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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

We bought a house, and the laundry machines did not convey with it. Feeling a bit tighter than usual, we bought a pair of older ones for $75 a piece from a local outfit that sells reused/unused building supplies.

Having endured precisely the phenomenon you're describing for the last decade, having a washer that reliably gets the job done in 45 minutes or less is pure bliss.

Yeah, it uses more water, but we're on a well and septic. My major complaint from an efficiency standpoint is that it doesn't spin out as much water as a modern machine. The dryer has to do more work accordingly.

Fortunately, we just had a nice day and put the clothesline up.

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It may not be as efficient but it won’t need replacement every 7 years. That alone makes up for it.

Plus it’s probably easy to repair. My Speed Queen is made of like 7 parts. Most people will have gone through 3 or 4 machines by the time mine is dead.

Most washing machines will use more $ in energy in their lifespan than they cost to buy. That means it is usually worth replacing an old but working one with an energy efficient one merely for the energy savings.

A modern EU machine will wash a large (10kg) load of clothes for 0.5 kwh of energy and 50 liters of water (13 gallons).

An old 1980's machine might use 4.5 kwh of electricity, and 180 liters of water.

I’m sure it’s just an example but being european I am surprised at the 10kg load. Most people I know hover around ~5-7 kg max capacity for their washing machines. They’re usually placed in bathrooms or kitchens since not a lot of people have space for a separate washing machine room since also not a lot of people have dryers in the EU (at least they’re not standard, they’re considered extra).

Not your point but just adding my two eurocents

Taking a random appliance vendor's list of machines, there are a good few 9 or 10kg ones, but 6-7kg is also common: https://powercity.ie/groups/view?grp=40&class=01 (the very most expensive one they sell does _18kg_; I had no idea that was a thing...)

It’s interesting because although not unimportant, the outcome I’m looking for when buying a washing machine is how well it cleans clothing. Of course price, speed, and efficiency cone into play. But I think many efficient machines do a poor job at cleaning.

Of course different people have different requirements. If you rarely have soiled clothing maybe it doesn’t matter. If you have kids and jobs/hobbies that soil clothing you may also have different expectations.

Also where you are in the world. In the USA energy is generally cheap and on many places water is plentiful. If I were in Germany where energy policy has been poorly managed I’d probably have to consider efficiency more.

> But I think many efficient machines do a poor job at cleaning.

Not in my experience. A good high efficiency front loader tends to get the clothes cleaner - and notably with much less wear than conventional top loaders. The money savings also come from clothing replacement as well.

Water use aside it's just better technology. Complexity is an issue, but I've had good luck by staying brands and models proven for reliability.

As long as we're swapping anecdotes, I spent a day cutting MDF for a project and came home just covered in fine brown dust. The place we rented before we moved had an LG HE front-loader.

My blue pants remained brown from the dust for a couple of cycles. My carpenter neighbor has had the same experience with HE machines and has gone to a Speed Queen top-loader. He finds it much more satisfactory as well.

You don't have to go by anecdotes, you can go by published testing then. Dust may be a special case, and perhaps certain occupations may be better off with a top loader for work clothes, but for everyday stains and body secretions front loaders work better and wear out clothes slower.

I'm not in the anti top-loader Speed Queen cult at all... but it is that on the internet, a cult (when I hear things like mold is "unavoidable", and basically you'd have to be an idiot to consider anything other than a Speed Queen top loader that is my conclusion) -- but most people are simply better served with a front loader.

The problem with front loaders, and it's a fatal flaw unfortunately, is they unavoidably have mold and mildew problems due to the design. This makes them an invalid option in my opinion as I don't want mold and mildew spores in my home. They also begin to stink and your clothing can pick it up over time as it gets worse.

The other problem is many top loaders today are garbage. In order to be effective they do need a good agitator and they do need use a lot of water. The water part doesn't really matter to me though as tap water is so cheap we're talking a few cents per load.

Also speed. A front loader takes a long time. A good top loader (like Speed Queen) is done in 30m.

> is they unavoidably have mold and mildew problems due to the design.

Keep the door open. The water evaporates. Never had a problem avoiding mold.

It’s more about residues that get left behind and trapped in the rubber gasket. Keeping a dour open, although helpful, simply isn’t enough. A big part of the problem is due to the limited water use. Things don’t fully rinse.

I don’t know, it’s a major problem that people report and I’ve experienced myself. There’s even a fan you can buy and put into the machine. But hey if you haven’t experienced problems then that’s great.

Using more water is a feature IMO. I want clean clothes. I don't care insane people decided to live ten million a city without enough water to use, there is more than enough where I live. Why should I be uselessly frugal with abundant resources and suffer as a result.

More water uses more energy to heat too. And the energy cost of heating water is much higher than even that of desalinating water.

A modern machine makes clothes just a little wet for the warm wash cycle. That detaches all the dirt and gets oils emulsified. Then later it rinses with lots of cold water. That gets you the best of both worlds - you still get really clean clothes, but only had to heat a small amount of water to do so.

More water is only a feature if you’re using stone age detergents. Modern detergents don’t benefit from more water, but they do benefit from better agitation.

Modern detergents use enzymes to break down dirt and material to bonds dirt to your clothes (like oils and fats), they need good agitation to physically separate the loosened material, where surfactants in the detergent can then bond to dirt and keep it suspended in the water. They’re so good, at keeping dirt in the water, that you just need enough water to saturate the clothes, and form a small amount of cleaning liquor. A drain and rinse cycle then completely removes the dirt from your clothes.

Adding more water makes the agitation far less efficient, because rather than being able to pick up and drop your clothes on to other clothes, or the hard surface of the wash drum, your clothes hit water first which cushions the impact. Resulting is less effective removal of dirt.

Finally modern detergents work best with plenty of time. The enzymes doing the heavy lifting don’t get consumed in the process, so the longer they’re in contact with your clothes, the more dirt they can break down. (Also worth mentioning enzymatic cleaners don’t damage most fabrics at all, because they’re carefully designed to only target dirt)

Using a lot of water doesn't really correlate with clean clothes. Actually, it may slightly negatively correlate; the biggest water users are old-style top loaders, and per Which, Consumer Reports et al, those are pretty consistently worse at actually _cleaning_ than either modern front load machines or modern high-efficiency top-loaders.

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