeah, I don't have any more details on that about what is actually happening. I suspect laundry. Gnomes. I always suspect laundry. Now do to that. They're suspicious little jerks. All right, well, you know what, it's time to turn this episode on the rinse cycle. But to do that, we're going to take another quick break. Okay, So let's talk about how modern washing machines work. And

we're gonna start with top loading machines. So these are the machines where there's a little door at the top of the machine. Seen, you lift it up, you put all your clothing in. Most of them, almost all of them have an agitator inside. That's the kind of the central post that sticks up from the bottom of the of the washing machine. Although from now on, if you really want to, you could probably call it a poster Dolly, dasher,

punch or punch. Okay, so if you're using your poster Polly punch, dasher paunch, it's like Rudolph, but the agitator has Usually it has some fins on it and some other uh like protrusions on the bottom of it. Now, these serve a purpose. When it's turning in the water. It actually has this action upon the clothing that's that's also inside the machine. It will either pull it down towards the bottom of the machine or push it back up toward the top. And that's the agitating movements you

get to shake loose all that dirt. So again, trying to replicate all the other means we've used to clean clothes over the years, that inner drum that the clothes are sitting in itself may or may move as well. Yeah, usually you have one that will uh spin because it has to drain up the water. But during the actual agitation process. It's pretty common that there's gonna be a breaking system on that thing, and it holds it in place.

So the agitator is doing all the moving, because if the drum were rotating the same time the agitator's rotating, it would reduce the effectiveness of the agitator. So, yeah, most of these are going to have an inner drum that's going to be steady. It's connected to an outer drum. The outer drum is water tight. It has to be, or else you have a huge mess every time you

attempt to make clean clothes. The inner drum has holes in it that allow the water to drain out and then it usually it's been picked up by a drain pump that pulls it out of the machine itself. But with your top loading washers, you've got intake valves that allow water to come in, and you have a cold water and a hot water one. Right, So generally speaking, most of these washing machines, uh they If you set a washing machine to wash cold, it will only allow

water from the cold intake to come in. If you want it hot, it will only allow water from the hot intake. So the machine itself for most of these doesn't have its own discrete heating element. It's just relying on the temperature of the water from your house to provide the heat or the cold water if you want warm. It does a mixture of both, right, so, uh, not

too complex there. Now some some washing machines do have a little heating element and they will allow uh warm or hot water to go across it to make it even hotter. Uh. That tends to be more common in front loaders that I've seen than top loaders. But it's possible that you could find a top loader that also has its own discrete, little electric heating element. It kind of looks like the sort of thing you would see an electric stove. So and then water just goes over

it and that heats up. So then you've got a a water level sensor that's inside the machine itself. So when the water hits the right level, the sensor is triggered and that sends a me message to the control center in the washing machine to say, hey, stop letting water in. It sends a signal to the intake valve. Has a little solenoid there that when you trigger it, it'll shut that intake valve so no more water will come in so you don't have to worry about a

huge overflowing mess. And solenoid valves of course being the kind of thing so that there cannot be a exchange of water back out from You can't get the dirty wash water going back out into your neighborhood. Uh yeah, into the pipes. Yeah, because that would be that would be really bad. So yeah, the valve has two purposes. One to stop more water coming in and to stop all the dirty water going back out. You only want the dirty water to go out through the exhaust. Solenoid

is like a one way thing. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of pinball machines, solenoids. That's what all the little triggers are used. Solinoids are using those just a little little trivia there. People will listen to. Uh current geek have heard me bust out that trivia in the past. So now you've got the water has hit the right level,

the mode goes into wash cycle. That's when. By the way, for these top loader ones, I don't know if you guys are familiar with this, but generally speaking, you have to put the soap in manually, like you don't put it into a dispenser or something. It doesn't go on automatically. Now, now you just you pour it on top of the clothing. Whether you're using liquid detergent or or a solid detergent

doesn't matter. You put it in with the clothing. If you forgot to put it in there, you are not going to have that, you know, Daisy Fresh scent or whatever brand you happen to get. So the agitator begins to turn and it usually will what you guys, you've got to drive motor. Normally it's on the bottom of

the washing machine. It also tends to act as a counter balance, a counterweight, which, by the way, you've got several counterweights in your washing machines because you've got lots of motion going on, and if you didn't have them there, you're washing machine would be dancing all over the place. Yes. Yeah, anyone who's ever had an unbalanced load and a washing machine and you start hearing that thumping noise, if you didn't have the counterweights in there, it would become catastrophic.

