The Great Washing Machine Debate

The Great Washing Machine Debate

“But how are we going to wash our sheets and towels?!”  – That was Francine’s first reaction when Dave suggested a life of living in a truck.  “Oh, we’ll find somewhere.  There are always laundries around, most of the campsites have washing machines and, if they don’t, you can always find someone willing to do your washing for you for a bit of money or we can do it by hand”.  Although she has been married to him for more than 25 years, she still hadn’t appreciated the extent of his ability to bulls**t!  (To be fair, Dave is still getting used to the fact that Francine will say she absolutely knows how to get to a place, when actually she is navigating loosely by the sun and/or randomly following other people!)

Washing machines can be a divisive issue amongst Overlanders.  Along with satellite dishes, televisions, dishwashers and microwaves, some consider them to be a luxury that means you are not a “real” Overlander.  We have met people who take their laundry into the shower with them and stamp on it to get it clean and others who produce photos (don’t ask!) of their bedsheets – so dirty, that they are brown instead of white, after travelling down the dusty West African route.  To get all Zen about it – “there are many ways to complete your journey” (which is to say – do whatever you’re comfortable with and avoids you getting divorced!)

Fortunately, when she met Big Bertha’s previous owners for the first time, Francine asked if there was anything they felt would have been useful.  “It would have been handy to have a washing machine..” mused the wife.  That lent some weight to Francine’s argument and, though Dave said it was impossible to modify the truck to include a washing machine, she did manage to get a free-standing spinner, so that, at least, towels would be wrung out well.

And so the journey began and, sure enough, it was easy to find lavanderias in Spain and Portugal (though it was still a pain to navigate our way to them through tiny streets).  However, in Morocco, it became more difficult and hand washing was the norm.  Despite Dave’s cheerful approach  – Francine HATED “washing day” with a passion!  In most of Africa, as in many countries, cold water is used for washing.  That’s fine, but Francine has a thing that sheets and towels have to be hot-washed.  Call her irrational, but that’s just the way she was brought up (mother was a nurse who had worked in a TB sanatorium so boil washing everything was probably the norm).  So every washing day we would be scalding our hands, often crouched in a shower (if there was no laundry sink) or hunched uncomfortably over the sink, slopping water backwards and forwards in a vague representation of laundering.  The amount of soapy suds coming out of the spinner showed that we often did rather a poor job of rinsing!

At one point, we even acquired a “sputnik” washing thingy.  We had stopped at a bit of a run-down camp in Arusha (Tanzania) and Dave spotted the item in a hangar/workshop, which was full of scrap metal, etc.  We asked the elderly owner about it and she said that her and her husband had used it when they were overlanding through Africa in the Seventies.  It was cracked, but we were welcome to take it. 

The design of the sputnik is round, with clothes, water and detergent loaded into a hole in the top.  The hole is closed and a side handle is used to turn the globe manually, creating a vacuum as it turns.  It sounded great – no electricity required, small enough to sit on a table top and a free upper body workout!  However (and maybe this was because Dave had to glue the crack in the body, then found out we were missing bits) our tests with it resulted in failure and we had to abandon the Sputnik.

Every time we passed women (always women) doing their laundry in rivers (then drying it on the ground, on rocks or hung on bushes), we were aware that ours was a “first world” problem, but as we said – it’s what you’re comfortable with.  Francine was convinced that some of the laundries that accepted our clothes, sub-contracted the job directly to the women at the rivers anyway!

However, at some point on our trip, Dave’s opinion about the washing machine changed and he started to watch YouTube videos (always a good sign!) about people installing small machines in boats and vans. In December 2022, after four years of living in BB, we decided to buy one – but that wasn’t as easy as you might think.  The only suitable appliance was a small wall-mounted model – not available throughout most of the world (probably because everyone is buying them for their new camper builds!).  We ended up ordering from EBay UK, paying in US Dollars, getting it delivered from the manufacturer (Daewoo) in South Korea to an address in South Africa for us to collect later.  Costing more than a full-sized washer, with various additional taxes to get it into South Africa, it could have turned out to be an expensive mistake.  It arrived intact at the collection point in South Africa.  Francine hugged the box.

Dave spent a long time trying to decide where we could install the machine and a plan finally came together to put it into one of the compartments at the back.  It had to be on a wooden frame, sturdy enough to hold it for a wash programme and spin cycle, but easy enough to remove, so that Dave could still access BB’s technical bay if necessary.  After a great deal of thought, Dave came up with the perfect design – now we just needed to find a cabinet maker/carpenter to build it for us.  Perhaps it was too small a job or maybe they were just used to fitting kitchens rather than making a one of a kind frame, but we didn’t succeed in finding one.  Fortunately (as you may have noticed) Dave is a dab-hand at most things and once he had sourced the wood and found a place that would cut it to his specifications, he was able to build the frame himself.  

The first test was a partial success – everything worked, but the wash was in cold water.  With the help of Google Translate, we were able to decipher the available programmes from Korean.  Unfortunately, it seemed that although ours was the same model number as the one with the French or English display, our model was for the Korean market and only did washes in cold water – or at 90˚C!  But all was not lost – Dave had previously been considering feeding hot water in (as an alternative to the machine using power to heat cold water), so this solution has actually worked out ok in the end!

Now we can arrive at a campspot (doesn’t even need to be an actual campsite!), put on a quick wash and hang it out in the sun.  In Francine’s eyes this could be the best truck modification ever!

Technical Notes (by Dave):

• Model is DWD-35MCRCR
• 1500W element to heat water for 90c Baby Wash program.  We won’t be using this.
• Standard Wash with three spins is roughly 30 minutes and uses roughly 30 litres of water.
• Maximum load 3.5kg.
• Current draw whilst washing (cold wash) is roughly (to be advised).
• The wood frame fits tightly into truck bay so as to distribute the spinning load into the truck. 
• The truck has not been modified in any way (eg drilling, cutting etc) except the addition of an electrical supply socket ( fed from 16A breaker on the Victron Inverter output) to supply washing machine.  Just in case the next owner likes to hand wash!
• The wooden frame, with washing machine, can be easily removed for access to the technical bay behind.