Anyone else using old washing machine motors for a DIY wind turbine or is that madness?

Done exactly this on my narrowboat build — not madness at all, though it's not without its headaches.

The motors to hunt for are the older brushless universal types from drum machines made before roughly 2005. Zanussi and Hotpoint units from that era turn up constantly on Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree for next to nothing. The permanent magnet motors are what you actually want — rewinding them for lower cut-in speeds is where the real rabbit hole starts.

A few practical notes from my own build:

• Cogging is a real problem at low wind speeds. You'll spend time shaping your blade pitch to compensate
• The output is AC, so you'll need a rectifier bridge before it plays nicely with a Victron MPPT or any charge controller
• Bearing replacement is usually essential — washing machine bearings are not rated for the lateral loads a turbine puts on them. Budget for decent SKF replacements
• Rotor imbalance will shake your mounting to pieces surprisingly quickly. Static balancing on the blades before installation is non-negotiable

On my boat I'm currently pulling maybe 80-120W in a decent Force 4, which honestly supplements my Fogstar lithium bank better than I expected for essentially zero material cost.

The bigger challenge is the tower/mounting situation — getting it high enough above the cabin to hit clean air is trickier on a narrowboat than a shepherd's hut where you presumably have more flexibility.

What motors are you looking at specifically? Some of the variable-speed inverter-driven motors from newer machines are essentially useless for this application, so worth confirming what you've sourced before going too far down the rewinding path.

@AshWalker the universal motors are actually brushed — bit of a misnomer there. The ones you really want from old drum machines are the permanent magnet DC motors or the three-phase induction types, though rewinding the latter is a proper faff.

Worth noting: older Hotpoint and Hoover machines from the 90s are goldmines for this. Skip the inverter-drive motors from modern efficiency-rated machines — the control electronics are integrated and basically useless for this application.

I've not done it on a narrowboat myself (solar is my thing) but I've seen decent low-wind builds using these on the Navitron forums — some guys getting reasonable cut-in speeds with careful blade matching.

What rotor diameter are you running?

@TIW_Power is right on that — worth getting the terminology straight before you start rewinding anything.

Had a go at something similar for my cabin setup a couple of years back. The rewinding process is where most people come unstuck tbh. Took me three attempts to get the pole configuration right.

One thing nobody mentions — rectification. Raw 3-phase AC output from these is all over the place in a light breeze. Chucked a cheap bridge rectifier at mine initially and it was all noise on the Victron BMV. Worth budgeting for a proper charge controller that can handle variable input.

Also the mechanical balancing is critical — an unbalanced rotor will shake itself apart inside six months. Ask me how I know 😅

@AshWalker @TIW_Power to be precise, the ones worth hunting are the permanent magnet DC motors or ideally the older induction-type motors you can rewind as alternators — neither of which are "universal" in the technical sense.

Also worth flagging: output from these is rarely clean enough to feed directly into a Victron MPPT or similar. You'll need a rectifier stage minimum, and even then the voltage curve under varying wind speed is all over the place.

Done some testing with a salvaged motor on my garden office setup as a backup curiosity — more hassle than it's worth unless you enjoy the project for its own sake. A cheap Renogy wind controller still needs sensible input to work with.

Not madness, but be honest about what you're actually building: a learning project, not a reliable power source.