Miele vs Miele

[launderess]

What must always be kept in mind with Miele

Is that for all intents and purposes North America is small "niche" market for their appliances.

Bad enough our standard power is 120v/60hz, but other small niggles just add up to point it just becomes "why bother".

Miele would never sell enough dryers in USA to ever make back costs from redesigning their vented dryers to meet UL standards. Hence they threw in the towel.

Happily one has learned if willing to wait long enough (and willing to pay shipping costs if necessary), a yearned after Miele appliance will turn up sooner or later.

 

[askolover]

I was just looking on amazon and ebay and didn't see any empty TwinDos cartridges.  I bet I could figure out a way to refill the one you have.  I used to have a swiffer wet jet.  Swiffer wanted me to buy their bottles of fluid.  Nah, I figured out how to refill it.  Same went for the self-washing litter box I had for my cats.  They wanted me to spend $$ for their specialty cleaning fluid.  Same, I figured out how to refill it with better product for a lot less money.

 

[launderess]

Well you wouldn't, would you?

Until or when MieleUSA gives the green light for empty Twindos cartridges to be sold here, Amazon or anyone else isn't going to have them on offer.

However if you Google via part number or words you'll find plenty of Amazon sites (UK, Germany, etc....) across the pond who sell the refillable cartridges. They all just say "will not ship to United States".

Ebay sellers in Europe long have been offering Twindos cartridges (Ultraphase 1 and 2), and even sometimes the empty versions as well. These are from either dealers/vendors and or private sellers moving on things surplus to requirements. Many of them *will8 ship to USA, though it may prove dear for what one gets.

 

[moon1234]

@foraloysius

Keep in mind the washer runs around 10-12 hours PER DAY. We understand that the w1 was not designed for this much use, but American machines would be dead in short order. We plan to build a house this coming year. The w1 will move upstairs for the girls one off things. We will put in a Miele pw5105 to match the PT7186. If you do the math and get the 30k hours they are rated for that is 8-10 years of use in our house we come out cheaper than buying 3-4 residential units for the same money. There is also less downtime.

 

[uncledave]

20ml is plenty with reasonably soft water.

I settled on 18ml after a month of playing around and find it to be plenty for most loads.

Im feeling bait and switched on the refillable cartridge availability but I'll get a set.

The Liquid Persil from wal mart makes for a hell of a deal if it will work at 20 ML, but I won't know until I can reliably dose at that level through the system.

UD

 

[moon1234]

Thought I would provide an update on how we are getting on with the W1.

I figured out how to get into the service menu. It is open the door with machine off. Turn dial to normal (cottons). Wait for machine to turn on. Hold finger on start/stop button while shutting the door. Continue holding start/stop button until it begins rapidly flashing green. Then push the start/stop button three times while holding the button on the third push. After 5 to ten seconds it will enter service mode. You can scroll through the options. I was mainly after the hours of use. Some of the options just have alpha-numeric entries. A service manual would be necessary to know what they do.

We have had the machine for 45 days so far and have 359 hours on the counter. We have gone through two full bottles of Ultra Phase 1 and 30% of the third bottle. For UltraPhase 2 it is one full bottle and 70% of the 2nd. Dosing is set at 20ML for UltraPhase 1 and 17ML for UltraPhase 2. This works well with most loads rinsing clean.

So I guess if this keeps up we will have around 2900-3000 hours on the machine after the first year. I will be buying the five year warranty for sure. I have a feeling it will pay for itself.

After owning this machine we have discovered that many of our loads, if sorted properly, just fill the machine. I think it would work well to have two of the W1 machines and be able to run colors in one and whites in another, etc. About 1/3 of our loads are sanitize loads so a 2nd washer than runs quicker colored/whites loads would be able to keep a professional dryer running and not have too much overlap.

Here's hoping the suspension holds up well. My 18 year old daughter does about half the laundry when she gets home from work. I am amazed how much she gets into the washer. I will empty it at night when I get home from work and there is more than a full laundry basket of wash. It sort of makes me wonder how that much fit in there. The other day I removed 10 full size bath towels out of it. Not the small ones, but the large ones from Costco.

I will wash my dress shirts after the kids go to sleep at night so the don't get put in the dryer. I find the dress shirts cycle works well, isn't all that long and removes all the stains around the cuffs and collar. I usually wear my shirts a few times before washing them since I wear a T-Shirt under all my dress shirts and it just seems wasteful to wash the dress shirt when it is not visibly soiled and does not smell.

So I am no longer worried about the washer being able to get the job done. I just think having two would make the piles of sorted laundry disappear a little more quickly. Less trips to the laundry room.

I have noticed some odd programming issues though. One is that with the current firmware 3.58 that when using the "options" button directly on the machine it is only possible to select a single option. If you select another it will de-select any other option. For example if extra rinse is selected and you scroll and select a soak, etc. it will de-select the extra rinse. However, if you use mobile control option it is possible to select ALL of the options for a particular cycle and the machine will carry them out.

The other one that is VERY irritating is that if you activate the child lock for a cycle it is still possible to turn the machine off by rotating the dial to off. Yes, child lock will lock the touch buttons, but what do you think a child likes to do with a big round dial that beeps when you turn it? If child lock is on, turning the dial to off should require a confirmation before it is carried out. Otherwise, what is the point of a child lock? We have had at least 10-15 loads now that we discovered were sitting "soaking" due to a child turning the machine off mid-cycle.

Other that those little things the machine is doing a great job.

 

[uncledave]

Good to hear its working out. Great update.

I found the same thing about load size its only a tiny bit bigger than my last machine but it equates to a notable increase in load size

I refilled a phase one with liquid persil from a flip-top squeeze bottle.

I cut a slit on the top just long enough to poke the tiny flip top nozzle into it - then inverted it and squeezed it full.

I covered the slit with a small piece of duct tape.

So far "about" equal cleaning at 1/4 the price or less.

UD

 

[uncledave]

ON the matter of the suspension I think we may be good to end -

The balancing algorithm is really good and prevents spin at a fairly conservative looking imbalance where my 1215 would have just taken off and pounded away.

IF there is no final spin event we have a rinse spin mode you can toss in a towel or something that will tip it and it always gets it done for me - the old 1215 had to go secret menu and you had to come back to it .