I spent most of the morning washing and decided to use the 55 Westinghouse Combo WD-2 and Kirkland Signature detergent which is labeled as HE compatible. Well, you can see the results with a load of towels. This is after it drained the wash water, or tried to!.

And the first rinse...

Second rinse...

I finally gave up and after the final 180 RPM spin (yeah, really 180 RPM!) I took them to the 58 Frigidaire for two more rinses. Adding Downy didn't work, allowing them to rest and the suds fall apart worked until I turned the machine back on. I should have followed the sticker by the door that instructs the owner to use only AD, Dash or Vim for best results. Should I send these pics to Costco and complain?

The product is unusable as labeled, and you should at least get a refund.

Besides, they should not be selling this as an HE product. Whether their supplier screwed up or they did, it needs to be rectified because thousands of other consumers will have the same problem.

Hi Greg. I find that Tide HE liquid is the best for low sudsing combined with good cleaning ability. When I use Mexican detergent (Viva) which can foam quite a bit, I add carpet defoamer which I get at the chemical store in town. It kills all the suds immediately.


Ross

Greg, you've mentioned you have mechanically softened water, as do I; I find Tide HE to be too sudsy---not necessarily in the wash, but it is tenacious throughout the rinse cycles.

I'm tellin' ya: SA8, or if you're really feel like blowing the bank account, UK Persil (both powedered) are the way to go for cleaner rinses in front-loaders.

By the way, hell of a suds cake, there, bud!

:)

What would have happened had the machine gone into the dry cycle? That's always been my fear with combos, especially with the old GE's that had no window. Can you imagine all those suds baking into the clothes and the machine itself?

;'D

I can't imagine you even THINKING about putting towels in there, much less doing it!!

I know that this is not environmentally correct, but back when they banned Phosphates in laundry detergent, my mother used to supplement the laundry wash with 1/4 cup Cascade powder(dishwasher detergent is still allowed to have phospates) on hard to clean laundry and to kill suds, she hated suds. Phosphates clean without suds and soften the water.

Maybe if you only used it occassionally, it could clean towels, which really suds up, and not require such rinsing wasting water.

Wow, so much for low sudsing huh?

I agree you should complain, and perhaps get a refund from Costco. It was advertised as low sudsing, and you used it carefully according to it's intended purpose, resulting in a sudsy mess. By all means, if that is what you want to do, go for it.

Good Luck,
James

You could invoke the Uniform Commercial Code and get them for something that was "unmerchantable for its intended use"...

I've used Sears Ultra Plus powder detergent for 30 years. Low sudsing. Works great in top loader or front loader. Cleans well. Smells fresh.

Jerry Gay

Buy a box of Fab "Rain Forest" Powder and call it a day. I personally don't care for the Kirkland Powder Detergent. Yes, you should most definately send those pics in and ask for a refund!

So there is actually articles of clothing in there?

ITCHY!

Ben

they refund anything. surprised about the suds, though.. ive used the liquid kirkland HE and it works great in my frontloader.. also, this detergent is rated one of the best in the comsumer mags.

If you make the knobs into eyes, it looks like your machine is vomiting. I suppose it is.

Here are the instructions on the box, notice it tells you to use MORE detergent for HE machines. I'm not too worried about a refund, it works just fine in a top-loader and although I hadn't tried it in a front-load washer, the Calypso was very unhappy with this formula and I figured this would happen in the Westy. I have lots of HE detergents around here from all over the world but what surprised me was that the suds didn't dissipate after the wash - they were pretty stubborn, even after a proper spin and rinse in the Unimatic. Oh well, the front of the machine is clean, as is the floor around it so it wasn't a total tragedy!

Yah, I complained about the Kirkland "HE Compatible" line of laundry detergents when they first came out a couple of years ago. Not only are they too high sudsing to be suitable for HE washers, but they also have ass-backwards dosing instructions. Someone up there in Kirkland, Washington didn't do their homework.

Sears Ultra HE is a good choice - and their Oxyclean boosted product is even lower sudsing than their other formulations.

Not real fond of Tide HE here - too much OBA's, it tends to make dark colors look faded. The Sears product have a lot less OBA's (confirmed by Consumer Reports).

For bath towels, I like Safeway Select HE free liquid. Low sudsing, and leaves towels relatively soft. Another good choice for bath towels is regular Persil powder. Also leaves towels relatively soft.

I sent this note to Costco, via email, just now:

Hi. Please don't get me wrong. I love Costco. Generally high quality products and often the lowest prices around.

However, I must take you to task over your line of "HE Compatible" laundry detergents.

I have tried both the powder and liquid versions of your HE Compatible laundry detergent. In both cases I have found the products to product too much suds in my front loader to be effective for cleaning. In order to keep the suds level down, I have to add so little product that it doesn't have enough concentration to clean properly.

