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The only items I've ever had to use pre wash for were my rugby gear! I played it in my school days and I wasn’t all that good at it, but everything came back absolutely caked in mud and grass stains. The machine needed the pre wash cycle to flush it all away! No detergent could magic that away...

A lot of the enzymes will survive the oxygen bleach in powder formulas as it’s not strong enough to denature proteins, but a lot of them also used a chemical / thermochemistry trick to delay the activation of the bleach, allowing the enzymes to work more effectively in the first phase of the...

Ease of use is about good design. Some electromechanical programmers had awful designs, complicated numbers, letters, push/pull, weird option buttons and so on. They were fine if you were familiar with their quirks. A lot of European machines with mechanical programmers often had a vast array...

This is reminding me of the way artisanal craft beers came along and then when the market was established major international beer brands all began rushing to become all artisanal and cool…

That’s a horrendous incident, but it genuinely does seem rather bizarre. There isn’t anything unusually automated in that car and it seems to be a highly unusual combination of simultaneous failures. It would be interesting to see what the manufacturer and the federal safety agencies make of it...

In a situation like that you only cut the engine when you're stopped, unless it's on fire! You need the servo assisted brakes and possibly power steering.   Manual car: Hold down clutch and don't let it up, brake, get into neutral and continue to brake until you're in control and in a safe...

There's no particular reason why electronic controls would have any issue sitting for a long time. They have no, or at least extremely few, moving parts.   It sounds like there was some kind of fault with the board or the conductivity sensor.

I remember a comment that buying an early automatic washing machine in Britain in the 1950s was as expensive as buying a small car. They were seriously high spec piece of equipment in the old days and you can be assured that the components were not cheap.   Many of them had more in common with...

Electronic controls are enormously superior to mechanical. They are reliable if they’re well made and use good quality components and they’re flexible and can use a degree of intelligence in control of the appliance. There no reason electronic controls are unreliable. They should be much more...

In general tablet and liquid formats are now dominant here. You often won’t find powder at all in a lot of smaller stores unfortunately. Just looking at Tesco, €4.00 for 2.6kg of their own brand powered detergents, colour, universal or non bio. That’s 40 washes. You’ll definitely find the...

In general tablet and liquid formats are now dominant here. You often won’t find powder at all in a lot of smaller stores unfortunately. Just looking at Tesco, €4.00 for 2.6kg of their own brand powered detergents, colour, universal or non bio. That’s 40 washes. Dunnes have similar, but I...

I can't find a price for an 18 wash powder pack here, not sure they're widely sold anymore.   SuperValu   P&G: 40 wash packs (2.6kg) Ariel - €11.00 Fairy - €11.00 Daz - €8.00 Megapack Fairy or Bold (3.9kg 60 wash) - €14.00   Unilever: Persil - 37 wash pack 1.85kg - €17.50   Ecover...

Results were pretty good. I’m just used to Miele’s more traditional barely tumbling approach.

You can buy most of the regular brands in a “cash and carry” wholesaler for small retailers. It usually just means you need to be a registered business to gain access to them. The only way someone could access supermarket brands in general would be to purchase them at retail prices, which are...

Speaking of portable AC, the funniest and most clueless use I’ve I’ve seen was at London Heathrow Airport in the last days of the now (thankfully) retired Terminal 1. There was an area dedicated, mostly to flights to and from Ireland, which was a pier extension built like a network of giant...

That not terrible, but the shipping is over £27 to the US and you might also get hit with customs charges, Personally, I can’t see it being worth it for a box of detergent, unless you’re really very keen on trying it for novelty value.

I’ve been on holiday and the place I was staying in has a Hotpoint (Ariston) washing machine of a pretty high spec. (For those of you unfamiliar, Hotpoint / Ariston is a middle of the road European brand(s) with a long history, most recently owned by Indesit, and now part of Whirlpool.) The...

I suspect they’re sourcing those items on a very very small scale but actually buying them in store. They’re definitely not available to 3rd parties as wholesale.

Doubtfully that anyone would be selling it online as it’s a private label (store) brand. You’d likely get a cease and desist notice from Aldi if you did. It can’t be purchased wholesale, unlike a mainstream brand.

Radion was a brand that appeared here for a few years and vanished again. Unilever dropped it in as a mainstream detergent with an odour-removal focus. I didn't realise it was a long established Scandinavian brand. It's quite possible the product launched in this market had little in common...