New washing Machine - Front Load vs Top

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#804185 23-Apr-2013 11:20

LookingUp: Another advantage of a front loader is that you can stack a dryer on top :-)

Related to this, if anyone has a disability it is much easier to raise up, and get clothes into and out of than a TL.

Jon

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#804191 23-Apr-2013 11:27

nzkiwiman: I live at home and my mother will not allow me to do my own washing after I broke the top loader in 2005

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noc

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#804192 23-Apr-2013 11:28

graemeh:

A good top loader can do a heavy duty wash in 45 mins, with a front loader that will get you a quick rinse with a bit of a wash. To was properly the front loader is more like 2 hours.

Top loaders are also much cheaper than an equivalent quality front loader.

Yes, but to wash your clothes in 45mins, a top loader beats them to a pulp. Top loaders ruin your clothes.

And yes, top loaders are cheaper.... But you pay for what you get :-)

Elpie

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#804212 23-Apr-2013 11:58

graemeh: Top loaders are great, they are fast and work well as long as you use warm water. Detergent doesn't work properly in cold water.

Unfortunately due to space restrictions we have a front loader. Yes it gets the clothes clean (as does a top loader) and spins well (as does a good top loader) but it has to be the world's slowest washing machine.

A good top loader can do a heavy duty wash in 45 mins, with a front loader that will get you a quick rinse with a bit of a wash. To was properly the front loader is more like 2 hours.

Remember that there are loads of differences between models. The longest wash I have on my front loader takes just over an hour, the shortest takes 15 minutes. I couldn't do a load of business shirts on a wash shorter than 40 minutes with my top loader, the same load has washed up much better (and with fewer creases - yay! to no ironing!) in 15 minutes.

A friend recently bought a different front loader and has to wait two hours for a full heavy-duty load. It's driving her crazy. It really does pay to do some research and look at what brands/models are available and what features they have.

trig42

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#804248 23-Apr-2013 12:36

We regularly use the 15 minute cycle on ours for very lightly soiled items (shirts), it seems to wash great.
It would also be very rare for us to use one of the longer cycles, but even they take less than two hours. We do use it for bedding and heavily soiled clothes, but again, rarely - the 50 minute cycle works great.

And with the powder, you don't need FL powder, you just need to use slightly less in a FL (less water, less detergent needed).

graemeh

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#804249 23-Apr-2013 12:38

noc:
graemeh:

A good top loader can do a heavy duty wash in 45 mins, with a front loader that will get you a quick rinse with a bit of a wash. To was properly the front loader is more like 2 hours.

Top loaders are also much cheaper than an equivalent quality front loader.

Yes, but to wash your clothes in 45mins, a top loader beats them to a pulp. Top loaders ruin your clothes.

And yes, top loaders are cheaper.... But you pay for what you get :-)

Not true for all top loaders. I never had this problem when we had a top loader.

graemeh

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#804251 23-Apr-2013 12:41

Elpie:
graemeh: Top loaders are great, they are fast and work well as long as you use warm water. Detergent doesn't work properly in cold water.

Unfortunately due to space restrictions we have a front loader. Yes it gets the clothes clean (as does a top loader) and spins well (as does a good top loader) but it has to be the world's slowest washing machine.

A good top loader can do a heavy duty wash in 45 mins, with a front loader that will get you a quick rinse with a bit of a wash. To was properly the front loader is more like 2 hours.

Remember that there are loads of differences between models. The longest wash I have on my front loader takes just over an hour, the shortest takes 15 minutes. I couldn't do a load of business shirts on a wash shorter than 40 minutes with my top loader, the same load has washed up much better (and with fewer creases - yay! to no ironing!) in 15 minutes.

A friend recently bought a different front loader and has to wait two hours for a full heavy-duty load. It's driving her crazy. It really does pay to do some research and look at what brands/models are available and what features they have.

Thanks, I'll have to try that with our front loader.

I think our problem might be ours is an ultra efficient one which seems to translate to the world's slowest washing machine. It does a great job but takes a long time.

If we ever have anything badly stained (e.g. tumeric on hand towels) you just set it to 90 degrees, with a prewash of napi san and let it cook away. This is a trick you can't do on top loaders.

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#804269 23-Apr-2013 12:48

Elpie:
graemeh: Top loaders are great, they are fast and work well as long as you use warm water. Detergent doesn't work properly in cold water.

Unfortunately due to space restrictions we have a front loader. Yes it gets the clothes clean (as does a top loader) and spins well (as does a good top loader) but it has to be the world's slowest washing machine.

A good top loader can do a heavy duty wash in 45 mins, with a front loader that will get you a quick rinse with a bit of a wash. To was properly the front loader is more like 2 hours.

Remember that there are loads of differences between models. The longest wash I have on my front loader takes just over an hour, the shortest takes 15 minutes. I couldn't do a load of business shirts on a wash shorter than 40 minutes with my top loader, the same load has washed up much better (and with fewer creases - yay! to no ironing!) in 15 minutes.