To make matters worse, the dosage instructions on your packaging are backwards. The instructions say to add more product for HE washers than for standard washers. In reality, one should almost always add less product for HE washers than for standard washers, in order to keep sudsing under control.

I would like to suggest that you go back to your supplier and work with them to produce a true HE laundry detergent, and to edit the dosage instructions on the packaging accordingly.

Thanks!

Good note - but did you send the picture(s) too?

Here is one during the wash that I forgot to post yesterday. Good thing I have it on my laptop to post from Robert's driveway!

IMO those "HE" detergents are just a high-priced rip off.

I wonder why Costco does not market the "Institutional" stuff in the plastic bucket, to those who need really low-sudsing performance?

Oh, and don't forget FAB!

Funny thing, Lightedcontrols was with us all day and evening yesterday so I know she had nothing to do with that sudz-lock----but it sure has her signature all over it----hmmmmm------was the machine also seriously overloaded?

I used Costco's on-line feedback web page, which I don't think allows for inclusion of attachments or photos.

But if they respond via email, I could send them your photo, with your permission.

I did a little custom detergent mixing yesterday. I split my towel load in two, including a thick terry bathrobe in one of the loads.

For the experiment, I used 2 oz of an STPP-silicate mixture, and 1 tsp of liquid surfactant NP-9. This worked well for the first load - minimal sudsing and good results.

Used the same dosing for the second load, but something went really wrong. I happened to look at the control panel mid-way and noticed it had gone into a suds-rinse mode before the wash cycle was over. Opened the door, and suds were 3/4 of the way up the drum. But luckily the washer had already drained most of the water so the suds were relatively dry and stiff, and didn't flow out of the aperature. I just let the machine do its thing and the final results were good as well.

NP-9 is a surfactant that was given to me by the chemical supply warehouse where I bought a lot of STPP a few years back. I hadn't used it much until now, and wanted to see if eliminating sodium carbonate from the mix, using 90%STPP and 10% sodium silicate instead, would result in softer terry cloth.

The verdict: not bad. Definitely softer than a carbonate laced powder would result in. Not quite as soft as a good liquid, like Safeway Ultra 2x free HE. Somewhere in between. Unfortunately I don't have a "softness meter" so the results are necessarily subjective and partly based on memory.

Don't know why the second load oversudsed, though. Maybe the bathrobe in the first load was dirty enough, or once treated with fabric softener, so that it suppressed the suds. Maybe there was excess residual detergent on some of the towels in the second load. I know that if I repeat this particular formulation I'll only add the STPP at first, then check the suds level, and then add 1/2 tsp of the surfactant and check the suds level again, adding more if needed to achieve light sudsing.

Oh, yah, I have a whole gallon of the NP-9, plenty for a lot of experiments ;-)

We've all been in situations where we are completely in the dark about something painfully obvious to someone else. Every one here knows that a higher dose of soap for an HE is ludicrous beyond belief. How did a mistake that grand ever get so far, i.e., so far up the editorial food chain-- and worse !--remain there all these years? Boggles de mind!

I have a five gallon pail of Kirkland soap and after a couple of loads in the 118, a FL, a Maytag wringer and a regular TL, I refuse to use it for anything other than mopping the floor in the wash studio!

It not only creates way too many suds but in my estimation it also does a very inferior job of cleaning.

Dick

I think there are two different Kirkland detergent pails. The round five gallon bucket is high sudsing. The square "institutional" bucket is supposed to be low sudsing.

However, I haven't tried either. Both are mostly sodium carbonate - washing soda, with no enzymes. Which explains their mediocre performance.

Is this the institutional bucket that is supposedly 'low sudsing'????

Next time this happens, simply add a tablespoon or less of any oil. Baby oil, canola, carpet detergent defoamer (silicone), it does not matter. All oils are defoaming agents (as any one who has whipped egg whites knows), and will cause the suds to go away. Pure soap is tricky as if the water is very soft, soap may initially reduce sudsing, but the foam will soon come back as the soap mixes with the wash bath. Best to add enough soap to kill the suds,then allow the machine to drain.

The oil trick was given to me when we got our first front loader and used more Tide HE, (like a fool used the entire sample packet as per the directions), and soon enough had enough foam to make a "Bobby Brady" moment. Quick call to our appliance repair guy gave us the oil trick, and it worked a treat.

L.

I have used a couple of the pails from Costco. I didn't find it particularly low-sudsing, in fact, the Duet cringes & shudders when it hears the lid being peeled off that bucket. I used it for rags, and heavily soiled things. I can spike that with ammonia or bleach(es) and use it in very hot water and don't have to feel guilty about being the cause of an enzyme massacre. It certainly has it's place in the "Soap Chest" of my laundry days.

