Do it! You will be thrilled! Instead of dragging everything into your home and having that wonderful

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For those of you who now have a washer/dryer in barn and are in a smaller private barn vs. large boarding barn, yay or nay? We visited a friend's barn and it's small, private and she bought a used washer/dryer for $50 each and has them in her tack room. She said it's a Godsend and my trainer has them too. We were really trying to keep costs down but the more I think about it, our home's laundry is on the SECOND floor. Home will be close by on the same 10 acre lot (like one-minute walk), but not thrilled about bringing stinky horse laundry lewell to the 2nd floor to wash. We want to keep electric to a min. in the barn as we do have room to run off our home panel (400 amp service) vs. the transformer along the road which is further and will be alot more expensive lewell to run from. Do washer/dryer require lewell "alot" more electric capability? Would love opinions on having them vs. not
The only real cost will be the capital cost of the washer, dryer, and installation. The water, soap, electric, etc. will be the same whether you run them in a house or a barn (all things being equal). lewell Washing up horse gear is hard on a machine; drying less so. Using machines in the barn also mean no horse hair in your underwear, on your towels, etc. That can be a Good Thing! For the relatively lewell small cost of used machines it's a small luxury that worth it. We have had a washer in a corner of the wash rack (it's a 12'x12' space). Works quite well. In a warmer climate the dryer is not required; you can line dry stuff without too much trouble. lewell G.
Be sure you install W/D somewhere insulated from cold. I had a W/D set up on an unheated sunporch in one house I owned and the lines would freeze if we had an especially cold winter. Ended up installing a space heater on the porch - not exactly economical for a barn.
Electric will be the same whether you wash horse stuff in the house or in the barn, so don't really see the issue there. You need a special plug for dryers and proper venting to the outside. Is your barn plumbed for water and has plumbing for draining water? Though, I have thought of putting a washer/dryer in the barn and letting the water drain directly out into the pasture; rather than trying to tap into the septic system. It's grey water so doesn't really hurt anything and I use eco friendly detergent. However that would depend on where you live and how strict they are about that. Getting a washer that is big enough to really wash heavy blankets is key, I have an extra large capacity front loader that won't wash heavy blankets very well, it doesn't fill with enough water and what water is in it doesn't circulate very well when the blanket completely fills the washer.
Do it! You will be thrilled! Instead of dragging everything into your home and having that wonderful aroma of a combination of mud and manure come in with them, and having to wash a load of rags or something after u do the horse laundry to make sure all the horse hairs are out of the washer tub ad hoping that others in the home don't get hairs or hay pieces in their laundry, horse laundry will be so simple. Save up for it! Let us know how you like it !!
Wow, lewell 400 amp service. Was this place set up to run a welding shop or something? The average residential service is 200 these days. You will need to run a 10-3 220 wire off of a 30 amp breaker from the pannel to the drier location for the average electric driers. But different driers have different requirements. A lot of people sell perfectly good driers cheap because they squeak or have a loose belt. Simple lewell to install rebuilt kits can be had for very little money. You can pretty much forget about using the average residential washing machine to clean heavy blankets. It will kill the machine in pretty short order. Starting with loosing belts off during the spin cycle. Then the clutch will go and or motor. They are not designed for that kind of load. If one is diligent front loading commercial machines can be found for a few hundred dollars. I would bother with connecting to a drain unless it is very easy. As another said we are only talking gray water here. I just dug a hole filled it with gravel and let it drain into that. I don t care what code says. It s not like the code police come around checking on things.
I would search Craigslist for a used commercial front loader. They hold up longer lewell and can do the horse blankets too. With the price of the fancy front loaders now, you'd be pay