What is suds saver?

[Designgeek]

Bpetersxx, you're going to get me to install WMP on my Mac one of these days soon...!

If you're in an area that has a serious water shortage, you can almost-kinda-sorta get a similar result as follows:

Wash a few loads in the same wash water, stopping the machine after it pauses between wash & extract/spin, and removing one load manually and putting in the next. Then the last load of the day goes through the complete cycle uninterrupted, and then you go back to the rest of the loads and put them through the rest of the cycle.

Or you can re-use the final rinse water from one load as wash water for the next. This also calls for watching the washer and manually intervening before final spin.

So here's a question. What about hacking the suds-saver controls to recycle the final rinse water for the next load's wash water?

Then, use a warm or hot rinse for final rinse, and it'll be recycled for a warm or hot wash in the next wash cycle (assuming you do multiple loads on the same day).

Anyone have a suds-saver machine and want to try hacking the controls like that?

 

[mixfinder]

suds saver

The factory issue models drained the wash water into a reservoir, of the owners making. The water sat, while the cycle completed. During that time, sediment (dirt) settled to the bottom of the holding vat. When the water was called back to the machine, it was vacummed up by the pump and redeposited in the wash basket, leaving 2 inches of water behind, which needed to rinsed out before the next load. At the beginning of the wash cycle, the washer would add enough fresh water to replace the water left in the finished laundry and the 2 inches left behind in the holding tank. You could augment the soap at that time in the cycle. Detergents, in the old days, used phosphates to clean. Newer detergents use surfactants which hold soil in suspension unitl the water is removed. Newer detergents lose the ability to hold soil in suspension, with time and agitation, causing redisposition of the soil. The choice of detergents, using a sudsaver, in today's eco freaked out world is important to the finished success of the laundry. Frigidaire and other models that did the overflow at the end of the wash, significantly cooled the water for the next wash. We did the three load rule. Ist load hot and white, second load warm and colored and third load cool and Wranglers, so they wouldn't fade. If you bleached, which messed up the bacteria in the septic tank, you had to be careful in choosing what was washed after the first load so it didn't get bleached out. We did bleach, in cold water in the rinse cycle and then followed with hot wash. Cold water removes many stains which hot water would set (protiens and vegetable) and hot water removes stains left behind by cold (grease), so the combo gives stunning outcomes. Maytags, Whirlpools and Kenmores all agitated as they reintroduced the water from the holding tank. Frigidaires sat quietly and pumped the water into a still wash basket.
Kelly

 

[mixfinder]

Rinse into Wash Water

If the rinse water has liquid fabric softener, called soft/sour in the laundry industry, it can cause streaking in the wash.
Kelly

When reusing water to wash in you can use an immersion heater to boost the water temp. I have done unsafe things like use the electric charcoal lighter or refrigerator defroster, but you NEVER read it here and they actually make devices specifically and SAFELY designed for that purpose.

 

[sudsmaster]

Vintage detergents contained both surfactanta and phosphates. Modern phosphate-free detergents subsitute more washing soda (sodium carbonate), and carboxymethylcellulose, and sometimes enzymes, to try to replace the superior cleaning action of a phosphated detergent. A detergent without surfactants would be little more than washing soda and/or phosphates. Not really a detergent. Some surfactant is needed to break water tension, improve wetting, and solubilize water-insoluble or lipid-rich soils.

 

[mixfinder]

Vintage Detergent

You are absolutely, correct. I look like a fool. Thanks for edifying me.
Kelly

 

[sudsmaster]

Sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass anyone. And you may be partially right. Before detergents, and before phosphates, I understand it was a common practice (in the 30's or earlier) to add some washing soda to the wash water to help soften it, and then add soap. Of course, complex phosphates would be even better, as they don't form a precipitate like washing soda does. Soap combines the surfactant qualities of a detergent with some of the "break" functions of a detergent. Its biggest drawback is that it can form an insoluble scum with hard water and heavy soiling. And of course solid soaps don't dissolve readily in cold water. Laundry may be somewhat alkaline (as this helps to turn oily soils into semi-soaps) with the addition of lye, or residual lye from the soap manufacturing process.

 

[bajaespuma]

Ancient Chinese Secret, Huh?

Calgon used to made with complex Polyphosphates to soften the rinse water as much as possible and get red of suds. What's it made of now?

 

[launderess]

Calgon liquid is mainly sodium citrate, and Calgon powder sodium carbonate and other water softeners, but no phosphates.

