Having siblings with their fare share of ‘accidents’, it made me wonder- How much soiling on clothing could a washing machine handle? Can a washing machine become clogged with fecal matter? Do washing machines have a MFC (maximum fecal capacity) label on them or something?
Anyone whose been around a washing machine washing heavily soiled clothes could probably attest that the smell is not pleasant. Whatever’s boiling in there dosn’t sound like it is good for the washing machine.
I’d think a clothes washer could handle practically any volume of :ahem: soil - it would just mix with the wash water and get dumped down the drain. You could probably throw a couple shovelfuls of dirt in with your sheets without breaking the machine. It’d probably take a few cycles to get 'em spring fresh again, though.*
The real question is the size of the chunks. They’d have to get ground up small enough to pass through those little holes in the drum. Also, the outflow pipe is only so big and there might be a screen over it. If the pipe gets blocked you’ll be in for a heck of a mess.
[sub]*I am not a Maytag repair man. Please do not try this at home.[/sub]
Let me tell you, I am never going to poop directly into my washing machine again.
Experiment with a can of corn first.
If you’re concerned, wash all the underwear LAST (i.e. after colour clothing, to avoid contaimnation) and throw in bleach with the load.
You could even run an empty load last (if the machine has a “small” setting, use it) with a higher concentration of bleach than you would use with clothing. This will effectively sterilize your machine, breaking up and dissolving feces and other contaminants.
Just don’t go nuts. Remember, mixing ammonia and bleach can kill you.
You could also rinse it off in the sink prior to throwing it into the wash.
Kewl! I wanna go first!
Might wanna rethink that. I know I wouldn’t be too happy to see the phrase “found dead, seated on the washing machine with his pants around his ankles” in my obituary.
I should have been clearer. The potential bleach/ammonia problem comes into play if you try bleaching underwear that has been liberally soaked in urine (certainly a possibility given the OP’s problem). The ammonia concentration in urine isn’t that high, but I’d make sure my washing machine was in a well-ventilated area (possibly turning on fans and opening extra windows) if I was going to run them through with lots of bleach. I also wouldn’t periodically lift the lid (and get a faceful of toxic gas) just to see how things are progressing.
Also, going nuts with cleanliness to the point where you start mixing cleansing chemicals in hopes of doing an extra-good job is risky. Bleach is very effective and inexpensive cleanser. I’d get concerned if a person decided things still weren’t clean enough and threw in extra chemicals, including ammonia, to do an extra-good (and potentially lethal) job.
What I want to know, is why on earth would you want your fecal matter that clean in the first place…
What?
When my college roommate and I moved into our apartment and tried to keep house all by ourselves for the very first time, we decided that those extra tough stains deserved both ammonia and bleach.
Believe me, you don’t wanna go there.
Mom Checks Into the Thread and Addresses the OP:
Are you talking about washing diapers, or washing items of clothing?
Either way, the normal procedure when dealing with fecal matter is sozzle the item of clothing, or diaper, in the toilet so the fecal matter falls off into the toilet, from whence it is flushed. Then you wash the item of clothing, or diaper. You don’t ask a washing machine to deal with large quantities of solid fecal matter, because as has already been pointed out, the holes in the drum aren’t big enough to allow large chunks, such as corn, to pass through.
Also, the fecal matter will rinse off the clothing into the rest of the load, so why contaminate all the clothes with potentially ill-making bacteria?
So, exactly what sort of situation are we talking about here? What does “Having siblings with their fare share of ‘accidents’” mean? Are your siblings toddlers, or are y’all living in a nursing home?
More than you want to know about this subject…Bacteria, Viruses Lurk in Washer
Oh thats just great. So now I am comforted in the fact that the clothes I am wearing have poop on them :eek:
I have a younger brother who has terrible personal hygene- earlier today my mom grimaced at the task of wiping feces off the inside of the washing machine :eek: which had gotten smeared on when some extremely soiled clothes had been deposited. I don’t know any more details. But the incident made me think of the OP. Due note that my brother is not an infant, in fact he is going to be in high school next fall. He’ll also be moving up to my dad’s, so it will be my dad’s problem and not ours.
Eh, your brother possibly has a medical problem, then, called “bowel incontinence”, and it’s probably something a doctor should know about. He may have Irritable Bowel Syndrome or Crohn’s Disease, to name two causes for it. Or he might just have a simple inability to digest milk (“lactose intolerance”), which can cause intestinal problems. Whatever the cause, there are ways of dealing with it, and IMO it goes beyond mere “nuisance level”.
Also, is he mentally disabled? Sometimes mentally disturbed people soil themselves on purpose, in which case it’s also something for a health care professional to deal with.
Either way, try to encourage your folks to have it taken care of. It isn’t something that should just be shrugged off. As has been pointed out, other people’s health is at stake, too.
I told my husband about this thread, and he related a story to me I feel compelled to share.
When he was about 8 years old he had an “accident”. A very big, messy one. Like, the entire contents of his intestinal track burst forth like a parasite in a bad horror movie. Anyhow, there’s this poor 8 year old kid with his pants full of poop, horribly embarassed and afraid the parents will go ballistic.
So he gets the bright idea that if he washes his pants maybe no one will ever find out.
In his panic, he tosses in the pants and the underwear and starts the machine, then goes off to the shower to finish cleaning himself up. But, being only 8 years old, he didn’t, um, scrape the larger chunks off into the garbage.
The result was, um, bad. Very bad. There was enough poop to completely block the holes in the washtub so at a certain point you wound up with soapy, poopy water overflowing the washing machine. Clean up, after getting the water out, apparently involved a garden trowel as well as a scrub brush.
His parent’s reaction was a mix of concern for the kid, pride that he tried to solve the problem, laughter at the results, and irritation about the mess.