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Old 6th Dec 2018, 12:39 am   #21
emeritus
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

I remember a "Which" test that purported to show that it cost twice as much to do a wash in a twin tub as compared with an automatic. This was based on doing a single wash, and ignored the fact that users of twin tubs usually did several washes with the same tub of detergent rather than having to heat up water from cold and use new detergent in an automatic.

I guess lifestyle must have been a significant factor. In the 1950's mum didn't go out to work, and Monday was washing day. By the 1980's fewer women were stay at home housewives and it was easier to bung a load of washing in the automatic every day.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 10:25 am   #22
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

I suppose either way you look at it there's a faff involved in washing. Even with an automatic it ties your time up to some extent unless you trust leaving it on while you go out.

I seem to recall my Grandma's had a flat top which she could use for rolling out pastry and things like that - very useful
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 10:48 am   #23
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

Washday was a lifestyle element which I think some found hard to give up: none more so than my mum, who openly dreaded outliving her last twintub. She didn't, it was still working at her passing in 2011, but she'd heard that automatic machines could take an hour and a half or more over a single load, and nothing could budge her from comparing that very unfavourably with the late model Hoovermatic with which she could polish off a whole week's assorted laundry in a couple of hours.

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Old 6th Dec 2018, 11:23 am   #24
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

That's my argument exactly. My front loading machine takes an average of 2 hours per wash, and if I have 6 loads to get through it takes all day, whereas if I fill up the twin tub the whole lot is done in about an hour and a half. And this is meant to be progress!
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 11:41 am   #25
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

My Hotpoint automatic (1992) took an hour. My Zanussi (2005) two. My current one, a Miele bought this year, takes three.

When my grandmother first got an automatic (late 1970s), she used to pull up a chair and sit by it while it did its stuff. The idea of leaving it to its own devices was too alien to contemplate initially.

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Old 6th Dec 2018, 12:59 pm   #26
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

My Cat was the same .... he monitored it's progress and every move - until one day it cornered and went for him [then flooded the kitchen]!
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 1:43 pm   #27
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

The only time I ever saw a twin tub in use was at my grandmother's. She had one up in Yorkshire which she used into the 1980s. But gran didn't work and still had the "Monday is wash day" mentality. She was also not at all well off and purchasing a new machine and having it plumbed in might have been against her frugal nature.

When she moved "down South" to be nearer us, selling her house and getting a council flat allowed her the money to finally buy a front loading automatic. The twin tub was already considered out of date in the 70s when I first encountered it.

From what people of my parents' generation told me, the reasons for dumping twin tubs and going with front loading automatics were thus:
1. The new machines were fully automated. Less work for mum in an era when more and more women were choosing and able to work.
2. The new machines took up less space
3. the new machines were quicker
4. The new machines were new!

Of course today the EU mandates certain energy efficiency levels which means that a regular 30C wash can take 150 minutes. Less water, less heating but more drum rotations so the machine will wear out quicker....

American top loading washing machines can do a load in 30 minutes, but I find they use more detergent and don't clean as well as the European style front loaders.

The Chinese plastic twin tub...is that the one often marketed at camping and caravanning? If so, I've used two...as a keen tent camper I have friends with those tin caravan things who have the small twin tub camping washer. The ones I used certainly did the job of getting clothes feeling and looking cleaner on a two week holiday.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 4:36 pm   #28
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

Some old ads..

I vaguely recall that the Baby Burco was quite versatile and had a lot of uses and bought for other reasons other than washing nappies.

.and the Creda dries in 4 minutes was that true?
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 5:32 pm   #29
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

Mam had a hotpoint twin tub, when in army & based in England I'd bring all my washing home when on weekend leave: I'd do my not so dirty civvy clothes first, then my barrack room/PE stuff, then the ditched field exercise stuff, reusing the first & second lot of water pumped out the spinner so using one lot of powder. When I came back from Germany & left the army when I got home the twin tub had gone & was replaced with a second hand vertical axis automatic, this got the clothes as clean as the twin tub but you couldn't recycle the water so used more powder. The VA job flooded the kitchen & was sent to washer heaven to be replaced with a creda front loader that I inherited when she passed on in 1994. It lasted me till 2001, we're on our third front loader now. I'd love a twin tub but SWMBO says "nein" so that's that...
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 5:59 pm   #30
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

My mother had a twintub in the 1960s (replacing an earlier "ADA" washer-wringer model that dated from the very-early-1950s and seemed to be made of bits of old aircraft-aluminium) - the twintub always struck me as being a horribly labour-intensive thing, needing masses of manual effort [moving pipes around, draining/refilling the washer tub and adding detergent for each load, moving clothes from the washer to the spinner, fill-spin-fill-spin-fill-spin for each load in the spinner].

You had to be there with it all the time it was in action. The neighbours had a nice Bendix automatic. Stick a load on before you went out - and it was finished when you got home.