Oh yeah, yeah. There's there's actually a really complex suspension system. Um It involves like a like a inner frame, a cable and pulley suspension and these little like disc brake like mechanisms that connect that inner frame to the corners of the outer walls. UM. And that's so that when the frame, that interframe shakes, they slow it down softly so that it doesn't hit against the outer wall of

the washer. And then because otherwise you would just be convinced that your house had been invaded by a horde of extremely loud ghosts, you know, who apparently are mad that you're doing laundry. Really clumsy robots who are also anti land could be ghost robots. That's yeah, terrible. So next you have the once the dry motor gets going

and it starts moving the agitator. Uh. Once the agitator is done, it's done oscillating, which is that that rotating motion where it goes in one direction, stops goes in the other direction. Uh. That's what's actually moving the clothes around getting them washed. Then you have the drain pump pulling all that wastewater out from the tub of the washing machine and through the drain pipe. Uh. That's uh, it's actually the same pump that circulates the water into

the tub during the wash cycle. UM. Thanks to the pump motor being reversible, it spins one way when you're driving a wash cycle, and the opposite way when you're draining the tub exactly. Yeah. And so after this, then you've got the the those brakes that are on the inner drum that keep it from rotating while the agitator is moving, they release, and the inner drum begins to spin. Uh And and that that removes the water from the clothes.

It can It can spin a lot faster than the agitator does because the although the motor itself usually only has one speed, and that's the fast speed, a gear reduction mechanism will translate the motion to to the gentle agitators speed. It's kind of like a washing machine version of a transmission Yeah. Yeah, because and and there's even more than that involved, because hey, the pump and the agitate spin mechanisms are both driven by the same motor.

In some machines, there's in fact an actual transmission system with this automatic clutch that that spins free with the inner drum during the agitate spin cycles and then locks into the outer drum and the pump system during the

water related cycles. Um Or, alternately, the motor can hook in via a pulley system, which I understand less well, and thus we'll not talk about essentially uses pulleys where you have different sized disks to to translate the motion either as fast and and frantic or more you know, kind of makes sense, makes sense. But yeah, so that's when you've got all the counterweights draining away when when that thing is in spin, it's really there's some serious

g forces coming out of that spinning drum. So that's why you have to have those counterweights to keep that washing machine from bursting out and killing your family. Frequently, they're made of concrete because why not. So if you've ever thought, oh, this machine is so heavy, yes, for a reason. It's filled with concrete and crazy crazy mechanics. Um, if anything goes wrong during this entire process, there's usually an overflow port that will pipe water directly out onto

your floor. Yes, that was not a design flaw. It was intentional because if it goes up over the sides of the inner tubs, um, it could get those electronics wet and then we're right back to that old bolting the motor directly to the side of the washing Yeah.

Bad times. So we talked about how that that uh, that special uh leads team gut one that would wash a load of clothing with one cup of water, and we talked about how that was less than two percent of what your average washing machine is able to do. So top loading washing machines, if you're using a high efficient top loading washing machine, we're talking one that is as efficient as they come. You're talking still talking about

using around twenty gallons of water per washing. A typical non high efficiency top loading washer is closer to forty gallons a k A hundred and fifty one leaders and older ones are even thirstier than that. Some use as many as five gallons eight liters of water sou And again, you know, we talked about how this technology doesn't necessarily develop that quickly, and that there's not a pressing need necessarily to upgrade because these are expensive purchases for most people.

It's one of those things where you're like, unless it breaks down, we're keeping this going as long as we can keep it. Oh yeah, and they're they're they're even expensive enough. I mean plenty, plenty of households do not own their own washer drivers. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it was it was quite some time before I had my own. I often was doing one of those people. I had to go to the laundromat pretty recent for me.

So so so yeah, if you if you end up having one of these things, then it can be it can be tough to make the move to say, let's go to something that conserves more water. But the nice thing is that even if you take the environmentally friendly stuff and you say that I can't consider that because it's it's my price range, if you look at the long term, and I'm I'm talking like a few years here, you can save more money with one of the more

EFFICI ship machines just from the water and energy use. Yeah, because front loading machines and these high efficient machines, the high efficient top loaders use less water and less energy and therefore the ongoing expense decreases. Uh. It's it's lower than what you would use for a traditional top loader, and you will save money in the long run. But that's the long run. Not everybody has. So let's talk

about front loading machines. They're pretty similar. I mean, obviously you've got a door that opens in the front as opposed to on the top. Uh, and there's a spinning drum inside them, and there's no agitator so the drum does all the agitating on its own. You have water coming in along with soap. In fact, the early process is identical to top loading. The water comes in through intake valves. It may move over a heating element, it might not. Uh, it actually comes in through the drum.