A friend recently bought a different front loader and has to wait two hours for a full heavy-duty load. It's driving her crazy. It really does pay to do some research and look at what brands/models are available and what features they have.

which model is that? and does it put more water when i put soiled clothes in?

Klipspringer

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#804291 23-Apr-2013 13:10

I use to be a FL fan. Did not like these top loaders.

In South Africa its common to have your washing machine in your kitchen and so we always had FL's.

But since being in NZ I like the idea of TL's. We have had problems with FL's in the past leaking at the rubber seals around the door.

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#804304 23-Apr-2013 13:42

I have a relatively cheap Simpson front loader and it's great!

Yes it can take a bit longer than a top loader, but it does do a great job.

The wash time depends on how much you put in, and it seems to do a pretty good job at sensing the load. It also has a 'fast wash' option which speeds things up.

A 1/2 load with the 'fast wash' option takes about 30 minutes. If its full, maybe 60-70 minutes on 'fast wash' mode.

If I do a full load without the 'fast wash' it takes maybe 2hrs, but we never need to as the fast option always does an excellent job.

Ours only has a cold water input and heats the water itself (Options between 30 and 90 degrees). In my case, I call this a disadvantage as we do pay for electricity but not for hot water in the building we live in.

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#804308 23-Apr-2013 13:47

joker97: wm that lasts 5 years is a pick? that's too short ... I reckon :)

What I mean is that the others all lasted less than 2 years and needed multiple repairs each. The Whirlpool has been going for 5 years so far and hasn't needed any repairing.

The old FL AEG we had is probably still going, but we had to leave that when we moved to NZ

Nothing seems built to last these days

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#804334 23-Apr-2013 14:51

trig42: We regularly use the 15 minute cycle on ours for very lightly soiled items (shirts), it seems to wash great.
It would also be very rare for us to use one of the longer cycles, but even they take less than two hours. We do use it for bedding and heavily soiled clothes, but again, rarely - the 50 minute cycle works great.

And with the powder, you don't need FL powder, you just need to use slightly less in a FL (less water, less detergent needed).

Suds are the bubbles or foam produced by the soap or detergent. Sudsing (foaming) detergents lower the surface tension of the water allowing it to enter smaller gaps more quickly making it more efficient at getting to the dirt. FL detergents produce less suds so they are formulated with higher efficiency ingredients to compensate for the lack of sudsing power.

The FL cycle produces suds because it traps more air when the wash falls from the top of the cylinder. If there is too much sudsing then the foam can be forced up into parts of the FL machine that are not intended to be wet. If you compare various FL machines you should be able to see that some are sealed better than others. I've seen cheap FL machines that would be very vulnerable to sudsing above the centre of the cylinder. TL machines are less likely to generate enough suds to cause the same sort of problem because they don't trap air in the same way.

Much of the dirt+dust+hair+etc in a wash can be removed by turbulence. If there was no turbulence then most of the dirt that would be removed would be water-soluble dirt. Non water-soluble dirt (grease, oil, fat) requires detergent to be agitated to produce enough force to shake the grease loose. The detergent compound has one end that attaches to the grease and the other end that attaches to water molecules. It's easy to test what happens if you have no water movement to confirm this for yourself.

Unless you change the detergent concentration by an order of magnitude the amount of detergent used is not that dependent upon the amount of water. The motion in the wash cycle circulates all the water+detergent around all the dirt. Provided there is lots of movement in the wash, the concentration of detergent makes little difference except where the amount of grease gets closer to the cleaning capacity of the detergent. In general, if you can get by with less detergent for the FL then the same will apply to the TL which usually uses more vigorous turbulence than the FL. That is why FL are generally more gentle on the clothes and use longer wash cycles.

khull

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#804413 23-Apr-2013 16:59

As a matter of preference I'd never buy a top loader for reasons already mentioned

- if you have back pain, a top loader requires you to bend over which is not ideal
- less space required as you do not need to mount a dryer
- more gentle at cleaning clothes (falling action) without the shearing action and in some cases they clean more effectively with less chemicals
- you can usually do more clothes in 1 load compared to a top loader

Loismustdye

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#805651 25-Apr-2013 23:44

We've recently bought a new machine and went for a top loader.
Primarily due to the fact that my wife has a degenerative disease in her spine which makes it difficult for her to bend down to a front loader, and the newer top loaders for her were higher up and produced far less strain on her back (note, I do do the washing as well and do not leave it all to my wife :-) ).
We've found the new washer quiet, quick and very good at cleaning our clothes etc. The machine dissolves the powder first before adding it to the load of washing, and we have had no issues with soap residue or similar after a load is done.
That and it was a fair bit cheaper than the equivalent FL washer. :-)

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#805674 26-Apr-2013 06:40

F&P?

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