My experience using a mini RV style washing machine with spinner.

I bought this washing machine for use in Cebu Philippines. It cost almost exactly $150 Canadian or about 110 American. It's an awesome machine.

It draws 250 watts. Clothes were usually run for about 15 minutes and they came out nice and clean. Four loads consume 250 watt hours. So, we could wash 16 loads with one kilowatt hour of electricity.

As I said, the clothing got nice and clean. And the spinner makes them so dry, that I usually just put them on without bothering with the clothesline. This helped me to stay cool. I was almost never too hot and I was almost never completely dry,. I do the same thing in Canada during the summer.

Some days, I just gave my clothes a brief rinse with no soap , because I was just looking for the cooling effect. One minute of washing followed by a spin.

 On a clothesline in the tropical heat, they were usually ready to put away within 2 hours. But we often hung them indoors, because then they help with cooling the house. During my two months there, we didn't use air conditioning. If the place started getting hot, I knew it was time to do some laundry. I would direct the electric fan towards the drying rack and we had evaporative cooling. That's all this well-built, concrete block house required to stay comfortable.

In the Philippines they use some of the stinkiest most chemical smelling laundry soaps I've ever seen. But on my second week there, we started manufacturing bar soap using only coconut oil, palm oil and sodium hydroxide. We made a version that contains quite a bit of salt, and that worked best for the laundry. The salty version has also cleared up pimples for my fiance and several friends.

There are many different brands of small washing machine and they all seem to do roughly the same thing. We bought this one because it was available in the size and price desired and because it came with a built in spinner. Nothing is automatic. You choose how much water you want to use and then you turn the machine to the number of minutes.

 It's rated for 6 kg.  The biggest thing I washed was a large duvet. I found that when a large load is done , it spins better if done in two batches. It's possible to spin a load while the machine is also washing. The drain switch takes a little getting used to. A couple times I tried to fill the machine while it was on drain. There's no drain pump, the water just runs out.

My fiance's mother has earned her living doing laundry in a plastic tub. I hope to set her up with a little laundromat.

I don't want to ever go back to using a giant heavy machine that's hard to move around. I like it that I get to choose the load size and that it sips electricity. And the spin dryer gets them so dry that it really makes sense for people who don't use electric dryers.

I'm totally satisfied with this machine. It's seen a couple months use already, cleaning the clothes for about 15 people. In the home where we were living, they had a dead machine that looked similar. It worked for several years and then someone really over stuffed it and something went wrong. They have quite a bit of experience with these small machines and my landlady said that this is how most people kill them, by overstuffing. I've seen the same thing done in North America, particularly when people go to the laundromat and have to pay. When it costs less than a penny in electricity to run a load, I can't see any reason to ever overfill the thing. But that's me.

That's almost the same as the machine I used for a few years which was great for smaller things and has really changed my life after hand washing and going to the laundromat for big stuff. (We're off-grid with a very modest amount of panels).



I've lent it to a friend since I managed to buy a bigger machine in a similar style which washes much bigger items and a lot more stuff. Yesterday, I washed two duvet covers, three sheets and lots of pillow cases, seven pairs of jeans, about eleven tee shirts, five shirts, 27 pairs of knickers and five bras, millions of socks and a few dog blankets - all with same soapy washing water. It was pretty grubby at the end.  

I used two only black rubbish bins of water for washing and rinsing, which I siphon off to water the garden.

The water drains into a v-shaped trench in the concrete floor and then it flows out to an area where it waters bananas. I think my homemade soap will be better for the bananas than the mixture of Tide and fabric softeners that was going to them before. The shallow well is about 30 feet away, so I'm sure we're getting some of this water back.

Washers and spinners are also available as individual units for about 100 Canadian dollars. When setting up a little a laundromat, I will go with these units. Spinning takes very little time, so we might get four washers and a spinner. That would cost me $500 including the tax, to set her mother up in a business that could vastly exceed what she has done before. But first I have to put up the building and get electricity to it. We will start with a single unit.

Time will tell if customers take to it. Right now, most people wash their clothing in a plastic tub by hand. There are also fancy laundromats with front loading machines and dryers. These little machines get the clothes clean and spin them almost dry. So I think there's a place in the market to use them commercially. If I do find that dryers are needed to satisfy some customers, I will buy some dead ones and produce hot air with solar panels. Electricity would only be required to spin it and to move the air.

