waste water usage

[cwlaundry]

Does anyone keep track of their waste water? If so, what percentage of your total water usage is it?

[Adamski]

cwlaundry,

Perhaps 25 years ago, CLA did a study that determined that 10% of water purchased for a laundromat did not go down the sewer but was evaporated in the dryers. I suspect the percentage evaporated today would be a little lower due to the higher extract g forces of many brands of washers developed in the past 7 years or so. I know of no specific recent study on this subject however.

Larry /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Howard]

I don't buy those numbers at all. Let's say an 18# washer uses 36 gallons of water (2 gallons / pound. AT the 10% figure that says 3.6 gallons don't go down the drain. At 8.34 pounds per gallon water that means that when you take the clothing out of the washer you are also taking 30.02 pounds of water out with it -- sounds quite high to me.

[Duane]

Ha! This is something... I was going through my office today and cleaning out all the paper work that had accumulated in the past 5 years and I came across a document about moisture retention. I had to dig it out of the trash!

Moisture retention in a load will vary from as low as 45% of the dry weight of synthetics up to 70% of the dry weight for cottons.

For 10 lbs of laundry you could expect .45 gallons to .8 gallons of water weight.


Based on the Maytag Neptune test results.

Duane.

[Howard]

[ QUOTE ]

Ha! This is something... I was going through my office today and cleaning out all the paper work that had accumulated in the past 5 years and I came across a document about moisture retention. I had to dig it out of the trash!

Moisture retention in a load will vary from as low as 45% of the dry weight of synthetics up to 70% of the dry weight for cottons.

For 10 lbs of laundry you could expect .45 gallons to .8 gallons of water weight.


Based on the Maytag Neptune test results.

Duane.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you are using the wrong units, shouldn't the % be weight. Which means 45% of 10 pounds is 4.5# of just over 1/2 gallon of water. In either case it is still a fairly small number.

[Duane]

10lbs of laundry would have about 45-70% of its weight of water in the load when finished.

That would be 4.5 lbs to 7 lbs of water weight.

Or .54 to .84 gallons of water. ( I think I just swapped the .54 as .45)

The publication suggested 60-65% would be a good overall average for high efficiency washers.