FL WASHERS and BAD MOLD SMELLS; when did you 1st hear about this issue?

[hoover1100]

Oh my!

As a Geography Student at University I do have to laugh!

Climate is not based on lattitude alone; altitude, continentality and air and sea currents have a massive influence.

Glasgow is on the same lattitude as Moscow, yet the average daily maximum temperature in Glasgow in January is 6.4c (43.5f), the average daily maximum in Moscow for January is -4.1c (24.6f). Moscow is far warmer than Glasgow in the Summer though, and drier all year round, due to the moderating affect of the sea. Surely this is school level basic climatology?

The Gulf stream makes western Europe far warmer than other areas of similar lattitude.

Besides, I only know one person who keeps their washer in an unheated room, everywhere else they are kept at around 20-22c (68-72f) most of the year.

Matt

 

[3beltwesty]

So were no heaters common in cars in Europe eons ago?

A set of German Neighbors in Jackson Miss were born and raised in East Germany and escaped over the Berlin wall. They lived in Jackson from about 1966 to about 1987 ish and "went back home" after wall fell "to escape the USA's South's heat and humidity"

The Folks from the UK I worked with in Southern California all bitched about the heat, and SoCal is really nothing compared to the humid hot deep South. It only rains about 10 to 11 inches a year in Los Angeles, it is basically a desert and dry. One place I worked for in SoCal had a sister factory in the UK. If a UK worker stayed got transfered to SoCal they often did not last long. They did not get 6 weeks of holidays, more like 2 that one could never take off. The hotter weather had the wife and kids mad, the doubling of salary got gobbled up by high rents and high taxes, thus many "went back home".

Here it rains 65 to 70 inches a year. It has rained 14 inches in a day before here. Thus with the amount of rain the humidity is way higher. Transplants from Europe to Las Angeles call SoCal hot. If a person from Europe moves to deep South, they often have issues and tend to move away. The German POW camps about 50 miles North folk's had issues at first adjusting to the heat too.

It SoCal the lack of humidity means in printing one has the printing press in a room with a humidifier to raise the humidity. In the deep south it is the other way around, the press is in a room with a de-humidifier.

The unheated house here this morning was 61 F / 16C and 70 percent RH inside, If I ran a heater so it was 20C the RH still is 52 percent.

The house here is just 2200 SQFT and has 6 tons of AC; 3 dehumidifiers; R30 ceilings, double windows.

Cars from the 1960's here locally often were ordered with NO heater, it was an extra cost option and thus some did not pay extra.

Even some 1960's cars in SoCal had no heaters, a used 1965 Ford I bought there had no heater core, just a bypass hose.

Thus if Europe is as mild as the USA, old cars probably sometimes had no heaters, since Europe is never cold?

 

[3beltwesty]

Here the average daily maximum temperature in January is 15.5 C (60F),

the highest average daily maximum was for January of 1989 and it was 20C ( 68F )

The total snowfall here of *all* the January's from 1960 to 2011 is Zero; thus probably a typical Europe?

The coldest temperature ever recorded here of *all* the January's here from 1960 to 2011 was 10F; ie -12C in 1963;

hottest recorded temp in January here from 1960 to 2011 was 85F 29.4C in Jan 2005

Thus one has folks running AC units in January, a typical thing maybe in Europe?

As far as snow; it once snowed here about 2 inches back about 1972/73.

There are tales by old folks eons ago about how about 1890 it was once cold enough to walk on ice in a pond if one was a kid.

It is warm enough that many folks cut their lawns grass in so called winter.

Eons ago many folks with 1960's cars here never used antifreeze, ie why bother?

 

[hoover1100]

European Climate

Europe is a continent, therefore it covers a vast area of land, and the climate varies greatly. Some areas of Europe are very cold, some areas are very hot, just like in North America.

The climate of the UK is mild and damp all year round, similar to the Nortwestern United States.

The climate of spain is more similar to that of California.

The climate of countries such as Switzerland and Austria is similar to that of the central USA and mountain regions.

This is all completely irrelevant anyway, everyone on here knows that if you look after your machine, it won't smell or get mouldy, no matter what machine you own, and that if you don't, you stand more of a chance of having these problems.

Matt

 

[3beltwesty]

Matt; Here as an Engineer I would really like to see but really never get :

(1) were folks live with Moldly and smelly washers.

(2) what their water hardness is and minerals

(3) Detergent type and brand

(4) how much soap they used.

(5) whether door was left open.

(6) any other variables that might matter.

The point about where it is more humid, mold/mould is easier to grow.