If you can get or make the spare parts, learn to fix them when they go wrong and keep them running, there's no reason why folk won't come running. I would !

Good luck with your idea !

Labor is about $5 a day and there are plenty of people who are good at tinkering, so if any machines quit I will definitely try to have them repaired. Because there isn't any cold weather, we just don't have big things that need to go through a washing machine. No winter coats and no really thick bedding. The larger stand-alone machines can do a pretty big blanket.

Are you dealing with a shortage of water? Is that why you're using it when it's dirty? Water is so abundant where I was that it's just not a concern. And it's so close to the surface that it takes very little energy to pump it. At that house the water just dumped on the ground under the bananas, but I could see in a larger operation I might want to put it to the top of a big banana trench and have it flow back under many of them. It doesn't really matter how much of it comes back, since there's a high water table.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I bought this washing machine for use in Cebu Philippines. It cost almost exactly $150 Canadian or about 110 American. It's an awesome machine.

It draws 250 watts. Clothes were usually run for about 15 minutes and they came out nice and clean. Four loads consume 250 watt hours. So, we could wash 16 loads with one kilowatt hour of electricity. [..]

Is this with spinning at which rpm? Sounds great, our cheapo machine (200 US$), which is a casual 60cm front-loader, uses  per load (7kg max) without heating water 0.15 kWh with 1200 rpm spinning. Unfortunately it has no extra intake for hot water. But once set to "energy saver" it doesn't heat water at all, doesn't check the input water temperature and one can feed hot/warm water through a casual mixer-tap from the wood heated boiler (first ten minutes only).

Dale Hodgins wrote:
It's rated for 6 kg.  The biggest thing I washed was a large duvet. I found that when a large load is done , it spins better if done in two batches. It's possible to spin a load while the machine is also washing. The drain switch takes a little getting used to. A couple times I tried to fill the machine while it was on drain. There's no drain pump, the water just runs out.
[..]

Our machine has not much extras, just a few LED. Though keeps up well with up to 7 kg. It can be also set to delay starting for 1-6 h or so.

I don't know the RPM but the picture of the unit should lead to the company website. I think it's Japanese. It spins them dryer than any clothing I've ever removed from a spinner.

I only know the wattage stated. I don't know if it's an average wattage or if it's only when the motor is going. Because it gives a little turn then it stops, and it continues this throughout the cycle. Probably only rotating for 1/3 of the time, but the water continues to slosh around until the next shot of power. Spinner time is generally under a minute, so not a big consideration for power. I use warm water a few times but it was big jugs that I had laid out in the sun. Homes there don't have water heaters.

The low draw is important, because I expect to eventually get my power from a battery bank powered by solar. People generally do their wash once the day starts warming up. It's an activity that women often do in the shade, when it's hot outside. The most comfortable part of the house I was living in, was a rear lean-to with plenty of ventilation and lines for hanging clothes. There was a bare metal roof with no insulation. It was hot to the touch, yet the building was so well ventilated that it remains comfortable. Clothing is placed near the ceiling. If I were doing my own drying room for a laundromat, I would use racks that can be hoisted close to the ceiling once they are loaded. Every commercial laundry that I saw, had very limited space and they used gas or electric powered dryers. But every Home Laundry system I witnessed, whether using a washing machine or the much more common wash tub, used only line drying.  

Side note. The salt soap that we manufactured leaves towels just as soft as if we had used Downy or some other horrible poison. It rained a little bit at least half of the days I was there , so on my own building I will definitely capture that water and often it will be used for laundry before it goes to plants. The use of clean rainwater should further reduce the need for soap. Clean fresh water is so abundant that it's not really much of a consideration. But I do want to use all natural products like the stuff I make, because it dumps right back onto the high water table. Of course I haven't purchased my land yet, so maybe I won't have the Abundant Supply that I have seen in most places.

The flow of water is notoriously slow after about 7 a.m., when getting it from the city supply. But this house also had a hand operated well pump that produces water very quickly. So most of the water we use was pumped by hand. You can put clothing in and start the thing long before you get all of the water in. So I suppose the dirtiest things could go in first. Usually if I was one-quarter full I would start the machine and then I fill a 5-gallon bucket a couple times to top it up. I'm not sure how much water it holds but I think probably 15 gallons. Definitely not a water saver. But you have the option of washing several loads in the same water if that's your thing. It would be difficult to save water from the spinner since it exits very low.

