I want a SCUBA laundry machine.

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

kr2y5

Contributor
Messages
929
Reaction score
260
Location
Seattle
# of dives
200 - 499
I need a new setup for cleaning SCUBA equipment to install in my garage for a drysuit and 2 sets of doubles, and I wonder what sorts of great DIY ideas people came up with. I used to have a low-tech solution that involves a pair of Husky "X-Workhorse" workbenches to rest my tanks on, crammed inside a rectangular shower cabin, alongside my drysuit, and that was usable, although not exceedingly convenient (shown below with sidemount tanks). I had to stand there, and water my equipment. I can't bother.

After moving to a new place, I no longer even have a shower cabin I can dedicate entirely to that purpose, but plenty of garage space, and I don't feel like building a big, clunky shower cabin in my garage, so I'm looking at improvising something entirely from scratch...

...besides, unlike the low-tech solution below, this time, I'd like to make it somewhat more lightweight, semi-mobile, and much more convenient and automated, as in: unload all my junk from the trunk, press a big green button, leave and forget... similar to starting my laundry machine (complete with the cheesy music once it's done).

I can imagine ways to do it, but I'm not sure how practical they will turn out to be, and I don't like to reinvent the wheel, so I'm curious if anyone else has any proven ideas they are willing to share, or any suggestions for what might work (or not).

The structural part seems the hardest. On one hand, I need a structure solid enough to support the weight of all the tanks, and that can serve as a frame to install other fixtures on (some parts of a sprinkler system, or whatever it is that I'll use to make the damned thing clean itself). A ready-made shower cabin seems inconvenient (heavy, clunky, ugly, weird-shaped, with no easy ways to attach things to it). A cage made from thick wooden beams would seem like a cheap, quick, and easy way to accomplish that (light, mobile, infinitely extensible). On the other hand, something has to trap water inside, and collect it at the bottom, and as I understand, the problem with wood is that it expands and shrinks as it meets water, so it's going to be hard to seal the empty sides of a wooden cage in places where it contacts other materials. A low-tech solution to trapping water might be to wrap around the entire cage with some soft plastic, like a shower curtain, and embed it inside a solid industrial-sized plastic tub that can support all the weight (where do you get those things), or alternatively, to line it with plastic from the inside, and suspend all equipment, including the tanks, within it, hanging from the above, thus eliminating the need for a fancy tub (any cheap plastic container would do, as it would not need to support any weight anymore).

I suspect someone with a bit of experience in construction can imagine some easier and more straightforward approaches... any ideas? Thanks!

IMG_20150421_204656.jpg
 
How about a swimming pool... You can dive in and wash your gear as you get a extra dive in... Get out of pool and dump gear on floor and get wife to put it away.. You can drink a beer well watching....

Jim...
 
Get out of pool and dump gear on floor and get wife to put it away.. You can drink a beer well watching....
:shocked2:
I think that most men of my generation, if they tried to pull a stunt like that, might have to extract the beer can from an orifice located at the opposite end of their body than the orifice they originally planned to insert the beer into...
 
I need a new setup for cleaning SCUBA equipment to install in my garage for a drysuit and 2 sets of doubles, and I wonder what sorts of great DIY ideas people came up with.

kr2y5,

I have never built one myself, but I have some ideas. I'll assume you own your garage (so that you can make permanent changes to it), that it is a framed structure having a cement floor, and that running tap water to it is not cost-prohibitive. Then:

1. In the most convenient corner of your garage, have a floor-drain installed in the cement floor and plumbed into your house's sewer system.

2. Have hot and cold water pipes run to this area of the garage, for a low (knee-high) spigot/spicket and a high shower head. Either tap into the house's freshwater supply for both the cold and hot water, or only for the cold water, and install a compact hot water heater (either electric supply or natural gas supply) above in the garage's rafters.

3. Have bright overhead lights installed in this area of the garage, and install a GFCI electric wall socket in your "room" (but out of direct line of the shower head).

