Monday, March 26, 2012

My New Washing Machine

We finally have our washing machine. I can’t believe it, after two years of talking about it and researching what is the best one for us , plus getting the best price, we actually have it. I know it seems like such a boring thing but it is something we have desperately needed seeing we are on tank water.

The front loader uses only 56 litres per wash, and the top loader used at least 120 litres per wash and I am pretty sure it was closer to 150 litres per wash. Big difference huh? I honestly don’t know why they still sell top loaders, they use way too much water.

We live in a big dry country, of course sometimes you wouldn’t know it but we do. Don’t forget the recent droughts and they were severe, towns running out of water, cities on high water restrictions and don’t forget the plight of the farmers, who are in my opinion, up there in the top five most important people in the country (probably at number one on the list).

We don’t think about water enough, especially if we live in towns and cities, as long as the water comes out of the tap that is all that matters. We don’t have to watch the dams and tanks getting lower and lower and wishing those rain clouds to form, just turn on a tap.

I know I sound like a broken record but it is really important, can you imagine turning on the tap and no water coming out. That happens to us when the power goes out as we have a water pump to pump water into the pipes and keep the pressure up. Not being about to even wash your hands or get a glass of water is a bit of a “oh my” moment.

Luckily we have a generator for these times to get the water pump going, though of course if it was a long term black out we would have to rethink our position. The other thing is our new tank out the front which has 2,500 litres of water in it and a tap on the bottom, only a small tank but it would keep us in drinking and washing water for a little while.

Anyway, back to our new machine, it is amazing how something like that can be a great source of entertainment, just watching the clothes go round through the window, seeing how little water it uses and the little amount of washing powder. We very quickly learnt our lesson with the washing powder, ours is kept in a tin box and not the original packaging so we couldn’t check (we did also look online but couldn’t find it there) so we just put in what we thought and it was too much. We actually joked about suds coming out the machine and when we checked to make sure all was good there were suds all over the floor coming out the machine. Won’t make that mistake again.

I have realised that it is going to take me a little while to cross “washing machine” of my list, it is just that it has been on there for so long it is a bit hard to stop thinking about it. It is a relief to have finally bought it, we got the one I wanted and at a good price to and now at least this year if we have a very dry winter I know that we will be doing our utmost to save water and make it last as long as possible.

1 comment:

  1. Oh how marvelous - We are keeping ours limping along until it dies and then we will replace it with a front loader. In the meantime we make sure every load is full to the brim... It is amazing the difference in water usage I thought they were more efficient, but thanks for posting the actual facts.

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