Freshwater can be added to the spin cycle. I usually spun them dry and then poured water over them while the machine was stopped. I don't have any faith that water would make it all the way to the bottom since it spins quite rapidly. When you don't use horrible poisons in the wash cycle, I don't think it's absolutely vital that every bit get rinsed out.

I watched one lady after another use far too much laundry soap when cleaning stuff that was already pretty clean. So most of the work they do isn't about washing the clothes, it's about getting rid of all that excess detergent. I have never seen people so happy to waste their time. Several of the women at the house would not use the machine, because they worry about whether it would clean the clothing, and they don't understand the math concerning electrical usage. The landlady was convinced it would hog power despite the machines rating and the simple math required to come to a cost per load. It was like talking to a fence post.

I went over it with her brother and he got it immediately. This time this equals that. Still, he had to talk his wife into using the machine. For a full week she continued to do wash in the plastic pail, while listening to our machine humming along. Like using a hand saw when someone beside you is holding a chainsaw. Some of them had a hard time understanding that this was my contribution to the house and that I wouldn't be trying to charge them for using it. They are accustomed to paying for a teaspoon of salt.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I don't know the RPM but the picture of the unit should lead to the company website. I think it's Japanese. It spins them dryer than any clothing I've ever removed from a spinner.

I only know the wattage stated. I don't know if it's an average wattage or if it's only when the motor is going. Because it gives a little turn then it stops, and it continues this throughout the cycle. Probably only rotating for 1/3 of the time, but the water continues to slosh around until the next shot of power. Spinner time is generally under a minute, so not a big consideration for power. I use warm water a few times but it was big jugs that I had laid out in the sun. Homes there don't have water heaters.

The low draw is important, because I expect to eventually get my power from a battery bank powered by solar. People generally do their wash once the day starts warming up. It's an activity that women often do in the shade, when it's hot outside. The most comfortable part of the house I was living in, was a rear lean-to with plenty of ventilation and lines for hanging clothes. There was a bare metal roof with no insulation. It was hot to the touch, yet the building was so well ventilated that it remains comfortable. Clothing is placed near the ceiling. If I were doing my own drying room for a laundromat, I would use racks that can be hoisted close to the ceiling once they are loaded. Every commercial laundry that I saw, had very limited space and they used gas or electric powered dryers. But every Home Laundry system I witnessed, whether using a washing machine or the much more common wash tub, used only line drying.  

Presuming the machine has more or less nothing then one motor, which is powering the washing "part" as well as the spinner part, you can't use both at the same time, it should be the max. power drained, despite perhaps a fraction of a second when the motor starts turning. There are small "power meter plug" (search ebay or alike) around 10 US$, where you can easily measure devices short and long term. I found one of those very helpful to see what eats all those kWh. E.g. see what the refrigator really uses in 24h or in a week.

A dryer can be very helpful depending on your climate. Tough only very few of those with heat pump tend to be economical with electricity

It definitely does both operations at once and using the spinner does not slow down the washing apparatus.

Because I'm in the demolition and house moving business I've had plenty of opportunities to live in unheated homes during the Canadian winter. And whenever I have electricity, I wash the clothing. And if there's no dryer, I hang these clothes about the unheated house and in a few days they are dry or pretty dry. Unheated sunrooms usually get the job done much quicker. I don't know of a climate where you need to have a dryer. People lived all over the world before electric dryers.

But to me washers are very important just because they save so much time. I sometimes do laundry in a big tub when there is no washing machine, but I don't do this in the winter, in unheated homes and no hot water. Even cavemen have their limits.

My absolute simplest method of washing clothing is to Hang Dirty Work Clothes in a small tree which I cut all of the branches off at about a foot long. I come back a few days or a month later and find that they are nice and clean. Always shake for spiders.

Greenhouse/sunroom drying works awesome in the PNW, I have a hard time imagining it not working elsewhere. Even outside under a roof my rain gear will gradually dry.

I love the tree idea, but if I tried it here I suspect I would come back to bear-chewed clothes! I left a note on a tree, and they chewed it by the next morning..


This thread has made me reconsider this style of washer.. I'm on solar only, so most normal washers will not suit well. On the other hand at first glance the units of this style available online in Canada look like Chinese junk, and/or cost several times as much as the one you bought, both somewhat offputting.

