Laundry Room Chatter

I’ve been censoring what I put out in my blog because, while interesting or important to me, I had a hard time thinking anyone else (Kathy and Karen) would care and would be bored. For my last topic-Nana- I had written up a history of our relationship with the McClures and then philosophized about the huge effect chance (or is it?) plays in our lives. On my energy efficient washing machine topic I deleted a short rant about the good use of bad data in tying greenhouse gases to global warming. I may reconsider and publish these words. I’ve got to decide whether my blog is happenings and feelings or that plus some life experiences, history, and some personal philosophy (and written for me). It’s my engineer technical side fighting my sensitive, feelings side. We will see which I wins.

Now on to the technical stuff. Since I have run about 10 loads through the new washing machine I have a good idea about its features. Having not purchase a new machine in a while I was pleased with the way this one works. As you know if you got my E-mail I built a 15” platform for the washer and dryer and with the front-loading washer it works out very nicely.

For those of you who are interested here are some of the features:

You put laundry detergent, fabric softener and bleach in separate compartment in a little drawer that slides out on the top of the machine. These are diluted and dispersed at the optimum time during the cycle. The machine decides how much water to use for each load so there is no water level to select. It has 5 cycle settings ranging from whitest whites, an 85 min cycle; down to express wash (for 2 or 3 items when you are in a hurry) which is a 30-minute cycle. Water temperature for the wash and rinse is automatically selected depending on the cycle and you can override it if you don’t like its selection. The only thing you can’t do in the machine is soak clothes. I guess they don’t trust the door seal with standing water. The machine counts down cycle time so you know how long is left and you can set it for delayed start if for some reason you want it to do a load at a later time. The clothes are washed by being tumbled through the water, switching direction periodically to assure even cleaning. I watched a good portion of the first load I washed and you never really see a water level. Most of the water is tied up in the clothing. I know this is gentler on the clothes because I accidentally left a couple of paper towels in the pocket of a pair of jeans I washed. In the old machine this meant torn bits of paper towel all through the wet clothes. In this machine they came through the cycle whole (and clean). There are 3 spin speeds to remove the water. It won’t let you spin delicates at the highest speed. After the spin it gently rotates back and forth tumbling the clothes so they don’t stay wrinkled and crushed against the side.
It’s working out that for most loads the dryer runs about 10 minutes longer than the washer so there is a much smoother flow of laundry through the machines than I thought there would be. Both machines have finished alarms loud enough for me to hear in the house – the dryer is buzzing right now – so I have to go.