Are ALL front loader washers junk?!!

[Clot]

I don't think you find a top loader this side of The Pond. they have been the standard product since the 1960s. Some are problems and others are not.

[<josh]

I&#39;ve been mostly happy with my front-loading LG over the last four years or so, averaging around 10 loads a week. (Family of five, twins were still in diapers when we got it, older sister is now a teenager....)

It did have one serious failure, a capacitor failed on a circuit board that should have taken five minutes to replace if it had been stocked in the U.S.....

[Una]

High end top loaders have no agitator and have all the other advantages of a front loader, except that the opening is on top.

Una

[Art]

My parents Maytag Neptune front loader is 10 years old. Had only 1 repair plus the free mold elimination upgrade in those 10 years.

I have a 5 year old Whirlpool built Kenmore. No repairs so far.

Both front loaders.

[Art]

You must be referring to the Calypso top loader which is pretty much a failed experiment on US consumers.

[Una]

Never heard of it.

Una

[salty]

I think Fisher & Paykel are just what you are looking for. A Top Load machine of moderate price with very advanced design and the same energy savings as a front loader, including a 1000rpm+ spin cycle so the dryer doesn&#39;t need to run as long. They also use any regular (much cheaper) detergent. They don&#39;t even have a transmission to go bad!

I bought mine from a local "Mom & Pop" type appliance place. The owner&#39;s wife mentioned that she had one at home and loved it.

[gas]

Here in Europe front loaders are the norm. I haven&#39;t seen a top loader in the ten years I&#39;ve been here. We have a 10 year old machine from a Swiss maker called Zug. Runs about 10 loads a week (2 families on a farm with cows and a great dane, we make a lot of laundry). So far it hasn&#39;t needed any service at all.

[sandpounder]

I have a front loader purchased in 1996. It has worked flawlessly. It was maufactured by a US company. But today I would buy European version. I suspect you should have addressed the vibration initially.

[Douglas Johnson]

My first generation Maytag Neptune (with mechanical controls) is 12 years old and going strong. How many more years should I wait?

-- Doug

[RF]

I bought an LG front loader in Europe when I lived there two years ago. I liked it so much that I brought it back with me. It is 250V and I had to get two wires from a dryer close by and a ground from a different 120V outlet. It has operated flawlessly and I have noticed several times that it will start to vibrate when it begins to spin. Then it slows down, sprays in some water and will rotate slowly for a minute or two and then take off to its max speed. I paid about $400 for it and I have noticed since that front loader prices seem to be much higher here in the U.S.

[tnom]

Until it dies. If it was a conventional, maybe 25 years.

[Paul M. Eldridge]

If Doug&#39;s front loader at an average of four loads per week saves him roughly $200.00 per year on utility and detergent costs and maybe another hundred or so dollars in avoided dry cleaning expenses and extended clothing life, he&#39;s some $3,500.00 ahead of the game at this point is he not? Assuming he paid a $400.00 premium, say, over an equivalent quality top loader, his accumulated net savings still exceed $3,000.00. And for a family with a couple kids those savings might come in at double that.

Cheers, Paul

[HeyBub]

If his goal was to save money, true. However, the little woman is more concerned with getting the clothes as clean as possible, so she&#39;s always gonna use even more detergent and run the "Large Load" with "Double Extra Rinse" setting thereby INCREASING the on-going costs.

If saving money is the goal, disabling those settings on the existing washer will do the trick. Also turning down the water heater temperature to "Tepid" or "Above freezing" saves money.

[ChrisJ]

We have two front load washers (one for us, one for our tenants). Ours is a roughly 9 years old Maytag Neptune, the other is a roughly 10-11 years old Frigidaire. So far we&#39;ve had one repair for the Neptune to replace a blown fuse Other than that, they have been no trouble and are workhorses. We especially like the fact the clothes are half-way dry when we transfer them to the dryer. Clothes from a top loader tend to be wetter coming out of the washer and thus take longer to dry.

Our water bill covers both our and our tenant&#39;s water usage so it makes sense to do what we can to keep things under control. This was especially true 3 years ago when we had the clean-freak, extremely uptight* tenant from heck who washed 2-3 loads every day - more if she was especially anxious.

*How uptight? The first week she lived in the apartment, she complained about the noise of the acorns from our oak tree falling onto the lawn and demanded that we do something about it.

Chris

[me]

What European versions would you take a look at?

[Pete C.]

Euro stuff tends to be over hyped. Personally if you want to skip the quasi-US assembled in Mexico brands, I&#39;d look at LG (Korean).

[Paul M. Eldridge]

I use regular liquid Tide (not the more expensive HE version) and if I use more than half the amount recommended for a top loader I have problems with excess sudsing. My machine doesn&#39;t have a "double extra rinse" option, just a single one which I do use; even so, I still save some 60 to 75 litres of water per load compared to a conventional top loader, plus I can wash larger loads (no bulky agitator to steal space).

In terms of cleaning abilities I have no complaints and I suspect one of the reasons why clothes often do come out cleaner even though less water is used is that there are four or five separate rinses as opposed to just one; in effect, multiple cracks at the bat.

With regards to water temperature, I tried washing in cold water but since our water is literally just a few degrees above freezing it never worked out. Most folks don&#39;t realize this but even the so called "cold water" formulated detergents are designed to work at water temperatures of 15C and above and my cold water comes in closer to 4 or 5C.

Thus, the following:

"Most detergents are geared for warm water that is 90 °F, but the industry standard for very cold water is 60 °F, says P&G senior engineer Michael Orr.

Coming up with an effective cold-water detergent was a challenge because the stain-fighting power of the ingredients in conventional detergent formulations decreases *by an order of magnitude for every

10 °F that you decrease the temperature,* says P&G senior scientist Donna Wiedemann, who formulated Tide Coldwater over the past 2 years.

Source:

I also understand the only effective way to kill dust mites is to wash sheets and towels in hot water; i.e., 60C or higher.

Source:

Cheers, Paul

[Paul M. Eldridge]

Hi Chris,

I can sympathize. Years ago I had a basement tenant (a single girl) who would do one to two loads a day and for the life of me I could never understand how this would be possible.

My den was also directly above her kitchen and whenever she did the dishes she turned on the hot water full blast and left it running so that she could rinse them in the adjoining sink as she went (I knew it was hot water because within a minute or so you&#39;d here a faint "woosh" as the gas water heater kicked on). I&#39;d literally have to get up from my desk and leave the room because the sound drove me crazy. By the time I bought my next home I swore I&#39;d never rent again.

Cheers, Paul

[Pete C.]

Largely the same here. I almost never use the "additional rinse" option on mine, I use about half of the top load amount worth of regular Tide detergent, and for water selections I use warm/cold in the winter when the cold tap water temp is low, and the cold/cold setting in the summer when the cold water is about 70F.