Saturday, August 23, 2014

Tricking your HE washing machine to add more water

Since we got the Whirlpool 5810 laundry suite I have been preoccupied with figuring out how the machine works so I can improve its performance. The main issue is a abysmal water use that is not enough to even wet all the laundry.

The washer figures out the amount of laundry by spinning it and sensing how long it would spin given a measured burst of energy. It also adds water and tumbles the laundry until most water is absorbed. Then based on amount of absorbed water it would add some more water.
To trick the washer some people online recommend adding old towels to the load. My solution is much simpler - you add 2,4 or 6 plastic bottles filled with water. Just remove the labels and clean up the glue first. You need to add the bottles around the perimeter spacing them equally so the balance is preserved. After the sensing cycle ends, you should remove the bottles so they do not damage your laundry. This works very well with Whirlpool 5810 machine and Deep Water Wash cycle. The laundry is just submerged and comes out clean.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The 'green' agenda is to use less.

Repeat quickly for clarity

use less
use-less

USELESS


Those who promote it are feck less.

Anonymous said...

Seems adding magnets might be easier unless the drum is incompatible with this ancient tech.

Consider wheel balancing on a car (evil consumer of more evil fossil fuels -- biochemical solar energy). Permanently affixing slim weights seems less hassle than loading unloading prior to loading/unloading those to be washed.