I kind of like our Kenmore front loader, except that after two-three years, the rubber seal* thing just peeled apart. That seemed a bit quick, but we do probably run it once a day. Anyway, it probably shaved $10 a month off the water bill and the clothes come out much drier.
*It was $80 to get a new one and took a long time to put in as you basically have to take the machine apart. It would have been $200 if my F-I-L wasn't there to do it.
I'm generally super-fond of Kenmore products. I have an LG HE front-loader, which possibly is good for the environment somehow and wasn't that expensive.
That's "needs replaced" in most of the US. Our appliance experience has been that you get what you pay for, a misassembled machine is a real headache. My routine is to go to a good (i.e., fancy, caters to yuppies) retailer and buy the second-cheapest thing they've got that suits my needs.
I second the advice on front-loaders (for efficiency reasons; in terms of reliability they may be a little worse than top-loaders) and the Kenmore brand in particular. Your timing is good. Sears / Kmart should be having a President's Day sale right around this time.
Be sure to check out the latest Consumer Reports ratings if you can (online sub costs about $25 if you can't be bothered to go to the local library).
I would also advise that washing machines are one of the few consumer goods (water heaters and furnaces being the others) where purchasing an extended warranty or purchase protection plan is not a sucker's bet.
If anyone wanted to recommend a dishwasher, while we've got an appliance thread, I've been hating our current one for ages now.
Kenmore toploader has been fine for 10 years (hope not to have jinxed it). Certainly better than ripping out the seams and beating the clothes on rocks in the Potomac, as we had been doing.
5: Pay extra for the quiet one. We've got a Kenmore Elite, which has done well. But, the main thing is to pay extra to get the quiet one.
front loaders seem very efficient and magically use hardly any water. one nota to bene is that a sealed washer is a great place to grow mildew. i ruined a bunch of clothes once by leaving a load sitting there for a day... don't think that would have happened in a top loader? and you have to clean the seal regularly or it starts to smell.
a couple years ago, when i think prices were higher, my then-bf and i bought a middle of the road set of LG front loading washer/dryer for around $1400. (more, i think, including the stands which provide storage and make things easier on your back -- otherwise a ripoff. maybe you can find used stands if you want that, or build something.) we liked them a lot and there were cute bells and whistles, digital displays of whatnot, child safety locking, etc.
but now i live at a place with kenmore front loaders which must have been much cheaper and honestly get things at least as clean. the washer seal does pull out a little from time to time and makes a mess if you don't watch out for it.
It's a midwestern thing, like saying "warshers".
a sealed washer is a great place to grow mildew
That is true. Since we only have one tub/shower in the house, it is handy to have a second place to grow mildew.
We bought our washing machine off of craigslist. It was cheap, it is tiny-by-US-standards and it works swell. It is a front loader. We keep the door open for 24 hours or so after doing a load so it can dry out. I don't remember the brand or model number. And thus concludes this totally unhelpful comment.
oh, the LG was considerably larger than the kenmore, that's true. probably quieter too but in both cases the machines were in the basement so it didn't matter.
at this vacation rental in maine i stayed at once they had tiny european stacking washer & dryer in the bathroom. they were super quiet and took hardly any soap and of course the loads had to be small too. i found it delightful! doing the wash was such a low-impact no big deal that you didn't mind doing every day! i think the soap they had seemed really sophisticated and european too.
a second place to grow mildew
ITS MOLE!
Apparently, the Kenmore front loader is the Official Washing Machine of the Mineshaft.® We've got one, too.
We have a matched set of very basic GE machines. Is it the case with washer/dreyers that, as with ranges, GE has several different lines, with widely varying quality? Ours were, I think, in the range of $400-$500 new (we bought the set for $200 from a friend who was getting divorced) and they've worked well, although the washer decided to not turn on for a couple of weeks, no matter how I fiddled with it. Then it just started working again and has been fine since. In conclusion: check your jeans for $5 bills before throwing them in the washer.
15: Were you gone that month, Moby? Original reference.
Also, in looking for online advice on fixing the washer, I came across a bunch of review sites where people were complaining bitterly about how much noise our model makes. Which is bizarre, because you can just barely hear it from the top of the basement steps. Totally not noticeable anywhere else in the house. I put it down to young people today who keep their washing machine in the bathroom.