I wonder if this is that rare item where the value is better on the ones purchased in the Phillipines, where they sound very common?

I think the same brands are available on Amazon. But they may have different lines for the North American Market since the one I bought is 220 volts. That's the standard power there. But it's the exact type of plug that we have in North America, so easy to make a mistake if you bring something over. I brought a Makita charger and someone in the house has assured me that the power in the Philippines is the same as in North America. Turns out he was guessing and he was wrong.

I bought one of these machines last summer-- I'm off the grid, and don't want to burden the battery bank so I wash on sunny days, rarely use soap, socks mostly turn grey, but they are clean, what do I care, I'm an old bachelor and it's easier to water plants if I'm not using soap.

I rarely set the wash cycle more than 5 minutes, tend to do smaller loads (I figure it will last longer)

I'm pleased with what I get for my compromises with soap and wash cycle times, but it's nice to know that should someone a bit fussier with those details want to join me, that this style washer will work.

I did have an odd experience in the very beginning, spinner almost always went out of balance and took a lot of finegeling to get it right.

Then one day I thought it had broken completely, spin basket seemed to be totally wobbly, but I turned it on anyway, and to my surprise it started working near perfect every time.

My spinner has a thin plastic insert that holds the clothes down in the basket, and if I use that to press out much of the water first, it seems to work better

Yes, they all seem to have this plastic tool for pressing down. I seldom use it. The out of balance thing is the reason that I like to spin half a load at a time.

Some people aren't comfortable with the manual operation of these things. There are several steps that must be taken. But in the household where I was living, during the hot part of the day, the women sit under that roof and yak for hours on end. Now they get a lot more wash done. When line drying is being used, they can put something on to wash and spin, then head out to hang something. Some of them like to do things with the collars of shirts and they sometimes want to hand wash expensive evening wear, so there's always plenty for them to do while waiting for a cycle to continue. This rear lean-to is also the main cooking area, so they can go from turning on the washer, to preparing meals. It makes just enough noise to let you know it's working. When the noise of one operation stops, it's pretty simple to walk over and flip the drain switch or whatever is required.

Many times I put my clothes in just for a couple of minutes and then spun them out. It was pointed out that that wasn't enough time to get them really clean. So then I would point out that without the washer, I would definitely wear them for another two days without any cleaning at all. After that revelation, my 2 minute wash cycles were welcomed. It's like swimming in your clothes, they don't get super clean, but you don't smell like sweat after. No soap was used on these quick rinses. And the only soap I used was our own homemade stuff.

Some people in the house are still reluctant to use it, because they think it would mean that they owe me something. I told them it's a minor expense and something for the whole household. And the landlady is still counting pennies, convinced that the washer uses a hundred times more power than it does. The power bill has increased since we moved there. My fiance still lives there and I will join her in June hopefully. We bought an electric kettle and an electric hot plate. And I've been paying all of the electricity above what was used before. So there's really no reason why the landlady should care how much power the washer uses. No amount of explaining will cure her befuddlement concerning mathematical problems. Her brother who understood the math right away, looked at me and smiled and then he shook his head a little, as I tried to explain one more time. There's lots of math in his job, and he's learned to pick his battles, in dealing with rampant ignorance.

I'm back in the philippines and we are at a new house. The situation at the old one became ridiculous with the landlords family constantly at war with one another. They mostly fight about pennies. I was a fairly large source of income for them but they made it impossible for Nova to be there when I wasn't around . Constantly asking for things and telling any lie necessary to help squeeze out a few more pesos. We paid 1,000 pesos per month for electricity. During most of that time it was just Nova on her own. The new place has its own electric meter. It cost 300 pesos per month with four people living there.

Back to the washing machine. The new place has a washing room that is set up really well. There is good pressure most of the time since the development has its own water tower. We don't use a hose. Water is run into the big plastic wash tub with a bucket in it. It takes two buckets on average, for the medium sized loads that are most common. Clothing is washed with soap that we make and that water is drained. The excess is spun out in about 30 seconds. Then the clothing is rinsed. It is lifted up and allowed to drip momentarily then deposited in the spinner. The rinse water is kept in the washer and used for the next wash cycle. The final spin is usually done for one minute or less . This get it really dry.

When it's too hot I rinse my clothing several times a day. It goes into pure water with no soap for about one minute . Then it is set to spin for three to five seconds. That gets rid of 80% of the water . I want some left since I'm wearing a swamp cooler.

