Another reason is they do a better job of washing clothes as they use more water. This is important for people that have kids, do cloth diapers, or are actually washing dirty/muddy clothes. They also don't have mold issues because of rubber gaskets and have been historically cheaper to maintain and repair.
The new top loaders, specifically Whirlpool made vertical modular washers are complete garbage. They break within 2-3 years of buying new. Whirlpool stopped making the direct drive top loading washers that everyone loved about 3 years ago. Now you can only buy them used, and I would highly recommend doing so if you need a good washer.
Front loading machines do spin the clothes a bit dryer, which saves on dry time, unless you hang dry, then it really doesn't make much difference. But they cost over twice as much and are about double the price when it comes to repairs. Hope that helps!
Here's a post I wrote up on the subject. http://recraigslist.com/2015/10/they-used-to-last-50-years/
This is no exaggeration. The one that broke for me was estimated by the technician to be 20 years old with the dryer he said was probably 30 years old. We'd kept them for years and years with no need for repairs. They did the job.
I told him in IT that complexity just made stuff break more often or take more work to fix. My prediction was that the old stuff was still more reliable & cheaper to fix. He confirmed this was true. Said the new stuff was all garbage that kept him in good business. I asked for the most reliable, used, old washer he had in stock at their warehouse at the time. The one he gave me for $80-100 looks old as the other stuff but similarly works fine.
I never buy new washers or dryers. I'd consider newer dishwashers because both Consumer Reports I read a long time ago and personal experience had them breaking a lot. I'm curious about feedback if they've improved in reliability over time. Washers & dryers the old ones win hands down at 20-30 years operation. They're the mainframes of appliances.
Dishwashers, stay away from Frigidaire entirely. They are made disposable. 2-3 years is the average life before needing a repair. I've had the best experience with Whirlpool dishwashers. KitchenAid has gone downhill in the past 5 years or so, in terms of quality.
In any case, what do you think of a clean-slate development that reversed some of the trends in your article?
I've thought quite a bit about it. I think the demand is there now for well-built machines as people are realizing now that their old machines were built much, much better and lasted longer. Before now, people really didn't have a contrast for those machines, so they really didn't understand how good they had it.
If someone was able to buy the patent for Whirlpool's direct drive machine, that would be ideal, then just start manufacturing those things again. People would weep tears of joy if they could buy those machines again, not exaggerating.
As far as design, there are only two designs that have ever been used. The top loader with the tall agitator and newer top loaders have the low profile agitator.
I'm still not quite sure why Whirlpool stopped making their direct drive top loaders. It was the biggest step down in quality I think I've ever seen. Machines went from lasting 8-12 years before needing some routine maintenance to mostly breaking within the first 3 years on the newly designed Vertical Modular Washers.
With enough resources and determination, the appliance industry could be turned on it's head, at least starting with washers and dryers.
https://lobste.rs/s/3rcyqa/they_used_last_50_years_appliance...
He raises a few good points but one I don't have any detail on is the commercial washers and dryers. How much better or worse are they? What's the arrangement like in terms of is it the same crap with a profitable service contract or much better with maintenance provisions at reasonable points in time?
The business model right now is really built upon the fact that there are very few appliance manufacturers left. Consolidation has taken away the competition and it seems like those remaining have set the bar pretty low. I think they know if they make a cheap dishwasher that lasts 3 years, that person will have to buy another machine. Throw in new models each year and consumers have no hope of keeping track of what brand is good and who they should trust. Confusion reigns when it comes to buying appliances. So people don't hold the manufacturers accountable. I see a lot of similarities with the mattress industry.
Unless one has a major fault, which is of course especially likely before it gets to you due to shipping damage or a mistake in the factory. In that case, they effectively refuse to service your machine, because they pay their 3rd party repair crew per incident, not accounting for the work required for one. So if one of those electro-mechanical control units fails, as they were eventually prone to do in the bad old days, you're all set, but ... well, after finding this out, I ended up paying > $200 for a major repair to my 2007 GE washer, and plan to continue doing that as long as possible, it was designed and manufactured before these machines went completely to shit.
Note also that in the US the Federal government pays companies to make their washers steadily do a poorer job in the name of energy efficiency (there are limits to other appliances, e.g. no one would accept a fridge which won't keep food in the safe zone, but not for washers). Whirlpool, which is essentially a pure play in appliances, didn't pay any taxes for a couple of years or so because of these credits they received from the Feds.
You're a bit older than most of us in this sub-thread. I figured you might have an idea.
I have the strong impression that white goods like your three or four basic appliances, fridge, washer, dryer and maybe freezer, were major things, and that purchases were made with care and perception of reliability key (how Sears' Kenmore brand did so well, but there was of course the reality of reliability plus good service behind their stuff as well), but then again my parents were from the Silent Generation, who's formative years were in the privations of the Great Depression and WWII. And finishing on impressions, a freezer might be considered something of a luxury (but also a money saver, especially for a big family), but not the washer and dryer.
One approach would be to get statistics on laundromats in suitable areas (i.e. don't including college towns), how have their numbers and capacities changed, if by very much at all? Also correct for family size and sex ratios, my 2 brothers plus one sister and I certainly created more dirty laundry than a smaller or more female family.
https://speedqueen.com/products/top-load-washers.aspx
The owner said that the motor from a modern speed queen washer could be put in the 30-year old model. He showed how the speed queen springs are heavy-duty, while the Samsung and modern maytag springs are very light.