Mine came with a VHS tape (!) of instructions which was actually worth watching because it said that you can cram the washer much fuller than you'd otherwise think you should. No doubt I could have learned the same information by reading the manual, but what were the chances of my doing that?
We have had some really shitty customer service from Sears in the past year, as has my mother. Everything is fine unless there is any kind of hitch at all, say if they need to reschedule delivery for some reason. Then you go down a really unpleasant rabbit hole of confused call centers and despair. We wound up canceling our order after a week and a half of it and going with Lowes, who were a dream.
we bought the set for $200 from a friend who was getting divorced
Way to exploit your friend's misfortune!
a VHS tape
I googled, and I see that it's, like, an iPod touch with wheels, right? Neat.
Around here, at least, you can find Asko washers—which are small, quiet and efficient—for cheap on craigslist. They're expensive to get fixed, but if you do the repairs yourself, they're a bargain. I picked up one just like ours for $99 once (with an instant rebate of $1.95, the change that had accumulated in the trap) and used it for parts to do what would have been several hundred bucks worth of repairs. No mildew, but doing laundry for the four of us means it gets frequent use.
I'm sure that given where you live, you can get all the mildew you want from nature.
Artisinally made mildew is better, Moby. Homebrew is the source.
I had no idea that washamashines were so inexpensive. As someone who hates communal laundry rooms, I should really reread the fine print on my new lease to see if I can get me one of those front-loading Kenmores.
I have a front-loading washer in my apartment complex, and it has one feature that I find incredibly irritating -- there's no way to stick something in after you started it. Invariably, I find that I dropped a sock or something right after I started it.
28: our apartment has a hookup for a washer but not for a dryer, so we use a drying rack; works pretty well.
30: If you have an outlet for an electric stove, you can change the plug on an electric dryer to the plug from an electric stove and it works.
31: we have an outlet, actually, we just don't have any place to run the vent. We could get a condensation dryer, or whatever they're called, but the drying rack works fine.
Well, don't the use outlet for a stove because the plug is different and while you can use a stove outlet for a dryer, the reverse isn't true. I asked some guy.
I should make a public service announcement.
Also, don't put turkeys (live or dead) in the dryer.
We have an outlet for a dryer. In the closet where the washer is (and where we could stack a dryer, if we had the stackable kind). But the drying rack works fine, as long as we're willing to eat nothing but jerky.
Wait, now I'm confused.
28: Or avail yourself of the best part of city living: paying someone else to do your laundry! (The usual response at this point is "I don't want someone handling my underwear" which always kind of mystifies me.)
Last time I volunteered at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore they had a Kenmore front loader going for ~$250. Seals looked like they were in good condition, minor cosmetic blemishes, no signs of electrical problems like scorched motor wiring or the like. I'd have bought it if I needed one.
Anyway, check out second hand places - people get rid of perfectly good appliances all the time, presumably upgrading to the latest and greatest and scoring a tax break along the way. Sniff the electrical parts for signs of overheating - that smell really lingers and really fills up spaces, so you don't have to stick your nose all the way in, just kind of sniff a bit around the vents. Sometimes appliances fail slowly due to motors straining, which is a reason to get rid of them other than simply upgrading to the latest networked washer that tweets status updates on your mismatched socks.
Now I'm considering paying someone to handle only my underwear.
the latest networked washer that tweets status updates
You have to be careful what you put into those newfangled ones. Mittens, for example, aren't compatible, since they're not digital.
Also, a friend who repairs appliances says that washing machines really aren't built the way they used to be. It used to be something like sop that a top-loading washer would last 20-30 years. Now, though, the replacement window for a front loader (very few people around here buy top loaders new, he says) is more like 7-12 years. Which probably speaks to KR's point upthread: extended warranties aren't a waste for such items.
Who's pooping in your washing machine?
Or avail yourself of the best part of city living: paying someone else to do your laundry!
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Smearcase sees into my soul.
Also, a friend who repairs appliances says that washing machines really aren't built the way they used to be.
So true. For one thing, there's a lot less steel in them than there used to be. If you've ever lifted an old one to move it, you can tell the difference.
OTOH, they're vastly more efficient in terms of water and (for dryers) electricity consumption, and they're substantially cheaper in constant dollar terms, so maybe it, urrmmm, all comes out in the wash.