Laundry at least that worn close to the body and or soiled with bodily fluids like sweat is acidic, not alkaline. Most if not all body fluids; sweat, tears, urine, even blood are slighly acidic. For one thing it helps provide a hostile environment for germs. However if left sitting for along time on laundry, sweat will turn alkaline. This why one is advised to use ammonina or alkaline substance on fresh sweat stains, and vinegar on old ones.

Soap is deactivated in the presence of acids, this includes the acids coming from soiled laundry. Housewives would combat this by simply adding enough soap until they had suds that would "stand up".

Have many vintage laundry books from the 1930's and 1940's, where both STPP, TSP, washing soda, and borax are discussed for softening water. So phosphates must have been around back then, probably easy to find at local chemists or general store.

Yes, pure soap is not great for laundering in cold water, but Fels and the any other "naphtha" containing soaps were excellent for laundering in all water temps. It was the petrol that did most of the cleaning, rather than relying simply upon pure soap. Even as late as the 1940's or 1950's hot water on demand from a heater was not something every housewife had; these ladies had to resort on wash days to the same methods as their mothers and grandmothers, boiling kegs of hot water.

Fels soap by the 1940's was more a "detergent" than soap. It contained fabric whiteners, water softening agents, naptha, and other chemicals that made it a great "heavy duty" wash product. However like all soaps, Fels suffers from one major drawback, soaps do not totally rinse out of laundry. Even with several warm rinses, a tiny bit of the oils/fats to make any soap remain. Eventually this soap residue will cause fabrics to grey, and even smell. Instant Fels, was advertised as having "built in fabric softeners" which really was nothing more than the left over fats/oils from the soap.

L.

 

[jamiel]

Laundress, Calgon powder purchased in Canada is phosphated. I'm coveting a box I bought a year ago...a couple tablespoons make all the difference.

 

[mixfinder]

Launderess

I sit, enthralled, at the feet of a Teacher, to learn more about laundry agents. My grandma, made lye soap with old cooking grease, lye and who knows what else. She boiled it a pot, outside and it gave off smoke, steam and the smell of dead flesh. Not unlike driving through the Northeast countryside and smelling scrapple cooking after butchering. She let the soap harden, cut it into bricks and then dropped a hunk in the grey aluminum square tub Maytag that once had a gas motor and left it there all day, while she washed. At the end of the wash she fished out any remnents and saved them for the next wash day. In the 60's, when she got a Kenmore 70's series washer, she used to use a product called Fels Naptha and also, White King D soap. She made a real production out of it, yet she always overloaded the washer and had gey laundry. From that era, I remember Salvo and Vim, the tablet detergents and also the great Smell of Amway SA-8 that had such a terrific smell and made NO suds. I have read enough about testing soap to recognize words like enzymes, surfactants and the fact of soil redisposition that has caused me to use shorter wash times than before. I used to hear women complain that the Maytag only washed for 12 minutes and that wasn't long enough. I became a laundry legend, with my 806 Maytag in the 80's and it was from listening to an old,old man, who was a door to door Maytag salesman in the 30's, tell me, never to combine bleach and soap and to use the cold then hot formulary. Many years later I learned about brightening agents in detergent and how bleach prevented them from
working. I also discovered the wonders of overnight soaking in detergent, allowing the enzmes to dine on the soil. The area where I grew up had very hard water water. The people with money bought softeners and the rest bought Calgon. I remember that laundry detergent wouldn't even dissolve with out it, but floated around in clumps on top of the water. I am excited to hear all I can about the function of cleaning agents and how to make them work for me.
Thank you Launddress

 

[toggleswitch]

I used to hear complaints that the Maytag only washed for 12

One minute per pound is the rule-of-thumb!

Thought for the day:
If the clothes were being washed by hand would EVERY piece get 12 minutes of attention/mechanical action?
Some may FEEL it needs more time; (notice I did not say *think*). Based on WHAT rational provable fact?

 

[mixfinder]

12 minutes

After many years of doing "laundry" by hand I really enjoy the performance of a "machine"
Kelly

 

[sudsmaster]

My understanding is that it is the insoluble scum that soap forms with hard water minerals - and not with oils or fats - that causes the greying that can occur with long-time washing with soap.

In the absence of hard water minerals, soap does a pretty good job at removing oily stains from fabrics. Unfortunately many greases and oils used on cars and machninery are mineral fats, and soap has a harder time dealing with these.