I’m not talking about those units where the dryer is stacked on top of the washing machine- I’m saying why not have an appliance where you put dirty clothes in, and clean, dried clothes come out?
I was thinking of this as I was doing my laundry. I can envision a washing/drying appliance where you just put dirty clothes into a receptacle, and the machine runs loads as its capacity becomes available, and dumps the dried clothes out of a nother chute (into a basket or something). This would streamline those situations where you have to do many loads in succession- you could just load the machine once and let it do all the work.
For one, it would take longer to do your laundry. I can do a first load, throw it in the dryer, then have a second load washing while the first is drying.
I also imagine that the necessary holes and drains for the water would somehow interfere with the necessary heat buildup to dry the clothes, but I’m not sure. That’s for someone more mechanically inclined than I.
Or do you mean that it would dump the wet clothes into another section for drying and then dump them out altogether?
What you need, my friend, is a laundry. Sometimes they’re located in a laundromat, and sometimes in a dry cleaners. You just drop your dirties off at the counter and pick them up later, washed, dried, and folded. I used to use one. It was very cool, and surprisingly inexpensive. And nobody there says anything about your hashmarks.
Peace,
mangeorge
Actually, a device I had in mind would have separate washing/drying chambers. So it would wash a load, transport it to the dryer which would dry it. Once the washing chamber was empty, the clothes hopper would load another load of clothes in the washing machine. Thus, the washing/drying is a continuous process.
And FTR, I HATE Laundromats. Boring, expensive when compared to a home machine, and all the Laundromats I’ve seen tended to be in rather bad neighborhoods (i.e. places I do not want to loiter for 1+ hours)
Make 'em in China. I’ve been using the Siemens 2 in 1 unit for 5 years and it works pretty well. If forget what the wieght limit is but it’s something like 5 pounds of clothes.
What about items that can be machine-washed, but not tumble-dried? Would you have a separate washer on hand just in case? Would you use catlike speed and reflexes to remove them at the exact moment that the laundry is being transferred?
Washer/dryers are quite common in the UK; however they are only usually designed to take a half-load if you are running a full wash/dry cycle. In the UK the washing machine will normally be in the kitchen, so the advantage is obviously the space it saves in only having one appliance in the kitchen; a lot of people won’t have room to have a seperate tumble dryer elsewhere. Disadvantages are that it will generally be able to dry less than a standard dryer, be more expensive and any extended warranties are more expensive.
