We bought a stackable Maytag front loader pair and have been very happy with
them. The appliance store we dealt with said we could user regular detergent
as long as we used ~1/3 what we used in a top loader. We've been doing this
for the 4 months since we bought the units with no problem.

There is a lot of advantages using these units (They use much less water,
clean better and are much easier on clothes) but are much pricier. However
if you stack them the unit on top is pretty high up. My wife nixed stacking
them because she couldn't reach the controls on the upper unit. She is 5'
tall.

Jon

"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote in message
...
Had you been using the special "High Efficiency" (low-sudsing) detergent
made for front-loaders?

Our Sears guy told us (when he came to replace the control module --
$200+ +labor unit free under our maintenance contract) that the major
cause of bearing and other mechanical failures in front-loaders is using
regular (mucho suds) detergent.

Perce


On 11/16/05 12:03 pm louie tossed the following ingredients into the
ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

Our previous house had the same issues, small tight space for laundry
(or basement, which wasn't a pleasant place to do laundry). We bought
a Kenmore washer & dryer (separately). The washer will either have to
be a front loader or you'll have to get one of the sets that is made
for stacking. I would steer clear of the Kenmore at least at the lower
end models, the one we had lasted 3 years before the drum support
broke. Sears "service" was absolutely no help - "sorry, this isn't
under warranty any more, but we can schedule a service call for you..."
I ended up fixing it myself, though I had to buy an entirely new
washer drum (all this while trying to sell the house - "please ignore
the washing machine parts strewn across the bathroom"). Anyway, the
dryer was gas, and up to the point where the washer broke down we were
VERY happy with the machine and had used it for many loads of normal
laundry plus my wife's nursing uniforms, plus our daughter's cloth
diapers. The front loaders are quite efficient, but have a mixed
reliability record pretty much across the board when it comes to the
manufacturers. Dryers are pretty simple machines and usually have
fewer problems. We had no issues with the gas dryer.