Portable Compact Mini Twin Tub Washing Machine and Spin Cycle w/ Hose, 13lbs. Capacit

[Heidi Mull]

IT CAME.

Worth. Every. Penny.

I first tested it out on a clean pair of jeans. Got them soaking wet...not just run them under some water for a bit wet, but ACTUALLY SOAK THEM IN A BASIN wet.

Then I loaded them into the Panda spin dryer and turned it on.

I expected the initial gush of water. After all, they were dripping wet. What I didn't expect was that it just kept coming, and coming and coming, and even increased as the dryer picked up speed. I sat there and watched for about a minute or so until no more water was coming out.

The jeans were damp. Just damp. Like perhaps more dry than if I had just pulled them from a full sized washing machine after its cycle was completed. I'd confidently hang them anywhere knowing there's no chance at all of dripping.

Of course the spin dryer can hold a lot more than that, but I wanted to test it out ASAP and didn't have it in me to do laundry this evening.

I'm excited.

[TrainChaser]

That really sounds great! I had heard of using the salad spinners several years ago, but most people seemed to just be using them for underwear.

Thanks for the review, Heidi!

[Snikwahjm]

Now I’m confused. I thought it was a panda spin dryer.

[Heidi Mull]

That really sounds great!  I had heard of using the salad spinners several years ago, but most people seemed to just be using them for underwear.

Thanks for the review, Heidi!

My salad spinner didn't work for jeans at all! I posted previously in this thread about how only one pair of tiny jeans barely fit, and they were still wet enough to easily squeeze water out after a lot of exhausting work on the salad spinner.

The Panda spin dryer spins far, FAR faster than any salad spinner. It has a much larger capacity, and spins things nearly dry with no effort on your part.

Of course the downside is it's HUGE (by vandwelling standards) and it uses electricity. But I think this will be the thing that finally makes it possible for us to stay on top of our laundry.

[TrainChaser]

Are you using solar power or shore power for it?

[frater secessus]

OK, picked up a salad spinner at a thrift store for 25 cents.  

Washed 4 days of socks (3pr shorties, 1pr crew)  and underwear (boxer briefs) in a bucket with a Breathing Mobile Washer plunger-style thingy.  The washer works great, by the way.  After washing I hand-squeezed the items tightly, and wrung them gently.  

The socks balanced and spun easily.  Underwear required 2-3 attempts to get them balanced enough to spin decently.

Wrung weight --> spun weight:

• socks batch - 18.4oz --> 15.7oz = 2.7oz additional water spun out
  
• underwear batch - 28.1oz --> 25.8oz = 2.3oz of additional water spun out
  

I suspect in the desert stuff dries so fast the water reduction would be unimportant.  In areas of higher humidity it might make some difference.

[Heidi Mull]

Are you using solar power or shore power for it?

Currently we're on shore power. We have a solar setup, but the batteries don't hold much of a charge so we need to replace those before we go off grid. Our inverter is capable of running the microwave off the batteries, and the spin dryer is 300W, so it should run it fine. Like the microwave, it's only run for short periods so hopefully the power drain wouldn't be too much. I'm hopeful it will work out for off-grid when we get there eventually.

[Heidi Mull]

OK, picked up a salad spinner at a thrift store for 25 cents. 

Show off. But seriously though, I do see how when washing only small items the salad spinner could be helpful.

As an update to my Panda spin dryer....today I had my first actual "laundry day" with it. Doing about 3 loads.

Examples of loads I've done include...

Load 1:

• 1 t-shirt
  
• 3 of my jeans (size 00)
  
• a full size thick terry cloth adult onesie (with hood!)
  
• several pairs of underwear
  
• could have fit more small items, but I tried to fit a full size bath towel in there. While it technically fit, the load did not spin correctly and I took it out.
  

Load 2:

• Bath towel
  
• Kitchen towel
  
• 2 heavy duty aprons (part of work uniform)
  
• t-shirt
  
• cardigan
  
• several pairs underwear
  

After the first load I was in heaven. I washed our full bath towels--which, honestly, bath towels are a luxury item, we could get by just fine drying ourselves off with hand towels--and they came out of the spinner almost completely dry. In fact, everything was. I kept squeeing over each item because I was so surprised anew. No need to hang them terribly carefully to dry - they were barely damp. Not only can I hang them anywhere in the trailer without dripping, I don't have to worry about them touching wood or upholstery or anything else because it's simply not transferring moisture. The clean laundry simply isn't wet enough.

It also comes out of the spin dryer slightly warm, I think from the motor heating up. We can smell a bit of burning smell from the motor. Hopefully that's just offgassing? It's designed to automatically shut off after 5 minutes, but I don't always run it that long, 3.5 minutes is often plenty. It does get a bit drier if run the full 5 minutes, but often only drips are coming out the drain at that point.

Loading it carefully so that a load is balanced takes a bit of time. I had the idea to spin dry a detergent-laden load, remove, rinse, and then spin dry again, but it just feels like too much work. Rinsing it traditionally still makes the most sense.

I fully expect all laundry to dry overnight. In the past, it took 2-3 days to dry out jeans. The test pair of jeans I tried out in the spin dryer? Those were dry by morning.

This is also about 3X the amount of laundry I've ever been able to do by hand in one day before. Soooo happy.

[frater secessus]

Thank you for the excellent write-up.  The Panda sounds like a winner.

I took my laundry bucket setup to the RTR but did not bring the salad spinner.  I judged it did not remove enough water to justify its volume in a van context.  Line-drying worked well in the desert:

[Cammalu]

What kind of van is that frater?


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