Quote:
Originally Posted by BigD629
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No, no, a thousand times no!!!
Actually, I was thinking about responding to BevRedmond's comment about the Panda being bigger than she expected, by comparing it to my WonderWash, which is surprisingly large and takes up a lot of space, and is vastly inferior to the Panda.
The WonderWash is my most disappointing purchase in years. At the time, I didn't really think about not having a spin cycle, and I now know it's really, really important. But also, the WonderWash claims to clean by using pressure created by hot water, but that means you have to have hot water, which may or may not be an issue, especially if boondocking. Also, it means you have to believe that the pressurized hot water claim actually works, and my results don't bear that out.
I bought the WonderWash for washing dirty mountainbiking clothes when boondocking and I can't use my Splendide. I think it's certainly no better at getting things clean than hand washing them in the sink, and it doesn't necessarily use less water. Where I can really see it is with socks, which get really dirty around the ankles. They come out of the WonderWash looking about the same as they went in.
I just don't think the pressure in the WonderWash is superior to regular hand-washing, or even using a plunger in a bucket.
And I'm not sure it even saves water. With my Splendide, I can fill once for a wash, spin it fast to get the soap out, fill again for a rinse, and spin again. Truly clean clothes for a total of 8 gallons.
The WonderWash uses probably 2 or 3 (or maybe more) gallons of water for the wash, and you really need to do two rinses because not much gets rinsed out if it doesn't spin. So it doesn't even save water over a "real" washing machine!
And with no spin cycle, the clothes aren't any drier than if I'd washed them in the sink or a bucket, and no amount of wringing will get them much better than sopping wet. From looking at the RPMs on the Panda, it sounds like the spin is about like my Splendide, which means stuff comes out almost dry.
I still have the WonderWash, probably because I just SO BADLY want to believe it works. But every time I use it, I'm reminded that it's really no better than hand washing, and takes up a LOT of room.
We're self-sufficient on solar and really hate running the generator. But we have a modified sine wave inverter so I'm scared to run the Splendide on it.
Lately, when boondocking, I've started running the generator for 30 minutes or so to do a load in my Splendide instead of using the WonderWash. It's vastly less effort and less messy, uses less water, and truly gets the clothes clean. If I'm favoring the generator over ANYTHING, then that "anything" has to be pretty bad.
I see all the good reviews on the WonderWash, and I guess I was swayed by them. But who knows who those people are. Ever been in a laundromat and watched someone cram so much into a top-loading machine that the stuff on top will never even get wet? You know they think it worked fine, and they're just wrong.