Upstairs laundry room

[noworklifebalance]

Tell me about your upstairs laundry rooms - how do you sound proof it?
What about leaks/flooding (my main worry)?
Have you managed to fit a drying area if the room is walk-in cupboard size?
Do you have an extractor fan/.dehumidifier built in?

Would anyone be happy to share photos of their small laundry rooms so I can see layouts? I have checked out Pinterest & googled.

TIA

I hang all my washing on the line in the garden, saving the planet and my electricity bill. (I've never once used my two year old tumble dryer!) How does that work with an upstairs laundry room? Isn't it a lot more hassle?

My parents utility room is upstairs, it's about the size of a box room I guess. It's fully tiled and kitted out with their old kitchen units so lots of storage space etc. Their tumble drier is vented via a wee board my dad made that slots into a slightly open sash window, so prevents drafts coming back in.

They've never had a leak so can't really comment on that except it's above the downstairs hallway so wouldn't be a massive problem if it did leak.

Sound wasn't an issue either but it's a 200 year old house so walls are solid.

We have a top loader washing machine in the upstairs en-suite. The room is fully tiled but not tanked. No sign of any leaks (yet).

Doesn't seem very different to running a shower in an upstairs room.

Mostly use airing cupboard, also upstairs, for drying. There is a covenant on the house which rules out drying washing in the back gardens.

@FuzzyPuffling - we don’t have a tumble dryer. Majority of the year we dry indoors on radiators or a heated airer, so would like to do this within the laundry “room” with the help of an extractor fan/dehumidifier.
Whilst the idea of drying outside would be ideal, I need a faster turnover for uniform etc.
I don’t mind taking the clean laundry downstairs 5 days/week for the few weeks that it’s warm enough to dry outside. Currently, I am lugging laundry down and then upstairs 5 days/wk for about 45 weeks of the year.
I would consider getting a tumble dryer for sheets & towels.

@TheCanyon our house is >100y old so maybe could take the spin cycle?! Good point re:location - the potential laundry room is above the d/stairs loo

My parents had their washing machine and tumble dryer stacked in a cupboard upstairs.

It probably was noisier on the wood floor there than if they’d had it on a solid floor downstairs. On the other hand it was further from where we were living and definitely better noise wise than having it in the kitchen. Couldn’t have it on when anyone was asleep though.

Was a bit of a pain as you couldn’t go check if the load had finished or swap over a load whilst cooking dinner.

No space for hanging out laundry in the cupboard, it all got hung on racks on the landing.

There was never a leak in 20+ yrs of this set up. It wouldn’t have been great if there was though.

I reckon the best place for laundry machines is on the ground floor but not in the kitchen, but many homes don’t have the space; second best is upstairs; third is in the kitchen.

If you have a cellar and could make it clean and tidy and put the machines down there, that’s probably second best ahead of upstairs.

It really depends on your house. We lived in a first floor maisonette (around 150 years old) and our washing machine would shake the whole building if it was on 1000 rpm or above. It was like it was trying to take off. So drying clothes took ages as they were pretty damp still from the washer.

But my SIL has her laundry room upstairs and it's absolutely fine even on 1600 rpm. Maybe go upstairs where you are thinking of having it and jump around and see how loud it is downstairs to get an idea.

I have a WM in the kitchen. Our TD is upstairs in a cupboard - only place it could fit. We have pull out drying racks on which items that can't go in the TD are hung to dry in the residual heat with a dehumidifier running underneath.

Buy an anti-vibration Matt to go under your machines and they will be much quieter .
You take clothes off up stairs and bed linens too, so it's easy to keep everything upstairs - especially on wet days, and just take wet washing out to the line on days you feel like it.

I think you can buy some kind of tray that the machine sits in in case of leaks.

I don't have an upstairs utility room but I do have a walk in cupboard that houses my boiler and cylinder. Originally I thought it was a waste of space and planned to make better use of it, but it's absolutely amazing for drying clothes. It's windowless and the only ventilation is through random holes, which I assume were for old pipework. I've never had issues with mould/smells. I couldn't be without it now. Jeans dry overnight 🎉

We're currently building an upstairs utility. A few things to mention in response to points raised by other posters:

The appliances will be off the floor in units, so the noise will be dampened.

We're going to have a drying rack hanging from the ceiling (old house with higher ceilings than modern build).

We're going to buy a new heat pump tumble dryer, as these are very energy efficient.

Wifi enabled machines can send an alert to your phone to tell you when the current cycle has finished.

Maybe we've been lucky, but I can't recall having a washing machine spring a leak in many years.