My dad took his old dryer to the store for disposal. When he went back a few days later, he saw his old dryer for sale. It'd been opened it up, the block that none of the Sears warranty servicers could find was removed, and it was perfectly usable. Someone else had recently abandoned a kenmore front loader into the store's possession - it needed a circuit board, and wasn't worth fixing.
What I shared above is very common knowledge in the repair industry, so odds are the Sears person that came out was either on his first day of the job or didn't even look at the machine. Sadly this happens a lot.
We got a front loaded Miele washer for our wedding and it has a warranty for 10 years but is expected to easily last up to 20 with minor fixes.
Don’t mix up the two different types of top-loaders
There’s the European Model, and the American model. The American model is inefficient, but the European model of top-loaders is just as efficient as front-loaders, far easier to construct, and requires less maintenance.
I’ll quote Wikipedia to explain the European model:
> Some machines which actually load from the top are otherwise much more similar to front-loading horizontal-axis drum machines. They have a drum rotating around a horizontal axis, as a front-loader, but there is no front door; instead there is a liftable lid which provides access to the drum, which has a hatch which can be latched shut. Clothes are loaded, the hatch and lid are closed, and the machine operates and spins just like a front-loader. These machines are narrower but usually taller than front-loaders, usually have a lower capacity, and are intended for use where only a narrow space is available, as is sometimes the case in Europe. They have incidental advantages: they can be loaded without bending down; they do not require a perishable rubber bellows seal; and instead of the drum having a single bearing on one side, it has a pair of symmetrical bearings, one on each side, avoiding asymmetrical bearing loading and potentially increasing life.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/European...
Also, we buy used/refurb appliances when possible, and there aren't many available front loaders.
It was faster to bag up the wet clothes and drive over to the laundromat. Gas fired dryer had a load done in 20 minutes.
The sun's drying power certainly isn't at its best at this time of year, but if I wash things after work in the evening, and get them in the sun's line of sight ready for sunrise the next day, I can expect 1 day to dry shirts (ironed in that evening's darkness)/underwear/socks, 2 days to dry pullovers/fleeces/trousers, and 3 days to dry towels/bedsheets/jeans. (That's "dry" as in "bone dry", meaning I can put them in a drawer.)
I'm sure that to people accustomed to using their 2.5 ton V8 pickup truck to drive a bag of wet clothes to be dried at a launderette like normal people, this whole thing seems improbably primitive - whatever next, outdoor loos? 3.5mm headphone jacks? - but it works for me!
Or you could dial back the snark and open your mind to the idea that not everyone lives where to do, even other Europeans.
She has several hanging racks that slip onto the top of a standard interior door; each rack can hold up to eight hangers, though in practice she only dries four or five items per rack. With three racks, that covers two loads of her shirts, blouses, jeans, and dress pants. She does use the dryer for her socks (thrown in with my clothes), as well as for our towels and bed linens, but she makes sure we don't over-dry the towels so they stay soft. We also have a line in the back yard for linens in the summertime.
Going back to the topic of top-loading versus front-loading washers, we finally had to get rid of our second-hand 30+ year old top loader when a part broke that was no longer available even on the secondhand market (basically we would have had to track down and buy a donor machine to get the part). What we bought to replace it was the closest we could get to a traditional top-loader, and so far it seems to be holding up well. It's a bit more advanced than a traditional machine; it has load sensing and a super-high speed spin cycle, and it's a hybrid digital/analog control system. I have a feeling it will probably last at most 10 years before we need to service it, which is better than I expected from a new machine. I don't remember the model number, but the brand is Amana (first I'd heard of that brand).
I don't really like it.
I think all of my friends also have separate ones.
Front loaders are harder to build, they have to use a huge counter weight due to the nature of the horizontal drum. There is only one bearing at the back that supports it all.
The vertical design is easier to build and more reliable. However, US culture is probably the dominating factor here.
We bought a low tech, inefficient speed queen with a 7 year warranty. The 10 year TCO is like 40% less than a comparable front loader.
My water comes from a private well and ultimately ends up in the drain field of my septic system and then presumably eventually makes it back down to the local table from whence it came. For me the cost of water is simply the cost of electricity for the well pump. I've never measured the power usage of the pump, but based on the voltage it runs at and the current rating of the circuit breaker on its circuit, and the rate it pumps water, and my electricity rates, the most it would cost to fill a large top loader is about $0.05, and so that is an upper bound on what a front loader could save me on water costs.
From what I've read the energy savings of a front loader comes from it drying better during the spin cycle, so you don't use as much energy when you use your dryer to dry the load. However, I usually do the wash in the morning, and then don't get around to moving it to the dryer until the evening. By then it has dried out quite a bit on its own, and is really just damp rather than wet. The dryer makes short work of it.
I'd have the same timing with a front loader, and so from the dryer's point of view the difference would be damp vs. less damp, not wet vs. less wet, so there would not be much energy savings.
I doubt that these tiny savings on water costs and dryer energy could make up the price difference over the lifetime of the unit.
My front loader takes a longer time to do a wash cycle, and I think its better spin cuts drying time by 1/3.
I guess I have good enough local conditions to allow for the several hours mine often sit in the washer. Maybe at some point I'll do some experiments and try to see what the limits are here, probably after I get around to building the temperature and humidity sensor network that I want to put throughout my house to better understand my HVAC system's performance.
US Top Loaders actually work completely different than all other washing machines, and are far more inefficient, and wash the clothes worse, and reduce their life span.
But, apparently, they're on their way out. Frustrating.
Does anyone know why top-loading machines persist in the US market?