Washing machine


Washing Machines

You can almost say that washing machines are the best home appliances you can buy although they don’t do dish washing or mopping your floor. However, what they do is take off some stress, mental as well as physical type, and make you walk on the streets with head held high.

washing machine

How Are Washing Machines Useful?

Start answering this question in reverse chronological way. You would either wash clothes by hand or get it dry-washed. I don’t think the former would fit-in in any way in the modern day living when no one has time and patience for mundane things.

Over and above, there is always the risk of damaging the fineries of delicate fabric; not to mention the fact that washing exquisitely embroidered designer wear is by far the last thing you would like how your clothes are treated. Forget the dry-washing for the moment, you will either way use a washing machine, no matter you do it at home or at a neighborhood laundry.

Washing machines have come a long way since 1930 when electricity became a thing of common place; they have undergone several phase changes before they evolved into their present selves. Let us list out the uses of washing machines:

  1. Washing machines are useful in reducing the human labor required to wash clothes
  2. They are safe on clothes regardless of the type of fabric
  3. They provide consistently better wash quality
  4. Better rinse and removal of soap and dirty water after the wash
  5. Washing machines save time by relieving you to look after other routines
  6. Delicate and non intrusive handling of clothes, coupled with spin drying which removes dirty and soap water better stretches the life of clothes

Now, we can revert to answering why washing machines are better choices than dry washing. Unlike dry washing, machine washing doesn’t make use of chemicals (although organic chemicals are not harsh in the short run) which can potentially be dangerous to the wearers, leave aside their effects on fabric colors and textures etc.

Types of Washing Machines

Knowledge of types of washing machines can potentially make a reasonable difference to your choice of washing machine when you are on the threshold of buying one. At the top of the pyramid, there are only two types of washing machines and almost all available machines fall into either one of these.

  1. Top loading washing machines
  2. Front loading washing machines

Before getting any further, let us get the truth about this fundamental difference between the two types. The top loading washing machines aren’t as popular in Europe as they are in the rest of the world and particularly so in the USA for the simple but inadvertent reason that European homes, which are generally smaller with still smaller kitchens tend to use a front loader as a top-loader would require greater headroom over the machine to be able to use it comfortably.

Any other arguments about performance difference have been quashed by scientific studies which establish parity in terms of wash quality, time taken and power consumption. However, the tower type agitators in either type of machines are now replaced by disk agitators.

If there are other types of washing machines then, they are:

  1. Commercial washing machines
  2. Industrial washing machines

Commercial machines are rather built for functionality, so the aesthetics get second preference here. Commercial types are usually quite large in size and have front covers. Keeping in view their constant exposure to wetness, their bodies are invariably built in stainless steel. Self service laundromats let customers operate machines which call for rugged construction.

Some commercial washing machines feature automatic chemical injection into wash tubs at preset times for different wash cycles to relieve attendants from constantly messing up with measuring and mixing of chemicals precisely. Industrial washing machines are machines of enormous capacities of up to 150kgs of clothes every cycle.

Household automatic washing machines take care of washing and drying cycles, water intake and shut-off at predetermined times and quantities.

Washing Machine Accessories

Accessories with any machines enhance their utility and make life better. There is a long list of washing machine accessories you can purchase. Let us look at the most popular ones here.

  1. Washing machine box or outlet box. You can purchase a box for as low as US$10 or high as $50 (fire wall mounting) depending on installation conditions. Boxes are also available with waste outlet however the typical uses of these are quick and safe access to supply and shut off control.
  2. Washing machine hoses. Take care to watch the sizes when you buy them for they come in different sizes depending on inlet and outlet on the machine and your supply tap. However, wrong sizes purchased should not cause lots of worry as you can adapters in between to make suitable.
  3. Flood-stop automatic valves. Flood stop valves may be used in semi-automatic washing machines where automatic shut off valves aren’t provided by default. When the flood stop valve activates, a buzzer also goes off to alert you. These are independently energized by ac power and are a bit complex to handle unless you are trained specifically.
  4. Laundry bags. Generally speaking, laundry bags are used to collect clothes overnight just like laundry boxes. However, net laundry bags are different and used to hold small and delicate fabrics separately within a washing machine to prevent them from being sucked into the system or prevent from stumbling over around the door uselessly.
  5. Roller-stand for washing machines. Extremely useful for mobility but take care to buy them with rubber soled or bakelite wheels to prevent damage to floor.

How to Choose Washing Machines

The best guide to choosing washing machines is to go by intuition and the fact that what are you really expected to do with them. Nevertheless, it pays to keep in mind that washing machines don’t last as many years as they did and it costs expensively to fix them. However not all machines are built poor, you have to be diligent enough in your choice. Here are a few practical tips to choose washing machines.

  1. High price tag is no indication/guarantee of quality assurance while the contrary may be true as you can’t produce good quality at very low prices. Cost of production has gone up exorbitantly in recent years driving the product price higher.
  2. Reputation of yesteryears is not dependable either in certain cases as many reputed companies are sold out to inexperienced managements which want to ride on reputation alone.
  3. Although it is not possible to check the internals at a showroom, you can try to judge the machine by ascertaining whether the components used are from reputed venders and whether they posses necessary certifications including CE and/or ISO etc. The argument here is better components finally make up a good machine.
  4. On site warranty and service are two critical issues. It is impractical to transport the machine to the service station for every small repair despite replaceable components being under warranty. Get clarity on clauses/conditions of warranty. Secondly, longer the warranty the better.
  5. Size does matter. But don’t just go by the external space occupied; instead look at the ratio of external dimension to the weight of clothes it can take per wash. Smaller the ration the better. Also lower power and water consumption, cheap and easy availability of accessories must concern you.
  6. Top model versus basic model. Extra features, user friendliness and more automation in terms of operation are what you get in top model. If you can’t manually attend to the number of wash and rinse cycles with interspersed water fill and drains, you may go for top model but get prepared to spend upto $200 extra. But remember, more the sophistication more are the chances of failure.
  7. Never forget to take advises from friends/relatives to decide upon a brand and model. Let your constraints like space at home, water and power consumptions distance from service point have their say in decision making. Compare cost for similar and same models from various shops. Try to strike a balance between cost and quality.

Where to Buy a Good Washing Machine

This may appear to be a funny question to someone reading this for fun but ask the common man who is desperately looking for washing machines; he will, in all likelihood, be a picture of confusions about this issue. Truly, you can’t buy something worth $600- $900 from just about any place you are not comfortable with.

Reputation of the shop is critical as is the point whether the service workshop attached to it. Besides caring for their reputation, these shops almost invariably sell relatively new goods unlike those which offer discount sale much after Christmas is over. Stock clearance sale only means outdated models and long unused, perhaps rusted machine. Again, your friends have a role to play here along side local classifieds, user review websites etc.