At the very least, it is good Blog fodder. Last Friday, I was asked this question three times (two are a coincidence, three is a trend).
Question 1: Do front loaders smell? The answer is not now. One of the original and most famous, the infamous Maytag Neptune, had a gap between the inner and outer tub. Water would be left between the two and fester, thus creating the odor, which arguably destroyed the company. This years models are gasket-ed to prevent said odor. Have a look:
Question 2: How do I prevent wrinkles?
Yes, your clothes will wrinkle with a front load. There is a simple reason. The spin speed on a front load averages 1200 RPM, which is roughly 3 times your top load. This is great for water extraction and less dry time, but will cause wrinkling.
The simple solution is fabric softener (as discovered by Dennis MacDonald) Try a capful in your next wash. We sell the Miele, but there are others.
One last comment: Consider an efficient washer. It will have up to twice the capacity and use half the electricity and a third the water. A conservative annual savings is $150...a least.
Regarding the Maytag Neptune...
ReplyDeleteThere were a couple of other issues with the earlier Neptunes besides the mold smell... The first being the door latch wax motor failure, which burns the R11 resistor and Q6 triac on the machine control board. Most Neptunes with the timer knob shipped with the faulty wax motor, see www.neptunehelpsong.com for a video that explains the issue.
The next reliability issue was to motor and motor control board reliability. Maytag corrected this issue with the 12002039 motor conversion kit where they redesigned the both the motor and motor control board. These have proven to be much more reliable than the originals. See http://www.neptunehelp.com. In addition, the MAH3000AWW's with the serial numbers starting with 10-25 have (2) more wax motors in the soap dispenser that control the bleach and softener. The new 12002535 wax motor design has the black color actuator tip where the faulty design has the brownish color actuator tip. I would recommend you replacing any wax motors with the brownish color actuator tips a.s.a.p.
Some of the smelly mold issues were from the rubber door boot. The MAH3000 and some of the MAH4000's did not have a door boot drain so the water would sit in there and colonize mold days after the last load.
The newer Neptunes had a drain hose installed to allow the water to drain back into the outer tub which helped. If you have the MAH3000 or MAH4000 without the drain hose you can purchase the new door boot (w/drain) and a door boot hose kit to retrofit your machine at http://www.neptunehelp.com.