Both the en-suite and main bathroom in the house we've just bought have had to have leaks fixed in the last couple of years (bizarrely the previous owners fixed the leaks, but didn't bother to redecorate to get rid of the water stains in the rooms below). I would agree with the PP who said that showers are likely to be worse culprits for leaking.

Technically, it's the same as having a washing machine in an upstairs flat I imagine.
If you can dry it upstairs, then it will save the trip with laundry downstairs and back upstairs.

(The drying laundry outside thing always makes me laugh. I am from a warm country and would love to dry outside - but you can't even rely on the weather to not rain if you hang out in the morning and go about your day leave alone the warmth needed! if there was ever a country that needed tumble driers - it's here in the UK!)

@SunflowersInTheShade

Technically, it's the same as having a washing machine in an upstairs flat I imagine. If you can dry it upstairs, then it will save the trip with laundry downstairs and back upstairs.

(The drying laundry outside thing always makes me laugh. I am from a warm country and would love to dry outside - but you can't even rely on the weather to not rain if you hang out in the morning and go about your day leave alone the warmth needed! if there was ever a country that needed tumble driers - it's here in the UK!)

Bang on. Out next door neighbours have their washing out in all weather, goodness knows why. They have a full line today, despite it being 3c and attempting to sleet.

Thanks all for your very helpful comments/ suggestions.

I have jumped up and down in the room as @blacklilypad suggested and it’s very solid.

Good point re: analogy with upstairs flats, whoever mentioned that.

@Elmrosie - yes, we will house the WM in a cabinet and raise it off the ground, may use an anti vibration mat as @itspartytime mentioned for good measure.
The ceiling is high so some sort of clothes hanging contraption would be be able to fit as long as I can reach it.

Very much like the idea of a tray to catch leaks @CellophaneFlower, it may help allay some of my concerns.

More I think about it, the more I am sold on the idea, especially not having to traipse up and down with the laundry basket. Happy to do that on the odd occasion that we have a scorching day to put the laundry out.

I love mine. Soooo much essier. Bosch (i think) do a super quiet low vibration machine for this purposr

Good thread as I'm thinking of making an upstairs laundry room in our refurb to make use of a windowless nothing sort of space. Currently we have a little utility downstairs. I keep the radiator on full and a dehumidifier going. Then we have an old fashioned hanging rack which lowers from the ceiling and takes a full load from the washing machine. It dries really well. I put a load on in the morning and hang out around lunch time. Mostly dry by the evening but fully dry by the next morning. We've never had a leak.

@Franca123 - do you have a link to your hanging rack (or similar one) please?

It's called a pulley maid. www.pulleymaid.com. It was in the house when we bought it. Not sure how I survived without it!

@Franca123

It's called a pulley maid. www.pulleymaid.com. It was in the house when we bought it. Not sure how I survived without it!

Thanks so much!

Ours is fab, but only tiny.

It has a washer, tumbler, pulley drying rack, a heated drying rack and a laundry hamper.

It’s above the garage so we can’t hear much. Open the window for ventilation. There’s also a radiator in there.

The only pain is carting it downstairs and outside in the summer. But it’s fine. I love it.

Pulley maids are brilliant! We had one in our last house and I can't wait to get another.

I have one (I call it a "Sheila Maid" - brand name?) and have been so evangelical about it, my friend has just had one installed too!

I moved my combined washer/dryer to an enlarged hall cupboard upstairs. So much more convenient to have it same floor as bed linen and where one gets dressed! As it's a combo I don't have to check it, though this is not always convenient if you do loads of washing, but you don't have to use the dryer function. If I didn't already have the machine (came with the house) I would have stacked a washer and dryer.
It's not vented but I've had no problem with humidity.
I have a vibration pad underneath the machine and a tray underneath that. It wouldn't stop a full flood, but to be honest in 40 years a doing laundry I've never had a washing machine leak. I've had one break down, but not leak. In retrospect I would put cheap carpet down below the tray (it's just on plywood above the floorboards), and I may do that when I get new carpet in the hallway. I've had the machine on just as I go to bed and it didn't keep me awake or anything.

People saying its a hassle to take laundry out in the summer makes absolutely no sense to me. You're doing exactly the same amount of legwork you would if your laundry were downstairs. Washing is already upstairs by default so you're going downstairs once to take washing outside (which you would have to do if you were carrying washing down to machine) then upstairs once to bring dry washing in (which you would do anyway).

Upstairs laundry rooms are hell on earth, the shake the house no matter what you do! We moved ours back downstairs when we moved in.

Ours doesn’t shake the house at all. We can’t even hear it.