I know it sounds obvious, but have you ever seen in your life a plastic flask or tank or jerry can that after several years leaked?
It is of course doable, but how durable will it be?
Imagine the kind of vibrations and shocks a jerry can used as a counterbalancing device in a relatively hot environment needs to bear.
A good, environment-friendly idea would be to make the concrete counterbalances a "standard" (in size and holes/bolting) and re-use them.
Nowadays in most countries (excluded the developing ones) the market for washing machine is almost exclusively a replacement one.
You get the new washing machine (without counterbalance) and you bolt on it the one from the old machine, and you save also the cost of the plastic water container.
...with an added cost of some 10-15 US$ for a steel tank that being just over something generating hot, humid air all the time will rust in no time or 40-60 US$ in the case of stainless steel.
Then everyone has 20 Kg of sand at home (if you have to transport the 20 Kg of sand all the theoretical transport savings are gone).
...but most people, whether using an installer or not, don't have multiple faucets that can dispense sand. Nearly everyone _does_ have access to water though.
Because it wasn't a priority. Plastic is more expensive than concrete. It's only now that "look how green we are" is able to tip the balance to where it's worth implementing.
If someone really wanted they could come up with a more complicated counterbalance solution and probably eliminate the dead weight entirely.
I really want to see how they came up with their numbers. I suspect that they're overly optimistic. +/-100lb isn't going to matter for fuel consumption in the last mile and the CO2 cost of picking up and replacing one that failed under warranty would likely negate many hundreds of machines worth of reduced fuel consumption before the last mile.
I somewhat doubt that a hollow plastic tank is significantly more expensive than a concrete block. Factor in the added cost of shipping the much heavier concrete block, and it seems like the manufacturer would also save money in the process.
The cost hasn't been cited in the "invention", but concrete is something that weights roughly 2,200 Kg per cubic meter, and has a cost (of course it depends on where it is produced) of less than 100 US$ per cubic meter, the 25 Kg counterbalance costs between 1 and 2 dollars, and is probably just barely comparable to a mass produced injected plastic tank, but I doubt that there will be any actual savings by the manufacturer.
And there is no real "visible" added cost of transport.
A 70 kg washing machine is typically 0.60x0.60x0.90=0.324 cubic meters, let's say 0.7x0.7x1,00=0.49-0.50 including packaging, it has a a very low "density" of 70/500=0.14.
On a truck with a platform of 2.40 m x 13.00 m (a normal large truck with a loading accepted of around 30,000 Kg ) you can usually put (in two levels) between 100 and 110 washers (2.40/0.7=3 13/0.7=18 2x3x18=108).
So you have this big truck, designed to carry 30,000 Kg and you load it with 8,000 Kg instead.
Do you think you will get a discount from the trucker?
And do you think that you will get a further discount if the load is 5,000 instead?
As well, do you think that you will get a discount from the delivery (and installing) guy if it weights 20 Kg less (but the guy needs to remove the top cover, fill the tank, re-assemble the cover)?
From an environmental viewpoint there are undoubtedly savings but the manufacturer (or the customer) won't be able to appreciate them in practice.
Is it that much more expensive to ship something in bulk with additional weight? I honestly don't know how distance shipping by the container works, but I always thought it was just a case of being billed based on volume.
In bulk you basically per 40' container which are usually kept under ~45,000lbs* and have 67.7 m3 volume. So, you are either volume or weight limited, but not really both.
Note: there are a few different container sizes, but 40' is by far the most common. Weight limits also very by location.
it's one of those ideas that seems so obvious and sensible in retrospect it makes you wonder how many other stupid designs are hidden in plain view, and why did this problem not get solved until 2017, when there are robots on Mars and probes orbiting Jupiter and Saturn ?
I got this idea long ago but I couldn't think of a way of using this idea. Then I thought it was obvious and that it was not implemented for some non obvious reason I didn't know.
A block of concrete is cheap and zero maintanance. And the machine typically is carried only twice in it's lifetime.
A water reservoir needs some way of filling, thus extra work for the buyer (typical ad: our washing machine doesn't need filling as those clunky reservoir ones!!!), maybe requires some maintenance. If you leave water in it for years it will rot, so probably you also need to put some disinfectants in.
So basically this idea is more environmentally sane, but more expensive. But there could be a market here, people care and are willing to spend more these days to save the env.
The soap water inlet can be a flexible tube that one can put inside the reservoir, then push a button and the exact amount of water is added (or some more and have it overflow to the drum).
> maybe requires some maintenance
Not if done correctly. And if it wasn't done correctly it seems easy to fix.
> so probably you also need to put some disinfectants in