Everyone has taken to doing their wash this way.

The rinse and spin is so convenient that we do all of the dish rags daily. Bath towels are also done daily. It costs almost nothing to do and the evaporative cooling really helps.

Here's how it looks in action. 1 minute is more than enough for mildly soiled items.

The system doesn't like my video

Yeah, you have to upload videos to vimeo or youtube first, and then embed it here. We have no way to attach videos.

Do you think this style of machine is up to washing a thick judo-type dogi? Think thick bath-robe for heft...

Dillon Nichols wrote:Do you think this style of machine is up to washing a thick judo-type dogi? Think thick bath-robe for heft...

Yes it will wash anything that fits in properly . It will hold about eight bath towels so i'm sure that would wash the judo outfit . The main thing i like is not being nailed down to cycles. If something needs a one minute rinse and spin, that's what it gets . If it needs five minutes of washing, that's what it gets. We wash most things for less than 5 minutes. They are seldom heavily soiled but they are sweaty, so we wash often . With virtually no cost, it makes sense for me to do this . I find it funny how many people will build up vast amounts of the laundry that doesn't seem to be dirty from much more than being piled on the floor. It's really weird if the clothing belongs to kids who play outside . My mom just let it get dirty. Really dirty. When she did the wash, the water turned black.

Advertising here in the Philippines seems like a trip back to the 70s . The majority of commercials sell unhealthy food or unneeded cleaning products. They sell a combination of keeping up with the Joneses and avoiding embarrassment. Lots of health scare stuff as well. Constant talk about germs, as though changing clothing four times a day will keep a kid from encountering germs. The ads also tell everyone that they stink and that every minor stain must be dealt with in some way.

The most ridiculous ads are the ones trying to get babies off of mother's milk and onto formula , and the ones for whitening soap . One companys slogan it is ...stay young , stay white. A skin lightening product sold to brown people.

We have had a Panda XPB36 portable washer with spinner for four years and I love it.  I wash jeans, sheets, towels and basically all our clothes it. It probably wouldn't work for large overalls or heavy coats.  I fill it from buckets of water (I really need to get a hose hookup to our bathtub faucet :^) ) and it drains into our septic tank.  We are working to get it to drain into a greywater catch.  I don't use soap, just baking soda and essential oils.  I can also use some thyme and oregano tincture I make if something is particularly stinky dirty.
I did a quick search, but ebay seemed the only place to buy one.

Review:

https://washingsolution.com/small-compact-panda-portable-washing-machine-7-9lbs-capacity-spin-dryer/  

I have a mini washer I got on Amazon many years ago, under "Laundry Alternative" brand.  I don't think the brand exists anymore.  But it's an awesome washer.  It's a single large drum and I can fit a light/thin king-sized blanket in there- I have other hug blankets that won't fit, but the thinnest of them do, as do all manner of sheets.  I can fit 2 large bath towels in one load, as another example.  It has multiple cycle settings and the fastest uses 15 gallons of water on 3 fills (so it's basically a 5 gallon drum).  I haven't measured power usage but our solar system can take it just fine doing loads all day long when the sun's out.  Clothing comes out nice and well-spun and ready for the line.  The washer has very good smart sensing for unbalanced loads and I can count on one hand how many times I've had to correct a load myself, out of thousands of loads.  It's still goin' strong!  We use the drained water in the greenhouse and in the compost heap.  I think it cost me around $120 and I had to buy a few simple hose adapter attachments for it for < $15.  It's been 4 years I think.  If/when it dies I will be sad that I can't buy a second

I don't miss full-size washing machines one bit.  If giant blankets need washing, leaving them on a line through a few rain storms usually does the trick

I used a portable Haier washing machine for 3 years in a 400 sq ft studio apartment. It was one of the best investments I ever bought. $50, delivered off kijiji, when I was paying $40 in taxi fare and $25 for the laundromat every 3 weeks, and handwashing with a plunger in the bathtub in between.

Its small, and hanging space was limites, so ocasionally I would get overrun with towels and bedding if I didn't keep up with it, but I dropped down to a laundromata trip every 3-6 months. My little washer could handle all my sheets plus pyjamas, or 2-3 towels plus small whites, etc, and did an awesome job. I found I needed to use way less soap than even half a 'small load', so my detergent literally lasted years. I have a built in washer and dryer in my current apartment, but honestly thinK the Haier is better. Only drawback is noise, I put a piece of foam under it as it vibrated, but then my current washer shakes the whole apartment so.... whatever.

