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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

While old appliances have good features, LG and Samsung have earned a reputation of being bad. Whirlpool and GE still make some good stuff and they still sell parts. The reason you keep the old washer is the new versions legally cannot use as much water, and so they don't clean as well.

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Oh you can buy the old wasteful washers if you still want them. They just don't got any EnergyStar ratings (in fact, people have been shopping around for "lack of EnergyStar" to find those old wasteful washers).

But "they don't clean as well" is a bit of a myth. More water requires more soap, and as it turns out, shuffling clothes around with *proportionally more soap* and *less water* leads to better cleanliness for the vast majority of stains.

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Think about it: if my washer only uses 1 gallon of water, but yours uses 5 gallons of water, your soap is 5x less effective than my same soap.

Its not the "water" that cleans, its the soap after all. With one exception: caked on mud prefers water over all other solvents.

But with regards to blood, sweat, grapes, tomatoes, and "typical" stains, its not the "water" that does anything. Its the soap. See ConsumerReports.org testing (ketchup tests and whatnot), as well as efficiency numbers that they've tested.

its the mix of water and soap. There is a fix amount of soap per liter water and kg of clothes. so its both

Water is called the "universal solvent" for a reason. We use soap for the exceptions, but water still does the bulk of the removal of things you don't want (dirt, salt), while soap handles the rest (generally oil based stains)

Except the #1 thing you are washing off is the natural oils from human skin and sweat.

And #2 and #3 are the oils in food (chocolate, grease, wine, and other food products) and then the oils from grass / outdoors.

Literally the only thing that water helps with is soil / dirt. Outside of that, the washing machine should be designed to use the minimum amount of water needed to activate the soap, the actual cleaner.

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