Salt water laundry

[tarik]

Evening all,

Some advice please - how do you do your laundry at sea? Obviously don't rinse with fresh water ( unless raining) what effect - if any does salt water rinsing have? What washing powder works with salt water?

Many thanks for all replies,


David

 

[Baddox]

Soap powders don’t like salt water. Modern ones are far more tolerant of water hardness but would be overwhelmed by sea water. Rinsing with sea water is less effective at remove the soap and would leave the fabrics salty taking longer to dry and leaving the fabrics feeling stiff.
Launderers in many developing countries just use one or sometimes two rinses where water is precious. You could then keep the rinse water for the next wash.

 

[DaveS]

You can buy soap designed for use in salt water. I got some years ago but so far have never used it so can't comment.

Regardless of how the clothes are washed I think the final rinse should be in fresh water if at all possible. If salt is used they will be difficult to dry and will attract moisture thereafter.

 

[nigelmercier]

I'm starting to itch just reading this, ugh!

 

[CelebrityScandel]

Hi David, before we were blessed as we are now with washing machine and plentiful fresh water on board we did all our laundry in salt water for many years.

Every cold water wash liquid laundry detergent as meant for washing machines we ever used worked as well in salt water as it did in fresh. You do not need to buy any special product for salt water and doing so would be a waste of money. As an aside the same applies for washing oneself, every liquid body wash and hand wash we ever tried also worked just as well in salt water as in fresh.

From boat to next boat we took a rectangular fish bin for laundry (and other uses). Let the clothes soak in the sea water and soap mix and hand stirred/squeezed or tampled on it all from time to time to wash. Some friends have used and liked the rotary hand operated pressure washers one sees mentioned from time to time but even for just the two of us they are too small unless one did the laundry very frequently. But we also tend to like to keep clothes, etc well washed rather than going around looking and smelling like the sweaty tramps one often comes across so we tended to have big washes.

As has been mentioned unless rinsed in fresh water the clothes retain salt so take longer to dry and may feel damp if any humidity. Drying flapping in the wind does mean they are not as salty as one might expect and was never a problem for outerwear such as shirts, but we tried to always rinse at least underwear, pyjamas and sheets in fresh water. Even a sparing rinse makes quite a difference.

You mention rain. We have been fortunate in that we had rain water collection off the deck to the tanks installed when the boats were built which meant that in areas where rain was frequent doing laundry after rain was not so demanding on our water supply and were sometimes able to use fresh.

There are plenty of ideas on the internet for temporary methods of collecting rainwater, but I cannot vouch for any of those, and as is common on forums many of the methods seem those of dreamers and amateur Heath Robinsons rather than being of much use . However, it is surprising how much water can be collected, even in light rain, if one has a reasonable sized collection area and a good method; in heavy rain on 40 to 45 foot boats we could collect 500 litres in half an hour or so.

 

[tarik]

Celebrity,

Thank you very much indeed for the very informative reply - no problem with fresh water at the moment - pouring with rain !!

Happy sailing

David

 

[leta]

Hi David, before we were blessed as we are now with washing machine and plentiful fresh water on board we did all our laundry in salt water for many years.

Every cold water wash liquid laundry detergent as meant for washing machines we ever used worked as well in salt water as it did in fresh. You do not need to buy any special product for salt water and doing so would be a waste of money. As an aside the same applies for washing oneself, every liquid body wash and hand wash we ever tried also worked just as well in salt water as in fresh.

From boat to next boat we took a rectangular fish bin for laundry (and other uses). Let the clothes soak in the sea water and soap mix and hand stirred/squeezed or tampled on it all from time to time to wash. Some friends have used and liked the rotary hand operated pressure washers one sees mentioned from time to time but even for just the two of us they are too small unless one did the laundry very frequently. But we also tend to like to keep clothes, etc well washed rather than going around looking and smelling like the sweaty tramps one often comes across so we tended to have big washes.

As has been mentioned unless rinsed in fresh water the clothes retain salt so take longer to dry and may feel damp if any humidity. Drying flapping in the wind does mean they are not as salty as one might expect and was never a problem for outerwear such as shirts, but we tried to always rinse at least underwear, pyjamas and sheets in fresh water. Even a sparing rinse makes quite a difference.

You mention rain. We have been fortunate in that we had rain water collection off the deck to the tanks installed when the boats were built which meant that in areas where rain was frequent doing laundry after rain was not so demanding on our water supply and were sometimes able to use fresh.

There are plenty of ideas on the internet for temporary methods of collecting rainwater, but I cannot vouch for any of those, and as is common on forums many of the methods seem those of dreamers and amateur Heath Robinsons rather than being of much use . However, it is surprising how much water can be collected, even in light rain, if one has a reasonable sized collection area and a good method; in heavy rain on 40 to 45 foot boats we could collect 500 litres in half an hour or so.

that's great advice, thanks CelebrityScandel

 

[geem]

We live aboard for at least 8 months a year. We have a watermaker. We dont have a washing machine but we do have a spinner. We use two builders buckets to wash our clothes. One used for washing in and one used for rinsing. We dont wash in salt water as it takes lots of fresh water to remove the salt. We use less fresh water because of the spinner. The spinner removes the soap quite effectively as it spins at twice the speed of a domestic washing machine. We generally use the generator to make water and the immersion heater at the same tome to make hot water. Works very well

 

[NormanS]

We have a good old fashioned "Acme" wringer. It squeezes out the water between two rubber rollers.