Limiting factor was hanging space.... best system I found was hanging things from hangers on the curtain rods in the window, it meant I didn't trip on them, and saved me the step of hanging them later, :) Clothes last so much longer hang dried too!  

So seriously.... if you are homesteading, or living in apartment- try one!

We have wires strung directly above the machines in the laundry room. Clothing can be placed in a basket or grabbed right from the spinner and put on hangers that go over head.

After doing the wash for four people for two months, I am quite confident that it takes 8 minutes a day to handle the laundry for people who change their clothes really often. That's 2 minutes per person per day. I've heard a lot of people yip yap about how they can't get anything done because they are swamped with laundry. I do all of our laundry and that's how long it takes. This includes loading machine , spinning , hanging and finally depositing all of the dry clothes on a kitchen chair where they are claimed by the owner.

Does not include machine runtime, but only the time when I'm actually doing something.

The washer developed an odd smell. It also developed a bit of lime scale. This scale became home to a slippery biofilm.

I gave it a good cleaning with a brush , rinsed it out and then filled it with clean water. Then I put in about 1 cup of vinegar and let it sit for 24 hours. Did a load of wash , because I wasn't about to waste a cup of vinegar.

Good as new. I discovered that there is a lint trap that needs cleaning occasionally. It also had a lot of limescale that required some scrubbing. I didn't know they put lint traps in washing machines. Perhaps that's a feature of these machines because nobody has a dryer.

Since cleaning out the lint trap, the clothing comes out with less little flecks and pieces of thread stuck to it.

IT CLEANS VEGETABLES  !!!
This machine is perfect for cleaning sweet potatoes and other root crops. There are no pumps to break down. There's just the agitator. They bump against one another and the sides of the machine, and don't really make contact with the agitator very often.

After five minutes on the low setting , they are pretty clean.

I haven't tried peanuts. We buy them clean , but if we grow our own , this could save a lot of tedious fiddling.

This interests me mostly as a farm tool , to clean up items for sale and to expedite things in a commercial kitchen.
.........
My in-laws are averse to anything efficient. They will kneel next to a washing machine machine to clean clothing in a pail, and spend many happy hours fiddling with a paring knife while a food processor sits idle. They haven't seen this trick yet.

This is the same type machine that my grandmother used in her fourth story walk up apartment in Brooklyn for decades. It was totally against the rules but she didn't want to lug laundry to the laundromat and it was just her.

As much as things change, they also stay the same.

Dale Hodgins wrote:IT CLEANS VEGETABLES  !!!
This machine is perfect for cleaning sweet potatoes and other root crops. There are no pumps to break down. There's just the agitator. They bump against one another and the sides of the machine, and don't really make contact with the agitator very often.

After five minutes on the low setting , they are pretty clean.

Awesome! I was looking for a better way to clean medicinal taproots in bulk. You just sold me on it!

Go with the gentle setting. If that's still too harsh , the agitator can have a piece of towel attached.

I've thought of a good use for a scrap machine, if it still agitates or spins in only one direction. Biogas generators work best when they are stirred. Seems like it would work.

I had an interesting experience(s) with my spinner and for a period of time the spin cycle would not start right away, I would have to open and close the two separate lids several times and hit the side of the machine (often more than once and from multiple directions)and then whimsically it would start to spin, worked fine once it started.

But the whole procedure had me worried and thinking I might have to take it apart, disable safety switches...

Finally one day it was so uncooperative that I pulled it out away from the wall, getting ready to turn it upside down and work my mayhem with it and suddenly it started working fine, switch it on and it goes on, no hitting or multiple attempts, like new.

Only thing I can figure is it may have some kind of leveling safety switch I was unaware of, and it must have been sitting unevenly

or it's evil and sent by the devil to aggravate me

Bob, I have the same problem and I solved it by lowering the evacuation tube and letting the excess water flow out, then quickly putting the tube back into the tub I use to capture the water. I hope that helps.

that also makes sense in my case since the drainage for my system is marginal at best and a slight tilt could cause it to back up, whatever it is, as simple as these machines appear to be they are more complex than they seem, with more safeguards than I might have expected.

Would you consider sharing you recipe for the salty laundry soap?