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Thread Number: 55293
American Top Loading Washing Machines |
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Post# 776913 , Reply# 1 8/12/2014 at 12:44 (3,537 days old) by henene4  (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany)) |
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I shortly searched all of them and the Whirlpools are most likely the same modell, one just rebaged, at least the data is somewhat simmilar. They Maytag shoul be Whirlpool made as well, AFAIK. The Huebsch and the Speed Queen are the same as well if I am not totaly wrong. Investing this amount of money, I'd go with either SQ of Huebsch, depending on which of both is cheaper. | ||
| Post# 776914 , Reply# 2 8/12/2014 at 12:47 (3,537 days old) by washman (o) | ||
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get the Speed Queen and enjoy. | ||
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Post# 778980 , Reply# 5 8/24/2014 at 05:09 (3,526 days old) by marky_mark (From Liverpool. Now living in Palm Springs and Dublin) |
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Hi Paul.
Hopefully I can give you some information that might help you. I am from the UK but I did live in Arizona for a year in 3 different houses. So I used 3 different types of washing machines. One of them was a Whirlpool pretty much the same as the one you are considering. I found that the Whirlpool had had an Energy Star makeover. I had to set the rinse selector to "fabric softener added" for it to do a deep-fill rinse. Otherwise it would rotate the tub slowly while filling about a quarter full with water, then draining with no agitation. Selecting "fabric softener added" along with second rinse would only do the first rinse as a deep fill and the second rinse would be as previously described unless using "Super Wash" in which case they were both deep fill. Also the temperatures were interesting -- I measured them. Options were cold, cool, warm and hot. I found that if using "super wash" then the hot temp was 50 °C. If the incoming hot water was any hotter then it would add cold and would not go over 50° unless you shut off the cold water valve. Warm was 40 °C. I don't know about cool and cold. However if using the regular wash cycle (not Super Wash) then hot was 40° and warm was basically cold (30° or probably less). Cycle times on this machine were longer than traditional American TLs. I found that Super Wash with a second rinse was close to 90 minutes. The actual wash portion was 20 minutes of agitation. The other hour or so was filling, draining, rinsing, spinning etc. This machine seemed to fill strangely slowly like the value was partially closed and would take about 8 minutes or more to fill up, but water pressure/flow at the sink was normal. But that could have just been this machine/house. You could use the regular cycle (select HOT to achieve WARM 40 °C) and set the rinse selector to "softener added" and you will get one deep fill rinse. This cycle might be about an hour or so. Also, this machine didn't work like a traditional American TL with the transmission, clutch and brake. There was no brake. The lid locked until the drum coasted to a halt. The motor basically just pulls the agitator back and forth as the motor continuously reverses direction. This sounds quite different to the traditional type were the motor runs constantly and the agitator's direction is reversed through the transmission. Having said all that, results were pretty good. And the temperatures were consistent, thanks to its ATC. So if you are just interested in the end result, then the laundry will probably come out pretty similar to laundry washed in the Speed Queen. But personally if I wanted an “American” TL then I would be a little disappointed with this machine because it has lost its “Americanness”. I don’t know specifically about the Speed Queen model you are referring to, but if it’s anything like the American AWN542 then I would DEFINITELY go with the Speed Queen. Although the AWN542 has had its max fill water level reduced slightly, that can easily be “corrected”! And you check the ratio of hot & cold water going in on “Warm” to make sure you get the desired temperature, even if that means enlarging its hot fill valve. The Speed Queen should also be made very solidly and will work the same as a traditional American TL (if it’s the same as the USA models). Let us know what you decide to do! Mark | ||
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Post# 779647 , Reply# 9 8/27/2014 at 05:40 (3,522 days old) by marky_mark (From Liverpool. Now living in Palm Springs and Dublin) |
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Although the majority of homes in the UK do not have a water meter -- I'm guessing you do? Even so, without a second rinse the machine will probably use about 140 litres per cycle. Check your water bill. Do you pay a couple of pounds per cubic metre? If so, 0.140 cubic metres per cycle will probably cost you somewhere around £0.30 per cycle in water. Is your hot water heated by gas? If so, although the machine will probably use about 3 or 4 times as much water for the actual wash portion of the cycle (somewhere around 80 litres?), the cost to heat that much water to 40 degrees by gas will not be too different to heating 20 litres in a Euro FL machine. Yes the TL will still cost more to run but do you mind it costing a few more pounds per month?
I suspect the Speed Queen will not have ATC (automatic temperature control) and may only have COLD, WARM and HOT. You may find that HOT fills only with hot water and WARM fills with a mixture. You could try playing around with the valves to get the fill ratio of cold & hot to achieve the "warm" temp you prefer. I found that if I set the machine to HOT and it filled only with hot water, the temperature of the wash water in the machine was only a couple of degrees lower than the temperature of the water coming out of the tap. It fills with so much water that it doesn't cool off too much. Whereas if a Euro FL fills with hot water, the temperature will drop a lot as heat is absorbed from the small quantity of water. I also had a Maytag Neptune FL in the States without a heater. This was a problem but I still managed to achieve good results just by understanding its limitations and adapting. As for washing whites as 60 degrees....yes I wash mine at 60 and sometimes at 90. But when I lived in the USA with a toploader I had to adapt. Generally I found that normally using Tide Vivid White and Bright with Bleach and a booster pac worked well most of the time when set to hot. Occasionally I would add chlorine bleach too. While living in Arizona, friend of mine (also from the UK) said that his white shirts were all starting to turn yellow and looked horrendous with stains under the arms. He just couldn't get them clean in a toploader. I told him to bring the shirts round to my house. I turned up the water heater and set the old Maytag toploader to HOT. I measured the temperature in the tub, it was 66 degrees. I started washing the shirts with Tide and a booster pac. I stopped the machine a couple of times during the wash to allow them to soak. Then after they had been washing/soaking for about 90 minutes I added chlorine bleach and allowed the wash to continue on and finish with an extra rinse. The shirts came out completely perfect. He was amazed how bright and white they were! Just as good as in a Euro FL machine. Although in a Euro machine we are used to just tossing in the clothes and expecting them to come out 100% perfect completely automatically after a 2-hour cycle. In an American TL with a 30-minute cycle, you may find you have to do some pre-treating etc., but I believe you can still achieve good results if you adapt. On the Clorox website they tell you how to check if clothes with colour can be bleached -- they give you a colourfastness test. So don't worry about occasionally bleaching whites that have some colour. This advise is not really seen in the UK as we don't need to use bleach on laundry normally. Hope this helps!!!! Mark | ||
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