OT: I'm not sure what the source is for this dispiriting information, but assuming it's correct, has this purported negotiation tactic ever even once come close to seeming as if it might work, in any of the other times Obama has used it, which as far as I can remember includes every single time he's done anything at all as president?
Add my voice to the front-loading HE LG chorus. The LG itself is a proud member of that chorus -- it announces the end of the wash cycle with a happy little 8-bit anthem.
If someone else is going to handle my underwear, I want to them handle what's in the underwear at the same time, if you know what I mean.
I'm not sure I know what I mean, but ick, strange people handling my underwear and using the wrong heat settings and strange detergent.
I used to take my laundry to one of those by-the-pound wash-and-fold joints. It was pretty excellent; they did a far, far better job with it than I ever would have. Not so cheap, though.
Rah bought us LG front loaders and they are a dream. I love them. I can forget way more laundry at a time than I used to.
18: I am immensely grateful for the link. I never knew what the hell was up with MOLE.
47: "Hi, I'd like to drop these off for fluff-and-fold. Let me think, I know there were a few things I had to ask you... do you take credit cards? Oh, and would you fingerbang me?"
45:Bat-signals to be used only in case of catastrophes, can cause link-overflow and rant-flooding if premature.
45: Sweet fucking Jesus on a pogo stick.
I've got a Bosch Maxx, 6kg load. Have had it about 8 years, and recently replaced the brushes. It's a bit knackered - sometimes I have to spin it again because the clothes are still really wet - but it'll do until something too expensive to bother repairing happens.
LG "Tromm" front-loading washer and dryer. (Two separate hunks of metal.)
I hasten to point out that 45 wasn't actually "OT", since this was a washing-ton post.
In our previous flat we had a Miele. Which was excellent. One minor fault in about 7 years, fixed, iirc, under warranty. Our current one [came with the flat] is a Beko and is total shit.
If the proposal in 45 didn't have the usual bollocks about non-defense discretionary spending being exempt I'd be all for it. Take the growth in Social Security straight out of the Pentagon budget, as well as the necessary additional money to cover the rest of the civilian budget without requiring deficit spending.
Also I want a front-loading pony that handles my undies with proper respect and appropriate detergent.
non-defense discretionary spending being exempt I'd be all for it
The language in the article was non-"security" discretionary spending. Feh.
DeLong "Austerity Double-Dip Watch: The United Kingdom"
Krugman ...but not his best
Konczal who is my favorite economist blogger right now. He quotes a 1993 Jamie Galbraith paper about how DeLong's (Romer, Thoma, Krugman) crowd surrendered to the neo-classicals in the early 80s and destroyed the world.
Mike Konczal at Rortybomb is on a smoking tear and astonishes me every single day.
Ezra Klein is a wholly-owned subsidiary of insane evil and will rot your brain.
Bosch Maxx, 6kg load.
Washing machine or toilet?
59:Translation "non-security":Department of Fatherland Protection and Torture of American Citizens will not be cut.
59: Dammitsomuch.
Security theater won't be cut, but stuff that actually does save lives will be. Look out FDA, NIH, and OSHA.
Also the Department of Energy, I guess. Might make my job situation a bit precarious. We already took a shellacking with a surprise cut to our funding of over 25% with no corresponding change in goals.
"You now have a year to a year and a half at most before the next economic meltdown" ...calculating that it takes 12-18 months for fiscal measures, this time austerity, to fully show up in the macroeconomy.
Here we go folks, bad double-dip in summer 2012. Obama goes full-scale right-triangular from tonight til then, giving Republicans their hearts' desires. Primary opposition a joke. Republican a horror.
Whatcha gonna do in the voting booth? Huh? Gonna give all three branches to the Repugs in November 2012? In the middle of a depression?
We are so so easy. A Democrat kills the New Deal and creates the permanent American aristocracy. And I have no idea what to do.
My parents love their Miele appliances (washer, dryer, dishwasher). I love my Miele vacuum cleaner so much that I even use it occasionally. However, I don't quite understand the whole premise of the question. Isn't it just your landlord's problem?
Our apartment, which is where the house's owners used to live, has a Kenmore stacked washer-and-dryer pair. No complaints at all about the washer, and the dryer is fine as long as the vent stays attached. The problem is that the stack is in a nearly custom-made closet in the bathroom, and the vents are in the back, so it tends to detach itself if the washer ever moves (say, you want to clean up the water that spilled because the drain pipe is frozen, because said owner decided to run the new drain down an uninsulated wall) and is hard to get back in place. But that would be true with any dryer - purely landlord error, no knock on the Kenmore. They did tell us that they had to replace it once because they hadn't heeded the advice to use HE detergent, and had destroyed the door seal that way.