The drum, the inner drum has holes in it that allow the water to pass through, rather than a spout at the top of the machine, which it's flat mess exactly. Uh. There's also an outer drum, just like with the top lottery of the inner drum. That's where all the clothes are and that's where the water comes through. The outer drum is again watertight, all else to just be a

big mess um. And then the the inner drum will spin one way and then the other will have this oscillating motion, very much like an agitator, and that's doing all the agitating for your clothing. Again, you have to have counterweights on the drum, the outer drum itself in order to stabilize it, and there's some counterweights also in other parts of the washer to make sure it doesn't go walking. Um. Now, once the water comes in, a

lot of these front loaders have a detergent drawer. You put the detergent inside the drawer and then you close it. When the water comes in, it'll actually flow through that drawer first and then pull that all the soap and stuff into the inner drum itself. So it's you know, this is one where you don't put the soap in after you put in the clothing. You put it in on the drawer, and then you close the drawer and

then you start the washer. Uh, presonably put the clothes in there already, Otherwise I would hope at some point you would put the clothing, because otherwise you just have soapy water. It's fun to watch. I get bored and not. Netflix doesn't always have something I want to watch. So anyway, again, you have the hot and cold water, You've got the you know, the same store stuff as top loader. It's got a water level sensor just like the top loader does,

so it knows when to shut it off. That basically is taking its cues from either whatever setting you've said, like whether it's a light load, a moderate load, or a heavy load, or some of them can actually detect how many, how how much clothing is in there based on weight or other parts of the water sensor and

we'll just shut off automatically. So it's ridiculous. Yeah. It's also you can put in more clothing in a front loader than you can of a comparable size of a top loader because there's no agitator there, so so you've got more space, right, so you might be able to put in a few pounds of clothing more than you could with a top loader, so fewer loads of laundry. It's another way of being more efficient. Yep. So then

you've got a motor that's bolted to the tub. It's been acting as another counterweight just with the top loader, and it's job is to turn that drum, to turn it, uh, you know, make it oscillate, and then also to spin it when it gets to the spin cycle that you know it's already drained the water. There's also a drain pump, just like with a top loader, and then the whole drum spins wicked fast until it pulls most of that water out. So the brains of it is a control module.

This is the same for both machines top loaders and frontloaders, and it usually will be send signals to all sorts of stuff like when to allow one phase of the the washing process to go to the next. It also will maintain information about the door because unlike a top loader, which often you can open the door while the top loader is working and it will continue working. Depends different stuff. Yeah, I had an old one at my my parents had an old one where if you opened it in the middle,

it was just going away. So you can still you could add more stuff to it. In fact, in some cases that you had to manually add in, like if you want to put in fabric softener, you had to wait for it. It was not fully automated. You had to wait for the right time and then pour it in manually. Um frontloaders are different. They have a locking mechanism and it's good. Yeah. Yeah, And it's only if that mechanism has since that the door has actually closed

it will allow it to start. Otherwise you could end up with lots of leaking. Yeah, I know that that sounds much messire potentially. Yeah. Granted, if the sensor is not working, then it may think it's closed when it's not really closed, and then you get water everywhere. But assuming everything is working correctly, you should be fine. In any case, it's slightly less water than you would be

using for a top loader generally. Yeah, yeah, it's normally somewhere around the twenty gallon or seventy six liter amount. So that's the same as that high efficiency top loader. Uh. And it tends to use less energy, So it tends to be both more energy efficient and water efficient. And you can find some that are even more efficient than that, and it all depends upon things. Is like the angle of the drums. Some of them are not angled directly horizontal.

Some of them are angled so that they're kind of like there's a deep end and a and a shallow end in a way from when you're looking at it in the front, it's like tilted downward a little bit. Uh. And some of them are just it's based upon how

the water comes in and how efficient it is. Uh. You still see lots of of advances, Like whenever I go to C E S there's always some companies that have like the cutting edge washer dryers, and they talk about how their technology has has improved to the point where you're you're using less water than ever and less

in electricity than ever. So we're still seeing those advances, and of course we're also seeing this come into the Internet of Things side, you know, you get push notifications when your laundry is done, or you'll be able to have it work in tandem with other electronics in your home for reasons I don't fully understand. I mean, honestly, if I if I could just get my dryer to dry my clothes without me haveing to run back up the three flights of stairs to where my laundry room

in my house is. And I'm not I'm complaining here. I know that a lot of people have it a lot harder, and I'm overall really glad that I don't have to do this in a river. Yeah. By the way, if if someone does covet you a little bit about about having to take a little extra effort, that does not automatically mean that person feels that they are in a worse position than anyone else on the Facebook planet.

So let's all just accept that. So I just because some people on the internet, uh do feel that way that they are in a worse position than anyone else on the planet, let's not let's not make the assumption that everyone isn't dead, because once in a blue moon, I do complain about things, but I do so with the full knowledge that yes, indeed, I inhabit a very

privileged position in multiple ways. So at any rate as someone who does the laundry in my home and our our laundry machines are not on the same floor as our bedroom, which means that there's lots of hauling up and downstairs. I also feel that I want my electronics to be interconnected so that when I go to cook something, it tells me, Hey, your cooking shirt is clean. You want to put that one on because that's the one

You don't care if you get grease stains on it. Yes, slob, I would like it if it were more polite, but I don't have high expectations of my electronics in that regard. I hope you guys enjoyed that classic episode of text Stuff how washing machines work from. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff that may know, the best way to do that is to pop on over to Twitter and we use the handle tech stuff hsw over there. I'll tell to

you again really soon. YEA. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Two