My mother upgraded from the twintub to a combined automatic washer/tumble-drier in the mid-1970s, and never looked back! The Bendix-automatic-owning neighbours got a washer/drier a few months later.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 7:12 pm   #31
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

An ADA "Coronation" model was left behind in my first house (1976). I still had it when I got married in 1980 and it was in regular use for some years until we could afford a new twin tub. I still have the instruction booklet, which refers to the fact it was constructed with either corrosion -resistant alloys or passivated steel and used porous bronze bearings that had to be oiled regulary. The Aluminium tub eventually developed pitting corrosion all around the flange of the heater element which I "temporarily" fixed with a liberal application of high temperature Dow Corning silicone rubber. I eventually recycled most of it: as the casing was a single sheet of steel folded into a rectangular shape with the ends rivetted together, I removed the rivets, hammered it flat and cut it to size to make a replacement sliding surface of an old childrens' slide for our young children. The claim to the steel being passivated certainly held up, as it spent many years out in the garden in all weathers without getting rusty (although it was painted using car spray paint). The base, which has ball-bearing castors, was fitted with a plywood top and makes an excellent bogie for moving furniture. I still have a piece of the casing that I raid when I need a piece of steel sheet for making small brackets etc. When I used to do wet chemical photography, the mangle was used as a power squeegee to expel surplus glazing solution when putting glossy prints on glazing sheets. The mains lead became an extension lead.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 7:38 pm   #32
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

My mother died a few years ago but still had the Servis twin tub bought in 1964. It was a bit like 'Triggers broom' with so many repairs and replacements it was hardly original. It fell upon me to maintain it when the annual maintenance plan refused to look after it any more. My favourite bodge was I made new washer and spinner lids from plywood as the originals rotted away.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 8:19 pm   #33
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nickthedentist View Post
When my grandmother first got an automatic (late 1970s), she used to pull up a chair and sit by it while it did its stuff.
Probably a bit later, but I clearly remember my mother and I sitting with great interest on chairs and watching our first front loading automatic go through its first wash.

Awesome.

I do remember my Gran having a twin-tub, probably a Hoover (Early seventies) but I wasn't interested enough at the time to remember the model.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 8:41 pm   #34
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

Quote:
Originally Posted by cheerfulcharlie View Post
I vaguely recall that the Baby Burco was quite versatile and had a lot of uses and bought for other reasons other than washing nappies.

.and the Creda dries in 4 minutes was that true?
Probably. Spin dryers were very efficient. When I was a student the coin-op laundrettes had a separate spin dryer / centrifuge and we all know that 50p in the centrifuge saved £ in the dryer.

If you've got a kitchen or utility room with a floor drain (there's a lot of steamy splashing around) a twin-tub is a very economical and efficient way of processing laundry. Hot whites, warm coloureds, then socks, all in one washing water.

Modern washing machines are rubbish by comparison, but they are easier.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 8:55 pm   #35
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

Speaking of driers, does anyone remember the "Flatley" ?? it was a sort-of small electrically-heated, ventilated wardrobe you hung wet clothes in to dry. They were unpredictable in terms of operating temperature - not nylon-football-shorts-friendly, as a schoolmate discovered.

Then there was the "Sheila-maid", a wooden frame you put your wet clothes on before winching it up to the ceiling using ropes and pulleys. Fine if you lived in a house with sensibly-high Victorian style ceilings, but if the ceiling was only the usual 20th-century-build 7-foot-six high you'd end up dodging round dangling wet stockings and shirts.

The coming of tumble-driers spelled inevitable death to such things.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 9:42 pm   #36
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

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Then there was the "Sheila-maid", a wooden frame you put your wet clothes on before winching it up to the ceiling using ropes and pulleys.
In Scotland that is a "pulley" and they're making a comeback especially in Victorian tenements.

https://www.glasgowhandymanservices....tallation.html

https://www.castinstyle.co.uk/sectio...clothes-airers
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 10:14 pm   #37
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

I installed one of those over the bath in our 1980s bungalow about ten years ago. It replaced a much flimsier retractable string and plastic affair which lasted about 5 years. Since we preferred to shower, it was no problem to leave clothes as long as needed and didn't need any dodging about. It dried everything except towels and bedclothes which felt much better tumble dried mostly when the sun was out so the (PV) leccy was free.

No room for one in my present abode, though.

Our first home washing machine in the '80s was a secondhand twintub which got its marching orders when we bought our first house.
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 10:32 pm   #38
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

Quote:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kirstyd View Post
I have two TTs here .The very first one made by Hoover and the last model[5090] so two machines from either end of the time scale both work well.I use the later model when the weather is good .Doing a whole weeks washing including hanging it out in less than an hour while the auto is still only half way through its cycle .The humble twin tub may look silly and a little crude to anyone born in this century but when they came on the market they were a godsend to the British housewife and an end to hours of back breaking work
I think your machine is the later version of mine, the T5054
yes thats correct .The 5090 was the last model made .exactly the same as yours only difference is the colour scheme
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Old 6th Dec 2018, 11:20 pm   #39
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

Quote:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
Then there was the "Sheila-maid", a wooden frame you put your wet clothes on before winching it up to the ceiling using ropes and pulleys.
In Scotland that is a "pulley" and they're making a comeback especially in Victorian tenements.
It was a 'creel' in our part of Yorkshire. A cleat for making off the doubled up ropes, a twin pulley to take the ropes horizontal, another further fron the wall for one to drop and to guide the other past, then a single pulley for the far end drop. The ropes eack supported a cast iron frame, and four wooden bars joined the frames.

Mum and dad bought an English Electric Liberator automatic washer in the middle sixties. Never mind us watching the show, ALL the neighbours were round! It was the first one in the street.

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Old 6th Dec 2018, 11:48 pm   #40
Paul_RK
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Default Re: Anyone still use a Twintub?

We do have this machine on perpetual standby: its reliability is second to none. Not too good with delicates though...

Paul
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