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Chinese designers come up with exercise bike that washes your clothes as you pedal

Get all your daily chores done at once with the Bike Washing Machine

Household chores is one reason give by would-be exercisers to skip off the sweating, but what if you could manage both at once?

The Bike Washing Machine, invented by engineers in China, replaces the front wheel  of a stationary exercise bike with a washing drum

The designers, based at Dalian Nationalities University, China, say cyclists would be able to save electricity by washing clothes as they exercise.

The pedalling motion spins the drum, churning the clothes and making sure the soap penetrates the fibres.

Any extra eenergy generated by the cycling is stored for another wash later, in case you’re too tired.

Once the soaping phase is done, the water is replaced and a rinse and spin cycle can be carried out.

In densely populated China, the designers say the Bike Washing Machine could be ideal for those living in small spaces who might otherwise have to choose between a washing machine or exercise equipment.

What’s more it could be cheaper than paying for electricity, or come in useful in countries without reliable power supplies.

On Tuvie, a design sharing site, the designers said: 'Riding a bike is a popular exercise, washing laundry is something that you might do on daily basis or at least once a week, unless you keep buying new clothes and underwear, so why not combine them into a single useful equipment/appliance?

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16 comments

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the little onion | 9 years ago
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Graham Obree made a bicycle (partly) out of a washing machine....

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ron611087 | 9 years ago
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Love it!
Although there's some irony in that we have added labour back into a something specifically invented as a labour saving device.

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antigee | 9 years ago
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fabric conditioner? and softenTFU

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rokapotamus | 9 years ago
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Brings a whole new meaning to spinning.

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horizontal dropout | 9 years ago
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" invented by engineers in China"

Bollocks, they've been around for years. Here are several versions:
http://www.bikehacks.com/bikehacks/2012/01/green-power-bike-washing-mach...

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crikey | 9 years ago
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Washing is the easy bit.
Find me a bike trainer that sorts the socks out, irons the shirts and puts it all away and I'm in.

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Bigfoz | 9 years ago
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Suspect it gets around the power usage / generation capabilities of a person by only doing small loads.

Also, how do you get the water in / out? Is it plumbed in? Details are non-existent other than "pedalling turns the drum". Not sure i can manage a 1,000rpm spin cycle like...

Vapourware

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bdsl | 9 years ago
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Although I suppose hand-washing is a thing, so in principle it should be possible to build a very low power washing machine. Still I think this is just a picture and not particularly interesting - there's no estimate of how much you can wash at once, how effective it will, how long it will take, how hard you have to pedal or how much the machine will cost. Only if all those are right is there any point.

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bdsl | 9 years ago
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There's a very good reason most of us don't already have these. Washing machines use upwards of 500w of power. Even Wiggins said he averaged 'only' 476 watts in a 10 mile TT.

I'm guessing this doesn't actually exist, and the designers just drew a picture and wrote a press release.

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bikebot replied to bdsl | 9 years ago
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bdsl wrote:

There's a very good reason most of us don't already have these. Washing machines use upwards of 500w of power. Even Wiggins said he averaged 'only' 476 watts in a 10 mile TT.

I'm guessing this doesn't actually exist, and the designers just drew a picture and wrote a press release.

Across much of Asia there's a trend towards much, much smaller washing machines, device less than third of the size of typical white goods. In Korea for example a chunk of the market is made up of young professionals who live in tiny apartments, and they prefer to do a small wash everyday.

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bikebot replied to bdsl | 9 years ago
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bdsl wrote:

There's a very good reason most of us don't already have these. Washing machines use upwards of 500w of power. Even Wiggins said he averaged 'only' 476 watts in a 10 mile TT.

I'm guessing this doesn't actually exist, and the designers just drew a picture and wrote a press release.

Across much of Asia there's a trend towards much, much smaller washing machines, device less than third of the size of typical white goods. In Korea for example a chunk of the market is made up of young professionals who live in tiny apartments, and they prefer to do a small wash everyday.

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mr-andrew replied to bdsl | 9 years ago
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bdsl wrote:

There's a very good reason most of us don't already have these. Washing machines use upwards of 500w of power. Even Wiggins said he averaged 'only' 476 watts in a 10 mile TT.

I'm guessing this doesn't actually exist, and the designers just drew a picture and wrote a press release.

When I lived in South Africa, I used one of these exclusively for years:
https://youtu.be/bvnXkT_ttWU

It's hand cranked and works well. I'm fairly certain it didn't need 500W to turn it, althou I could be stronger than I think  3 I would imagine that most of that power goes into getting the large, counterbalanced drum going and then running the spin cycle.

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Bikeylikey replied to bdsl | 9 years ago
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bdsl wrote:

There's a very good reason most of us don't already have these. Washing machines use upwards of 500w of power. Even Wiggins said he averaged 'only' 476 watts in a 10 mile TT.

I'm guessing this doesn't actually exist, and the designers just drew a picture and wrote a press release.

The clue is that the machine stores electricity, presumably in a battery, to be used when 'you're too tired'. Presumably this means that you don't have to produce the wattage required at the time it's running, so you don't have to be turning out 500w or 400w or whatever yourself, it could be stored at an inconsistent rate from 1 to whatever wattage you can produce, then released at the consistent rate required to run the machine.

Nowhere near enough information in the article. What about cost? How much plumbing? When and where available?

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tommytwoparrots | 9 years ago
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 21 Totally bonkers...i want one!

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Grizzerly | 9 years ago
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DO NOT let my wife see this!

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Grizzerly | 9 years ago
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DO NOT let my wife see this!

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