June 17, 2010

The New, Goofy Washing Machine.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Jim @ 9:13 pm

When we bought the House by the Parkway (South), we bought a new washing machine. Truth is, there was nothing wrong with the washing machine at the House By The Parkway (North), but “new” seemed to be the watchword of the day. Being a Laundry Guy, I take a special interest in this particular appliance.

When shopping for the machine,, I checked out the front loaders that people seem to like these days, but I didn’t want one. To me, it seemed like a pain in the ass to load and unload. Besides, the first washing machine we had in the fifties was a front loader, so, for me, there was nothing novel or hip about them. I am a top loader kinda guy.

So, we bought a top loader. Here is a cell phone picture.

Note that it has a window in the lid/door, which permits one to actually watch the clothes being washed. This is a good thing for retired folks. Watching the washing machine beats most television. As you can see from this picture, the controls look pretty straightforward, no? Well, don’t be fooled. This thing has all sorts of bells and whistles on it (Gah!) and, like the telephone and DVR, it comes with a farookin’ manual that requires some serious study.

To give you a feel of how this seemingly benign washing machine looks when it is doing its thing, I took a picture with the lights out in the room Admittedly, it is a shitty picture, but you get the idea that this baby is more than just a knob and a button. It looks more like the control panel on the space shuttle.

Check out all those lights. I keep looking for one that tells me if the landing gear is down.

All the blinding lights are not what makes it goofy. Take a look at the inside of the machine (the tub).

What’s missing?

Yes, there is no agitator. WTF? It’s just a bigass tub. You just toss the clothes into the tub, and put the detergent in the dispenser (NOT on the clothes, for chrissakes – according to the manual) and start her up. Then comes the goofy part. In all my other washing machines, the tub fills with water and, once the tub is filled and the clothes are floating around in soapy water, the cycle (wash, rinse, spin blah blah) starts.

Not so with this goofy machine, which works as follows:

Put clothes in tub.

Add detergent to dispenser.

Press “start”

About a cup or so of water (yes, a cup) squirts on the clothes, and then it the tub spins. WTF?

It stops after about ten seconds or so, then it squirts about another cup of on the clothes, and it spins again!

It does this a few more times before it begins to act like a regular washing machine, but even at that, it does some goofy tub gyrations, presumably owing to the lack of an agitator. I’ll be damned if I can figure out how it manages to get clothes clean, but it does.

Then, there is the new dryer, but that’s a story for another day.

Sometimes it’s not easy being a Laundry Guy.

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