Thus if chap #37 in Burbank California has no mold issues, and chap #57 in New Orleans does, the humidity is one of many factors that effects the growth of mold. The humidity is way higher in New Orleans versus Los Angeles, thus the same way a machine is used can cause mold to grow in humid areas and not in dry areas. It is so dry in SoCal that one could hang a pair of bluejeans up inside and it would be bone dry in 12 hours, since the humidity might be just 15 percent at times. Here where the humidity is high drying a pair of bluejeans inside does not work well at all.

Here is a link that shows mold growth likes to see RH's above 55 percent. That is how it is here about all the time inside a house. When I lived in SoCal/LA the RH in my apartment was never that high.

http://www.toxic-black-mold-info.com/moldsigns.htm

 

[3beltwesty]

In Los Angeles it is so dry that the long term average for the entire month of July is about 1/100 inch; ie 1/4 mm.

Locally I have seen it rain 14 inches/ 0.35 meters in one day in July; more than what LA sees in one year. ie 10 to 11 inches.

It is so dry in Los Angeles that when one is away on a long business trip the sink/toilet plumbing traps can dry out in a month or two and ones house or apartment will fill up with sewer gas.

Here with powdered detergents and soaps the shelf life is poor; once opened very poor, the product absorbs moisture and one gets a caked mess like chunks of concrete with some powered products.

 

[passatdoc]

@foraloysius

First off, I agree with you.

 

But I do have a question from the time I lived in Nijmegen. The family with whom I lived had a garage attached to the house, with a direct door entry from garage to the dining area and kitchen (as is very, very common in USA). The house was built in early 1960s and the direct door from garage to kitchen was probably a very welcome innovation. (as it turned out, they used the garage for storage: kids' sports equipment, mopeds, etc, so normally they parked the car in the driveway, but some neighbors had less junk and could park inside the garage).

 

The garage was unheated, and the laundry area was in the garage (not in a cellar, not in the kitchen as one often sees in Europe). They had a cold-water fill top loading H-axis washer, I think an AEG (it was some brand very common in Holland then). At the time, having laundry in the garage seemed perfectly normal to me, since many times in California one sees the laundry area situated in the garage as well (water leaks, if any, remain confined to the garage; also, keeps the heat out of the house in the summer if one has a dryer).

 

However, now that I think about it, I wonder how they prevented the water lines from freezing in the winter? California garages can get cold in winter, but not cold enough to freeze pipes, but a cold Dutch winter could freeze pipes. Do you think they had to use special insulation for the pipes? In the USA there is even electrical tape that heats pipes if you are using pipes in a marginal situation with danger of freezing. We used it once in a rented house in New England with an unheated space beneath the laundry room floor that was not heated----if the temperature dropped to say -15-20C, the pipes could freeze. The heating tape was activated by a thermostat and only switched on when it was very cold.

 

[3beltwesty]

re "In the USA there is even electrical tape that heats pipes if you are using pipes in a marginal situation with danger of freezing"

Here today I was looking at some plans for a Hotel and the tape callout was 5 watts per foot. I am not sure if that is average or not. I seem to remember 2 watts for foot and 3 too, maybe rusty on that matter.

 

[foraloysius]

Jim

The set up you describe is very unusual here. If a house has a garage, most of the time there is a utility room as well. And a utility room would be heated. I can only speculate how they had things organised. I have never seen such tape overhere.

Have we established what kind of washer they had? Was it an H-axis twintub? They could have had an AEG Turnamat, very popular in the Netherlands.

 

[3beltwesty]

Plumbing Heat tape Link:

http://www.plumbingsupplyhouse.com/plumbing-questions/what-is-plumbing-heat-tape.html

 

[pierreandreply4]

Just a tought?

have you ever tought that sometime a bit of water might be remaining in the washer water heater or the fact that the room might be humid and this may sometime cause some smells? hust a tought as i never had this kind of problem before as i always left the lid open on my top loading washer and always leave the door partaly open on my whirlpool duet fl washer.

 

[limey]

Heating Tape For Water Pipes

I have also seen that type of tape on outside fire lines when sub freezing temperatures are anticipated and the lines remain charged with water.

 

[3beltwesty]

One type of laundry in the garage design.

In Southern California some tract houses are built like this:

The washer and dryer are in the garage, since it often never gets to hot or cold.

Older homes have the WH close to the floor; newer ones has the WH up high on a box (several feet) if the WH is gas.

a variant is the washer and dryer is on the left or right.

This type of design is rarer in the deep south than southern California, since out weather has more extremes.

In the Deep south the design can be where one walks through the laundry room from the garage.