4. Install water barrier, cement board (the "sheetrock" often used in bathrooms), and surface treatment of your choice (e.g., ceramic tile) on the walls and ceiling of this corner of the garage.

5. The remaining one or two open "sides" of this "room" can be closed off using a vinyl shower curtain. So, install a shower curtain rod to accommodate.

6. Treat/paint the floor of this "room" with a waterproof, slip-proof, industrial floor paint.

7. You'll need a large, sturdy tub in which to soak gear (e.g., your BC, your reg mounted and pressurized on a small cylinder), so procure a used stainless tub for this. I have in mind the kind of tub athletic facilities use for athletes. This doesn't need to be permanently plumbed; it can be filled using a hose attached to the wall faucet, and it can be drained using a hose flowing directly into the floor drain.

8. An industrial SS sink would be convenient (but not necessary) for small items.

9. Floor space of this "room" should be sufficient to allow you to spread out your drysuit (for example) on the "floor" so that you can wash/scrub it thoroughly after soaking it in the SS tub.

10. Washing isn't the only consideration. Drying is, too. You can hang hooks, or a SS pipe, from the ceiling of this "room" from which to hang your gear, and run a dehumidifier to dry your gear. (Hence the GFCI electric wall socket.)

11. Finally, depending on the size of your space, you can run an electric heater to heat your room during colder weather. (Another use of the GFCI electric wall socket.) Or have your garage outfitted with one of those small natural gas shop heaters you sometimes see mounted in garages used as workspaces.

12. Maybe have your electrician install an exhaust fan while he/she is installing the wall socket and ceiling light, to help control humidity while gear is being washed.

13. Oh, and you'll need a floor squeegee to help dry up the water on the floor.

That's it, I think. Some of the work (e.g., installing the cement board, tiling the walls, paining the walls, hanging the rods) you can do easily yourself, I would think. Other work involves skilled tradespeople (e.g., floor drain, plumbing, electrical work) which, of course, can be costly. The costliest appliances would be the SS tub and the hot water heater if you should decide to not use the house's hot water supply.

How much was your budget?

Safe Diving,

rx7diver
 
How about a swimming pool... You can dive in and wash your gear as you get a extra dive in... Get out of pool and dump gear on floor and get wife to put it away.. You can drink a beer well watching....

Jim...

If I tried that it wouldn't only be my dive gear floating motionless in the pool.
 
Last edited:
I'd build the necessary size wooden box, open at the top. Reinforced with 2x4's along the sides. Go to home depot and get painter's plastic sheeting, as thick as possible. Glue the plastic sheeting, as one piece, to the inside walls of the box. Hook up a submersible water pump and run the output to a pipe that circulates to the top where you have installed a shower head of sorts (or multiple shower heads because you want it to rinse all the gear at once). Fill up with water to correct depth, turn on pump, and let it run till it makes you happy. perhaps you can have a split valve that will send the water from the pump to either the shower heads or to a drain(or hose that you simply run outside).

Now, if I were building this for me, I'd have some sort of mechanism to raise and lower the gear into the box-I'd build the box about 4 feet high, raise the gear back up for air drying when done rinsing. (or I'd go refrigerator style with door that opens, but then sealing is the big issue, but even then it's not prohibitive.

You want semi mobile.
 
I have never built one myself, but...

kr2y5,

I recently moved to a new house. I no longer have a basement and a downstairs bathroom to accommodate my scuba hobby. However, my new house has an attached garage that has a wall on the other side of which is a full-sized bathroom. So, I've been giving this problem some thought, and the "solution" I outlined above is more for my own situation than yours, but maybe some of my ideas can be of some help to you.

Safe Diving,

rx7diver
 
Hire the neighbor kid to do it for you. Cheaper and easier in the long run.
 
Would you trust the neighbor kid with your (OMG!!!!!!11111!!!!!! life support) equipment? Everybody knows that teenagers have only one thing on their mind, and that's not scuba gear...
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom