Diaper vs Washing Machine

ben10hnt

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  1. Adult Baby
  2. Diaper Lover
Has anyone every left a disposable diaper in a washing machine or a dryer?

I just put a week load into the machine and I'm not sure if I got rid of the diaper I wore yesterday.
 
ben10hnt said:
Has anyone every left a disposable diaper in a washing machine or a dryer?

I just put a week load into the machine and I'm not sure if I got rid of the diaper I wore yesterday.

You'd better interrupt the washing load then. A disposable diaper will break apart, and large clumps of the padding will clog the machine.

And may I suggest next time you dispose of used diapers in a diaper pail and not the laundry basket.
 
Yeeeaaah. You better check that out. Because it'll screw up your washing machine and drainage pipes from your house.

I know this because my grandmother flushed a freakin' pad down the toilet and plugged up the system forever. We didn't end up putting two and two together until the thing passed out into our septic tank, but the toilet would back up every time someone used it and stuff was coming back up into the bathtub.

It took probably a month or so before everything went back to normal. :p
 
I ruined the pump in my high efficiency front load washer on 2 separate occasions by leaving an unused diaper in the pouch of an old starter jacket. The sap is like throwing sand in the pump and destroys the little plastic impeller.
 
CuddleWoozle said:
Yeeeaaah. You better check that out. Because it'll screw up your washing machine and drainage pipes from your house.

I know this because my grandmother flushed a freakin' pad down the toilet and plugged up the system forever. We didn't end up putting two and two together until the thing passed out into our septic tank, but the toilet would back up every time someone used it and stuff was coming back up into the bathtub.

It took probably a month or so before everything went back to normal. :p

yeah people don't use common sense sometimes. One place I worked, the business next door (which sells stuff that gets a lot of moms with kids, shares our sewer line) had a customer go into the customer bathroom and change their baby's diaper, and FLUSHED the diaper. It got stuck a few feet from the street, around 50 feet from the toilets, so the plumbers had a heck of a time reaching it with the cutter to chew it out. Our toilets were down for over a day. The landlord was NOT happy with them. Big plumber bill.

Now that shop has big signs on their bathroom doors, "dispose of diapers in trash can, DO NOT FLUSH". (one of those "Yes it's obvious, but we have to tell you this because someone was actually stupid enough to DO it" signs)
 
I have only done it once. I have no idea how a diaper made it into the machine, I think I must have placed a one in with the washing quickly to conceal it when I had unexpected guests. I think at the time it was a very quick and simple hiding place.

When I took the load out, I also pulled out the empty skin of a diaper with no filling in it at all. All the inner sap went clear when wet so I didnt notice right away. I put the washing out to dry and checked the drain of the washing machine and scooped out any sap that was in there. I put the machine on again to give it a flush through. Thankfully it worked as normal and was undamaged.

As for my washing, after it was dry, it was covered in all the white dried sap. I gave all the items a good shake outside to try and remove as much as I could and picked off all the stubborn bits that wouldn't fall off. I put the washing back through the machine again and it removed the majority of the sap apart from the odd bit here and there. Luckily I have not done it since.
 
Thx for the advice.

Luckily not a lot of damage has been done. The diaper was in the small laundry bag that I use for my socks and underwears, so though the diaper was pretty much ruined, much of it was trapped inside the bag.

I'll try to be more careful next time.
 
Everybody and anyone who has used a washer and/or dryer enough, has at some point washed or dried something that shouldn't be in the machine.
 
CuddleWoozle said:
Yeeeaaah. You better check that out. Because it'll screw up your washing machine and drainage pipes from your house.

I know this because my grandmother flushed a freakin' pad down the toilet and plugged up the system forever. We didn't end up putting two and two together until the thing passed out into our septic tank, but the toilet would back up every time someone used it and stuff was coming back up into the bathtub.

It took probably a month or so before everything went back to normal. :p

Wow. That sounds really strange and convoluted. How come flushing a diaper down the toilet causes draining pipes to be damaged so badly?
 
ScriptedGamer said:
Wow. That sounds really strange and convoluted. How come flushing a diaper down the toilet causes draining pipes to be damaged so badly?

Because the padding doesn't dissolve and break up in water like toilet paper does. It will flow through the pipes until it hits a turn, an area with not enough slope, or any small blockages (like a break in the pipe or roots). It accumulates at this point, and builds up causing a blockage.
 
