Ted's Blog

A long time ago they had a commercial that showed the typical washing machine agitator and some industrial agitator that pumped up and down. It was pathetic how the rotary one would turn and how effective the turbo pumper (or whatever it was called) was. This was before I actually knew how to do laundry so it is surprising to me that probably 25 years later I had a washing machine that still had that silly agitator. And any time I opend the lid to see what was going on, there was the agitator spinning a half turn at a time and making no apparent impact on the clothes around it.

So I was looking forward to a better approach. Front-loaders at least tumble the clothes around so you know they are moving. I've washed things like pillows or comforters and had parts come through still dry with the old washer. No way that would happen with this one. I got the Whirlpool Duet from Lowe's. Consumer Reports gave it very good marks for capacity (so I could wash Clio and Katie's comforters they use for beds) as well as washing ability and noise.

I figured I would go ahead and get a new dryer, but not an expensive one to match the front-loader. The front-loader is supposed to wring out more water so the dryer doesn't need to work as hard, but the dryer I had would run for nearly an hour and get the clothes down to damp. After running another 30 minutes they would be dry.

I bought a Kenmore dryer from the Sears outlet. It was both scratched and dented, but supposedly new and marked down $120 off the list price of $400.

I have now run the first loads through both. The washer is kind of neat. It also doesn't use much water. I was expecting the front window to become like a goldfish bowl with clothes floating around in a tank, but you never even see the water line. It tumbles the clothes a couple of turns, sprinkles on some water, tumbles the clothes the other way, adds some more water, etc. It just keeps turning, pausing, turning the other way. Eventually the clothes all get wet but it takes a little while. It rinses the same way. It has sensor that figure out when it is rinsed enough so you are supposed to use low-suds special detergent for front loaders. It seems to work fine either way. When it starts to spin it spins slowly one direction, then stops and spins the other direction. I don't know if it is trying to figure out if the load is balanced or what, but eventually it starts really going like a jet. After a total of 40 minutes it is done.

The dryer? It's just a dryer. It does actually dry the clothes the first go around and it has a light inside the drum which is nice. Seems to leave a few more wrinkles than the old one, but the first load I ran through was pretty big.