I bought our Maytag mumble mumbles used with a refrigerator for $900 at a used appliance store, along with a 6 month warranty. They've been fine. If you don't need new, bargains can be had.
45: This is why there was so much speculation earlier about the SOTU calling for social security cuts. We're supposed to be grateful we get this instead.
FWIW, when we bought the house in 1984 it came with Maytag washer and dryer that looked as though they were original (1948). The dryer is still going. We replaced the washer in the mid-90s with another Maytag (heavy duty top loader) which hasn't given any trouble at all.
General observation on washing machines. We have a reconditioned machine that's probably 15-20 years old. The guy who sold it to us said that the durability of modern machines which are built in the not(US,UK,Germany) is significantly less than the older models which were and that as far as he's concerned he'll go on recommending these until it becomes difficult to find parts, which doesn't appear imminent. Therefore, if you have a reconditioning shop whose reputation you can rely on anywhere nearby, that may be the way to go. If you don't have a reliable service agent such as this, then nothing you get new will last as long as your previous model, almost by definition.
I won't consider this subject definitively covered until washerdryer him-or-herself has weighed in.
I would also advise that washing machines are one of the few consumer goods (water heaters and furnaces being the others) where purchasing an extended warranty or purchase protection plan is not a sucker's bet.
This. When our combined washer/dryer conked out in 2007, it was out of its original warranty but still in the extended warranty and we got a replacement washer + dryer for it, free of charge. A life saver when we didn't really have the money to buy new ones.
There are 73 comments and I get p0wned by the 73rd.
It was actually washerdreyer.
The stacked stackable units are popular in small apartments.
Buying reconditioned older washers does mean trading energy and water use against reliability, as new models are way more efficient than 15-20 year old ones.
Does that get balanced out at all by the fact that you're not requiring a new appliance to be built, and perhaps won't require another new one to be built in a few years' time?
re: 77
I wonder what the calculus is for that? I read a thing somewhere [a newspaper 'green advice' column, I think] where someone was asking whether it was greener to buy a new car -- massively lower emissions, much better fuel efficiency, etc. -- or keep using their old one -- thus avoiding the pollution and carbon costs of a new build. IIRC, the calculus was still pretty strongly in favour of getting a new one, as the carbon emissions and pollution over the car's lifetime was a lot higher than its manufacture. No idea how that holds for washing machines.
Speaking of fuel efficiency, the cost of petrol is really biting me in the arse at the moment, and I have a small and relatively fuel efficient car.
No idea how that holds for washing machines.
Nor I, but at a wild guess you'd get different numbers if your old machine was built before or after the cutoff date where they started including the technology to limit water use on the basis of the weight of the load. Which was about 10-15 years ago, as I recall. I'm assuming here that it's highly inefficient in terms of power as well as water to fill the thing up to wash one pair of jeans, because of the heating requirement.
For our US friends, petrol is a little under $8 a US gallon* here at the moment.
* i.e. a little under £6 per UK gallon.
We recently acquired a Bosch to replace our Hoover that died after only 5 years use. The Bosch pWns hard (big loads, fast spin, built-in timer). We looked at the consumer report magazines and Bosch and Miele consistently got top ranks. Don't buy that cheap American crap; get German engineering that lasts. It is worth it over time.
If your Bosch was made in Germany, it's probably golden - the expression "BoG standard" wasn't invented for nothing - but not all of them are and I don't know of any way to tell the difference.
the cost of petrol is really biting me in the arse at the moment, and I have a small and relatively fuel efficient car
Tell me about it. I've got a big fucker, and whilst it's more efficient than the smaller van I used to have, it's still starting to get very painful.
re: 84
Yeah, I drive a lot of miles commuting between London and Oxford, and when I started doing it last year my monthly costs were a good £100 a month less than they are now. It's still cheaper than the train, but by less than it used to be.
Probably going to look in more detail at various fuel saving options [getting the ECU remapped, for example]. Given the amount of mileage I do, even a 5 - 10% saving would pay for itself within a few months.
