New Motorhome

Using site machines on extended trips does work out expensive,

What do you all do at home for washing, have you ever worked out the cost of a wash especially for a cotton wash for towels etc?  If you take into account electric, water etc. though not £4 I bet is £2-£3?

Being away for a long time you will obviously need to wash things at some point, like others we take about 10 days clothes and do a wash normally on site but dry in open air as its generally abroad.  WE do like ot have a clean towel once a week so for a 3 week tour we would take 2 each and wash one lot to cover the third week, do the same for bed linen as it can get a bit sweaty in the hot weather....

as with Michael, except for the odd fortnight's stay on a CCC/THS site, our long breaks are taken where drying of washing is a speedy natural process....

underwear, t-shirts, shorts (the staple of our touring wardrobe) can be managed without resort to a washing machine or dryer....just a small wash load in an outside sink, in the sun, every few days...

apart from bedding, it's so much easier to keep up with laundry when what you are washing is small and light, and everything dries in a couple of hours....

Water cost at home is the same whether we use it or not, no meters here.  We have solar PV so as far as possible wash when the sun shines.

I have not checked how much electricity our WM uses, that could be interesting, but if we say 5kwh for a 60 degree cottons wash, that would be 65p for the electricity and 10p for the bio pod.

A lot of what you pay to use a machine on a site probably goes to the purchase and repair etc of the machines, so if you factor that in at home, our machine has cost us 20p per day over its life so far.  Again it costs that whether we use it or not, and the longer we have it the less the daily cost.

So compared to that, using a site machine is pretty expensive.

However, after a couple of bad experiences with CAMC machines when we first started taking longer trips, it is the performance of the machine that mainly puts us off using them.

With a small twin tub, cost £70 and in use for 9 years now ( or indeed hand washing as many do) washing a small load more frequently means we do not often have a large load to try to get dry at one time, which works for us.

As we go away out of the hottest times, getting things dry is often the biggest problem.

For short trips we take enough clothes (to many) to not need to do washing.

On most sites home or away the machines cost around £4 €5 for wash and £1 for dry, abroad no need to tumble.

The main issue I have with using site machines is one the cost and two hanging around trying to get a load in if site is busy. so to that end 2 years ago I bought a camping twin tub machine.

We take this away with us on long trips 10 - 12 weeks, it lives in the shower which isn't a problem as we use site facilities.

It can easily take the bedding 2 x single duvet covers, sheets and pillow cases, just don't put it all in at once. It will take jeans and tops and the spinner is really good.

One wash once a week job done. I do sometimes hand wash then just spin if the items require it.

Machine is currently on offer at Aldi for £69.99, can be ordered on line and delivered free of charge. Outlay soon recovered. 

Edit: we take ordinary towels away with us but also a couple of those quick dry sport towels should be encounter a long period of bad weather. (never happens as we move if its that bad)

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We have handed clothes in at a launderette in town and collected them the next day - washed, dried, ironed, folded, clean and warm. 

Its not just the queuing that annoys me, its the state of the machines when you do finally get one. Twice on club sites I've had to clean out dog hairs from the machine before I can use it (didn't in the end until warden put a rinse through it) 

Hand washing is ok for small items but for some things it just pulls them out of shape. 

We have handed clothes in at a launderette in town and collected them the next day - washed, dried, ironed, folded, clean and warm.

Not got to that point yet quite happy doing my own while I can. When away for 10 - 12 weeks it would cost a fortune to do that, like AD we are not so much on holiday just living somewhere else 

Oh dear, Tammy, are people putting  dogs in Club site washing machines? I just read a novel in which Jack Reacher puts the villain in a commercial  tumble drier and switched it on. But dogs in washing machines?  I sense  a protest beginning. 

Had to be a smallish dog ET 

Which Jack Reacher book is that?  we both read them but don't recall a villain in a tumble drier.

Hi there jspur ,a lot of the C&MC sites have washing machines and as has been said ,about £4.00 or somewhere near👍Try not to waste too much of your trip in the laundry room😳 Exciting times ahead for you ,try to keep the stress levels down😂 Congrats on your new Motorhome ,enjoy. We have been at it for 22yrs now and still love it.

Brian & Jo