From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: alt.energy.homepower
Subject: Re: Front Loading Washer KillaWatt readings?
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:02:41 -0400
Message-ID: <63c7f3dm7fqf4bml178cgjcvtm3o7unsv6@4ax.com>

On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:37:34 -0700, "Bob F" <bobnospam@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>"Neon John" <no@never.com> wrote in message
>news:i0unc39p2o9euuro9qje7unrki3j6fuvlo@4ax.com...
>
>> Even at your outrageous water rate, it's going to take a LOT of loads to
>> offset the
>> cost of that front loader.  Playing with some numbers.
>>
>> Nah, I think I'll stick to my old top loaders.
>>
>
>The other thing I've heard is that clothing lasts A LOT longer with the front
>loaders. If true, that would help a lot.

Based both on personal experience and some interesting reading I'm currently doing, I
doubt it.  I don't doubt that tumbling is gentler than agitating but I doubt that the
effect is great.

The pants I have on (blue twill work uniform pants) are over 10 years old.  The color
is a bit faded but they're still hole-free, show almost no wear at the high friction
points and still look nice.  Ditto the shirts that go with them.

The interesting reading is a 687 page (!) handbook titled "Liquid Detergents, 2nd
Ed", K. Lai, CRC press, 2006.  Could you imagine ever being able to write 687 pages
about detergents?  I couldn't either.  I've learned a LOT.  Laundry detergents are
responsible for almost all the service improvements in modern cloths.  Wear,
color-fastness, color brightness, resistance to wrinkles, all are primarily the
result of ingredients in laundry detergents.

They even have an additive that digests off the thread that holds those annoying
"wear pills" onto cloth, especially on cotton.  I recall years ago my wife using a
razor to shave off those pills.  I attributed their disappearance to better cloth
materials and manufacturing.  Not so!  Same with color-fastness.  I figured that
better dyes accounted for being able to toss all sorts of colors in the same load.
Nope, detergent additives.

Maybe I'll write a "reader's digest" summary of this tome when I get finished with
it.

John