85. Could you run to a second hand hybrid? my sister drives one (new, but she's a lot richer than me), and she says it saves significantly. Although, if you're mostly going up and down the M40, you wouldn't do as well out of that as some. Advertise to carpool?
re: 86
I don't think I could really afford the car upgrade, to be honest. I don't know how much I'd save relative to the outlay. Financially it'd probably make more sense to switch to a newer second-hand diesel, which might not be quite as fuel efficient* but would be a damn sight cheaper. If I end up still commuting after the summer I might sell my wee car and get a diesel, but at the moment it's probably more economical to try and improve fuel efficiency with the car I have.
* although that's arguable given that I'm just doing a run up and down the M40, as you say.
You Brits worry too much. Didn't you see the speech? America's going to save the future by creating unlimited energy from salmon.
America's going to save the future by creating unlimited energy from salmon.
And when it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, "This is a desert place and the time is now past. Send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves victuals."
But Jesus Barack said unto them, "They need not depart. Give ye them to eat."
And they said unto Him, "We have here but five loaves bagels and two fishes slices of lox."
And He said, "Bring them hither to Me."
And He commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves bagels and the two fishes slices of lox; and looking up to Heaven, He blessed and broke the loaves spread cream cheese on the bagels and gave them to His disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.
And they all ate and were filled. And they took up the fragments that remained, twelve baskets recycling bags full.
whether it was greener to buy a new car -- massively lower emissions, much better fuel efficiency, etc. -- or keep using their old one -- thus avoiding the pollution and carbon costs of a new build. IIRC, the calculus was still pretty strongly in favour of getting a new one, as the carbon emissions and pollution over the car's lifetime was a lot higher than its manufacture.
Really? I remember a thread where I was debating keeping my clunker, and I got the opposite impression.
Yeah, my impression of the old car / new car question is the same as Heebie's. Shiny new hybrids and shiny and new, but in terms of total impact you're better off with your 1985 Civic. Although the example I have in mind might also take into account that the old car is small and fuel-efficient... The answer might be different for a 1985 Grand Cherokee.
I'm pretty sure I'm rememberingt the advice column I read correctly, however, whether that was in fact correct, I've no idea.
Googling, there's a Scientific American article that says:
A 2004 analysis by Toyota found that as much as 28 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions generated during the lifecycle of a typical gasoline-powered car can occur during its manufacture and its transportation to the dealer; the remaining emissions occur during driving once its new owner takes possession. An earlier study by Seikei University in Japan put the pre-purchase number at 12 percent.
There've been massive leap forwards in fuel efficiency in the past couple of years, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of modern cars easily save that manufacturing 'cost' over their lifetime. If the 12% figure is true then it's even more likely. Of course that same Scientific American article refers to car getting 25mpg as having good mileage, which, even allowing for the US/Imperial gallon conversion isn't just a bit less efficient than the current state of the art [not including hybrids], it's laughably less efficient.
My car gets about 35mpg US,* an equivalent new fuel efficient diesel of the same size and class gets about 55mpg US, and with larger or more fuel hungry classes of cars the gulf gets larger.
* driving it the way I do, which includes a lot of driving _way_ above the most fuel efficient speeds.
At the time, Ksky also sent me The Case For Keeping a Clunker. Which looks like it says basically the same things as ttaM said, though.
Do NOT buy a Bosch front loader. If youhalf fill it with things like sheets and towels, some of them - or at least some parts of some of them - will come out dry, and I mean that literally, as in untouched by water. I understand the low water usage concept, but unless they have invented some magical new process, I don't understand how the machine can wash the clothes if it doesn't get them wet. What we've wound up doing is starting the machine and then standing there and adding multiple pitchers of water to the wash. And using extra rinse. And then running a quick wash as a final rinse. So a load of laundry takes about 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
And there's no dedicated spin cycle for spin drying things like woolens that you wash by hand. Nor any way to soak things before washing.
This will be the most expensive washing machine in history after I pay the lawyers & alimony when my wife divorces me because I insisted om buying this high quality machine despite her preference for a Maytag top loader at less than half the price that had most of the features she wanted, unlike the Bosch.
There's a strange machine used in UK called a "Teasmaid". Place by your bed it makes tea and then sounds an alarm to wake you up.
The company making them launched a campaign a year or so ago to find the oldest one still in regular use and one turned up manufactured in the 1950's.
It was still working - the only problem being that it only made tea at 3.30 am.