ScriptedGamer said:
How come flushing a diaper down the toilet causes draining pipes to be damaged so badly?

Diapers contain SAP, that swells as it absorbs water. It can swell dozens or hundreds of times its original size.

When you flush even a wet diaper, SOME of that padding is still going to be dry. So assuming you rolled it up to fit down the toilet, it's going to take a minute or so for the water around it in the pipe to get to the remaining dry SAP and make it swell. Wherever the diaper is in the pipe at that time, it will probably try to double its size, with all the water available to it now. and that plugs the pipe. Or at least makes it more likely to get caught in a bend in the pipe and get stuck there.

The idiot that flushed the diaper in my previous post didn't just slow the drain by getting the diaper caught in a bend, it completely plugged the line. When we tried to plunge the line, it actually ended up breaking several of the sewer pipe seals between the toilet and the diaper, causing the pipes to start dripping at the joints.

So the diaper doesn't really "damage the pipes", but it renders them non-functional, and you have to have them serviced (lines cleared) which is inconvenient, expensive, and often messy.

I once had a squirrel crawl down the sewer stack vent pipe on my house, and finally climb up into the gooseneck below my toilet before he finally got stuck, died, and swelled up. It took plumbers over two hours to remove my toilet and extract it. Fortunately they were finally able to hook it under the jaw with a bent coat hanger and pull it up out of the hole where the toilet was. That was a $280 squirrel, and I shudder to think of how much more it would have cost if they had needed to disassemble my sewer line to get it out. Now I have a mesh grill over my sewer stack on my house, as does my neighbor.
 
bambinod said:
Diapers contain SAP, that swells as it absorbs water. It can swell dozens or hundreds of times its original size.

When you flush even a wet diaper, SOME of that padding is still going to be dry. So assuming you rolled it up to fit down the toilet, it's going to take a minute or so for the water around it in the pipe to get to the remaining dry SAP and make it swell. Wherever the diaper is in the pipe at that time, it will probably try to double its size, with all the water available to it now. and that plugs the pipe. Or at least makes it more likely to get caught in a bend in the pipe and get stuck there.

The idiot that flushed the diaper in my previous post didn't just slow the drain by getting the diaper caught in a bend, it completely plugged the line. When we tried to plunge the line, it actually ended up breaking several of the sewer pipe seals between the toilet and the diaper, causing the pipes to start dripping at the joints.

So the diaper doesn't really "damage the pipes", but it renders them non-functional, and you have to have them serviced (lines cleared) which is inconvenient, expensive, and often messy.

I once had a squirrel crawl down the sewer stack vent pipe on my house, and finally climb up into the gooseneck below my toilet before he finally got stuck, died, and swelled up. It took plumbers over two hours to remove my toilet and extract it. Fortunately they were finally able to hook it under the jaw with a bent coat hanger and pull it up out of the hole where the toilet was. That was a $280 squirrel, and I shudder to think of how much more it would have cost if they had needed to disassemble my sewer line to get it out. Now I have a mesh grill over my sewer stack on my house, as does my neighbor.

What would happen if more than one diaper was put in there? Like ten or so?
 
Ick... no. I've certainly washed tons of cloth diapers. The most bizarre thing I came across was when visiting my Alzheimer-afflicted mother in law and finding the remains of a depend she tried to "wash out."
 
ScriptedGamer said:
Wow. That sounds really strange and convoluted. How come flushing a diaper down the toilet causes draining pipes to be damaged so badly?

Since you asked me, I'll just say that what they said about the SAP is correct. In my case, luckily, it was a urinary IC pad and not a diaper. So it eventually just scooted out bit by bit. I KNOW it made it out because the poor guy trying to clear out our septic tank felt it hit and knew what it was. (His machine is like an enormous sewer vacuum. When something weird goes up, he can feel it kick.)

Also watch out for those 'flushable' wipes. They don't break up like they're supposed to half of the time.

If we hadn't have had the septic tank and been in town with a regular sewer system, it probably would have caused problems for not just us but also possibly neighbors as it wouldn't pass out into a large open vault until it had scooted down the larger pipes.

Its the same reason that around our house you don't pour grease/oil down the drain. :p It eventually builds up a 'crust' that blocks off the pipes.

As for the 'if 10 are flushed'. You'll be paying to have your sewer lines all ripped out and replaced. I doubt they'd be able to clear all that out.
 
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