The price of laundry

It's getting more and more expensive for us to do our laundry at the laundromat. Just this past week the cheapest place in town raised their prices $.50 per load. We're currently spending around $80.00 per month just on laundry.

Finding a home for the washer/dryer combo took a bit of compromise, but we found a spot for it where the refrigerator used to live. It was an inch or so too narrow, so I modified the opening so we could slide the new machine into place when it arrives.

For the washing machine I needed to install a drain & supply lines. For the dryer I needed to install a dryer vent.

The drain line was fairly easy. Right under the platform that will support the washer/dryer there the drain lines for the kitchen sink ran through. I just installed a "T" and added a trap.

The supply lines for the washer were a bit more difficult... I figured that I'd just tap into the hot and cold lines under the kitchen sink, but it turns out that the lines for the trailer were a bit more complicated to work with than normal house plumbing. After buying about $60.00 worth of fittings and water lines I managed to get the hot and cold lines run to a couple of washer valves.

There was already electricity to the cabinet for the refrigerator and since our new washer/dryer combo runs off of 110V and under 13 Amp we can run it of the existing circuit.

Last of all I needed to install a vent to the outside for the dryer. That should have been a piece of cake, but mid way through cutting the hole through the aluminum exterior of the trailer, the main breaker tripped. I reset it and moments later our 1000 Watt inverter tripped. I plugged the saw into the RV park electricity thinking maybe my saw was too heavy a load for the inverter or something. Turns out that I had hit not one but 2 110V wires. I didn't cut through them, but I stripped off some of the wire housing - hence the short. A few wraps of electrical tape and everything was back to normal. I didn't have the option to move the vent - The clearance is so tight that it needs to line up with the back of the dryer perfectly. The picture to the right shows the new dryer vent just above the old refrigerator access cover (which is off in the picture)