Soaks
Soaks make a huge difference, though mostly on soils that respond to enzymes. Our Kenmore has AutoSoak that I use on most loads. Cleaning performance even in lower temps has always been stellar. The GE TL we had at our rental had options for 15, 30, 60, or 120 min soaks. That machine did not clean well, so soaks helped dramatically though never to FL level of performance. Two hour soaks were often used in that house. In top loads it is required for mechanical action to stop and resume by using motor, where as FL machines stop to reverse direction anyways. Timer TL machines may be a little more complex and confuse people since audible action stopped for a longer period of time. Newer machines are quieter, and tend to stop for multiple reasons during cycle, so is easier to get away with. Not to mention longer wash times. Some Maytag HE TL machines I have used have Deep Clean option which alternates 1 min soak, 1 min wash for 20 minutes, but only adds 10 minutes because the soaks are added to existing wash time. Which admittedly seems like a great option. FL tumble patters can be changed to increase “soak” times by extending duration between tumbles on higher soil settings, but likely will not confuse owners since the machines are quiet and tumbling stops frequently anyways. With restrictions on TL machines, I do see where soaks will likely be added and cycles will be extended as hot water consumption is further reduced. As previously discussed, Whirlpool Catalyst pretreat was incredible, but the Cabrio/Oasis/Bravos machines did a similar pretreat phase that was quite good as well, but was longer. Some did view this as “sensing” and didn’t like it.
