New washing machine time - What sort?

Our Boschwash did that until I discovered the keypress combination to shut it up. Every now and then someone leans on it in just the wrong way and I have to look it up again.

More than the 10 year guarantee on Astracast sinks did for me. They've refused to pay out, saying that we broke the sink and that we can't prove we bought it anyway.

What was its spin speed?

Our dish washer went with a hell of a bang (so loud, I thought that it was the oven element!), but this turned out just to be the input smoothing capacitors. A cheap and quick fix.

Worth a check??

Cheers, Mark

Aiieeee No!

They remain the most unreliable hunks of crap on the face of the planet, right up there with Whirlpool.

Someone I know has an M-i-L who insists on buying them Hotpoint appliances as a gesture of parental affection. They last for about a year, or sometimes not even that. The dishwasher, for example, has a "brilliant" design in which water is fed to the spray bar from a socket at the back of the machine. Load up the top tray and the weight causes the tray to sag, the bar cannot mate with its socket, the door will not close and if one slams the tray or door the machine is buggered.

FWIW, over the last 32 years we've had exactly two washing machines, bth bought from John Lewis. Both have been Zanussi models.

The first was retired after 25 years when I simply got tired of replacing the one component that broke from time to time. This was the plastic catch that secured the front door in use. Erindoors would sometimes slam the door closed when a towel was not fully psched into the washing machine. If the towel was across the lock plate the catch would break with the force of the slam. Spares cost about 50p and were a doddle to replace.

Also SWMBO demanded a condensing washer dryer and that necessitated the change. The new one is just as good, silent in use, relatively cheap still built like a brick shithouse and a fraction of the cost of "poncy french brand(tm)". The only servicing in seven years has been the occasional removal of fluff from the filter. It got a descale last year because we live in an area where the water has lumps in it.

How can it be quiet with a big drum? Especially on Christmas day.

I /must/ get round to fixing the Hotpoint. Last year I fixed (part of) the roof. I left a drill or something in my trouser pocket whilst they were washed. It got lodged between the drums and punched holes in the inner drum. It's now over 25 years old (I think) and was in perfect working order before the drill escapade. I'm wondering how best to repair the holes (probably leave them, but push the lump into the hole so it doesn't snag the clothes?

Miele are German, despite the name.

(Contrariwise, Krup (coffeemakers) are French.)

Our 6 year old Miele has a 'hand wash only wool' program, which seems to do the job, though as far as i know, its not certified by the Woolmark people.

Maybe I was referring to Scholtes?

Indeed.

Car body filler.

And M=F6ben are English.

--=20 Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.

Now there's a brand I thought disappeared along with avocado baths ...

"Scholt=E8s inspires the true sense of luxury. Impeccable and distinctive, it rewards you with professional results and iconic aesthetics for your home and lifestyle." (Scholtes website)

I ken merde when I see it.

"Miele is a German manufacturer of high quality domestic appliances and commercial equipment. It was founded in 1899 by Carl Miele and Reinhard Zinkann and has always been a family-owned, family-run company. Since the beginning, the Miele motto has been "Immer Besser" or "Forever Better" and this philosophy is still reflected in the legendary quality and longevity of the products." (Miele website)

Owain

Must be too posh for the likes of me - never heard of it.

And deeply, profoundly, fundamentally s*it.

(Also Dolphin bathrooms, which are the same firm.)

Ha ha! I have one of those :-) Probably around 25 years old, does the job well, very easy to repair, spare parts available cheaply in huge supply... it made me chuckle when I first moved to the US and saw all these big old top-loaders like granny used to have, but there's definitely benefits in keeping a design simple and relatively unchanged for years.

(The water use doesn't bug me so much here - it comes out of the ground behind the house and goes into the ground in front of the house. I'd be a bit more eco-conscious about it if I was in a town on mains water, I suppose)

Everyone just does cold-water washes over here unless there's something that *really* needs the heat. Not sure if US detergents are typically a different formula to UK ones, though, and so better suited to it...

cheers

Jules

Understood.

However our two year old fridge-freezer is a Hotpoint and seems very well engineered. Basically just "un-Hotpointy". The trick would seem to be that this model is engineered and built in Poland, not the UK.

Or maybe not...

Some stripping reveals that the drum suspension has gone askew, letting the drum bang on the front and back of the case. This had slowly worn through the rubber door seal (top, so I didn't notice it) and finally the wires to the heater (low centre front of drum) came off and contacted the case, hence the RCD trip.

Repair could be as simple as splicing in four new lengths of cable and some glass fibre sheathing, a new door seal and sorting out the suspension.

Now the suspension? What on earth is supposed to hold this thing in place anyway? There's a tiny fore and aft spring at the top and two tangential vertical dampers at the sides. Nothing I can see (haven't got space to up-end it easily) would stop the drum twisting. Case doesn't come off too easily to look.

It's a Hotpoint Aquarius Ultra 1000rpm model 9539 from 1994.