Ahem,

Only the finest Extra Virgin First Cold Press Organic Olive Oil for my washers, thank you very much...

And it had better be Chateau Froufrou Napa Valley Special Reserve pressing...

Seriously, good suggestion. I'd probably use a bland odorless colorless oil like safflower, canola. Not sure if the polyunsaturated nature of most veggie oils is a plus or minus. I don't think fine linens will care if it's Omega-3 or whatever, though.

Gary - yeah, that's the bucket I was thinking of. Have you found it to be high sudsing? If so, D'oh!

Greg,

I have a 40 lb bucket of low sudsing very plain powder I got from Smart and Final nearly six years ago. I use it on the driveway. It does say it's low sudsing, right there on the pail.

One of these days I'm gonna try spiking it with STPP and see how it does in one of the front loaders.

Yes, much more so than the Sears detergent.

Love the Sears detergent...cleans well and hardly any suds~!

Pine oil does well to kill suds too.

De-sudser
Disinfectant
Spiritual cleanser!

Now the really bad thing about this is that detergent solution has leaked into the heater box. This is what caused WH combos to rust out because the heater is below the drum. The alkaline-based detergents dried and attacked the finish in the heater box. Then, when the damper and gasket on the top of the heater box just below that inlet where the air blows into the drum became brittle from the heat, every splash of water that fell through wound up leaking through the rusted heater box and onto the floor.

Laundress, it is very difficult to add oil to an oversudsed WH combo because it has no dispensers or other openings to add washing products. If you shut if off and wait 5 minutes, enough of the water will drain out of the suds that you can quickly open the door and give the suds a fast spray of PAM and then wait while that takes down the suds.

Oh, no leaking in the heater box here - I rebuilt all that when the combo came. The original rubber seal was completely crisped and half gone. I replaced it with an Oreck vacuum cleaner belt and hi-temp gasket silicone. I pulled the front panel after the suds to see if there were any drips from the heater box and it was all completely dry. What a horrible design that was - I can see why they recalled them all!

Mayhaps it would help to keep a bottle of carpet defoamer on hand, and dose a small amount per wash as insurance. Stuff works wonders in preventing sudsing/knocking down suds.

You may also try quickly opening the door and chucking one or more of those anti-gas softgels into the machine. Gas-X and the generic knock-offs are a type of silicone.

What you also could do is pour some oil on a clean washcloth or rag, and chuck it into the machine. This does work as noticed when laundering lots of washcloths, there is absoultely no suds, even with Tide with Bleach. Didn't make the connection at first then realised the cloths contained soap from use while bathing, and that soap residue was keeping the suds down. Also when I knocked over a bottle of carpet defoamer, used a Handi-wipe to clean up the spill, then tried to wash out the cloth in the slop sink. No matter how much dish detergent I used, there were NO suds.


L.

Isnt oil a deadly enemy of a washers rubber parts ?

Hell, just add a cap of fabric softener. Always does the trick, and it smells nice!!

The directions on the Kirkland box are probably written for modern front loaders, that are most likely twice the capacity of the Westinghouse. If you followed their dosing directions, maybe it was just too much detergent? It seems like an awful lot of an HE detergent....just a thought.

Is that really the top spin speed of this machine? The clothes must still be dripping wet after that.

Yes, IIRC Bendix owned all the patents for the needed suspension systems (needed to spin faster without a bolt-down) at the time.

Greg do I win the prize? *LOL* Learning vicariously from all of you !

Although the SA-8 was even a little too high suds even for my Miele. I have to run a full load with it. The stuff works good. I am not much of a Tide fan, at my Cosco they sell the Liquid Tide, and I am not at all tempted. I have heard from friends that it is good for fading clothes badly. I have used one less expensive alternative that works very well, and that is Faks detergent. It is not as good as Persil, it takes two scoops, does the job, and a 3 Kilo box is 12.95 at the European store on Hawthorne. I use it for the sheets and linnens from an Org that I wash for. The smell is quite nice, and there are no suds at all. I like that. Works great for the 190 washes. I would take it back to Cosco. That can't be good for the Berrings in your Gorgious from loader. I placed a link for the Faks if you were thinking about buying it. For the money, it is not bad stuff.

Just one word: Gosh! *jaws dropping* I can't believe how much that stuff has foamed!!! It took me a cup of dishwashing liquid to do that mess and it rinsed away as soon as the machine hit spin!!!

And only 180 rpm?!?!?! Wow! How long did it take to dry? I guess clothes were still dripping!

When I first got my Westinghouse space mates washer I was constantly over sudsing. Partially because everything had been washed in a top loader and there was residual soap that hadn't rinsed out completely. Plus, I had very soft water and at that time the only thing I would use was Tide or Oxydol. I can testify to how hard it is to get the suds out of one of these things once it's full...Thank god for that deep rinse!