Westy Combo Suds tragedy!

[launderess]

Next time this happens, simply add a tablespoon or less of any oil. Baby oil, canola, carpet detergent defoamer (silicone), it does not matter. All oils are defoaming agents (as any one who has whipped egg whites knows), and will cause the suds to go away. Pure soap is tricky as if the water is very soft, soap may initially reduce sudsing, but the foam will soon come back as the soap mixes with the wash bath. Best to add enough soap to kill the suds,then allow the machine to drain.

The oil trick was given to me when we got our first front loader and used more Tide HE, (like a fool used the entire sample packet as per the directions), and soon enough had enough foam to make a "Bobby Brady" moment. Quick call to our appliance repair guy gave us the oil trick, and it worked a treat.

L.

 

[gansky1]

I have used a couple of the pails from Costco. I didn't find it particularly low-sudsing, in fact, the Duet cringes & shudders when it hears the lid being peeled off that bucket. I used it for rags, and heavily soiled things. I can spike that with ammonia or bleach(es) and use it in very hot water and don't have to feel guilty about being the cause of an enzyme massacre. It certainly has it's place in the "Soap Chest" of my laundry days.

 

[sudsmaster]

Oil calms those sudsy waters...

Ahem,

Only the finest Extra Virgin First Cold Press Organic Olive Oil for my washers, thank you very much...

And it had better be Chateau Froufrou Napa Valley Special Reserve pressing...

Seriously, good suggestion. I'd probably use a bland odorless colorless oil like safflower, canola. Not sure if the polyunsaturated nature of most veggie oils is a plus or minus. I don't think fine linens will care if it's Omega-3 or whatever, though.

Gary - yeah, that's the bucket I was thinking of. Have you found it to be high sudsing? If so, D'oh!

 

[sudsmaster]

Greg,

I have a 40 lb bucket of low sudsing very plain powder I got from Smart and Final nearly six years ago. I use it on the driveway. It does say it's low sudsing, right there on the pail.

One of these days I'm gonna try spiking it with STPP and see how it does in one of the front loaders.

 

[gadgetgary]

Gary - yeah, that's the bucket I was thinking of. Have y

Yes, much more so than the Sears detergent.

Love the Sears detergent...cleans well and hardly any suds~!

 

[toggleswitch]

The smell, the smell!

Pine oil does well to kill suds too.

De-sudser
Disinfectant
Spiritual cleanser!

 

[tomturbomatic]

Now the really bad thing about this is that detergent solution has leaked into the heater box. This is what caused WH combos to rust out because the heater is below the drum. The alkaline-based detergents dried and attacked the finish in the heater box. Then, when the damper and gasket on the top of the heater box just below that inlet where the air blows into the drum became brittle from the heat, every splash of water that fell through wound up leaking through the rusted heater box and onto the floor.

Laundress, it is very difficult to add oil to an oversudsed WH combo because it has no dispensers or other openings to add washing products. If you shut if off and wait 5 minutes, enough of the water will drain out of the suds that you can quickly open the door and give the suds a fast spray of PAM and then wait while that takes down the suds.

 

[gansky1]

Oh, no leaking in the heater box here - I rebuilt all that when the combo came. The original rubber seal was completely crisped and half gone. I replaced it with an Oreck vacuum cleaner belt and hi-temp gasket silicone. I pulled the front panel after the suds to see if there were any drips from the heater box and it was all completely dry. What a horrible design that was - I can see why they recalled them all!

 

[launderess]

Mayhaps it would help to keep a bottle of carpet defoamer on hand, and dose a small amount per wash as insurance. Stuff works wonders in preventing sudsing/knocking down suds.

You may also try quickly opening the door and chucking one or more of those anti-gas softgels into the machine. Gas-X and the generic knock-offs are a type of silicone.

What you also could do is pour some oil on a clean washcloth or rag, and chuck it into the machine. This does work as noticed when laundering lots of washcloths, there is absoultely no suds, even with Tide with Bleach. Didn't make the connection at first then realised the cloths contained soap from use while bathing, and that soap residue was keeping the suds down. Also when I knocked over a bottle of carpet defoamer, used a Handi-wipe to clean up the spill, then tried to wash out the cloth in the slop sink. No matter how much dish detergent I used, there were NO suds.

L.

 

[mrboilwash]

Isnt oil a deadly enemy of a washers rubber parts ?

 

[andrewinorlando]

Hell, just add a cap of fabric softener. Always does the trick, and it smells nice!!

The directions on the Kirkland box are probably written for modern front loaders, that are most likely twice the capacity of the Westinghouse. If you followed their dosing directions, maybe it was just too much detergent? It seems like an awful lot of an HE detergent....just a thought.

 

[electron800]

180rpm!?

Is that really the top spin speed of this machine? The clothes must still be dripping wet after that.

 

[toggleswitch]

Oh honey, I have been called a winner before!

Yes, IIRC Bendix owned all the patents for the needed suspension systems (needed to spin faster without a bolt-down) at the time.

Greg do I win the prize? *LOL* Learning vicariously from all of you !

 

[irishwashguy]

I like the Persil and the SA-8

Although the SA-8 was even a little too high suds even for my Miele. I have to run a full load with it. The stuff works good. I am not much of a Tide fan, at my Cosco they sell the Liquid Tide, and I am not at all tempted. I have heard from friends that it is good for fading clothes badly. I have used one less expensive alternative that works very well, and that is Faks detergent. It is not as good as Persil, it takes two scoops, does the job, and a 3 Kilo box is 12.95 at the European store on Hawthorne. I use it for the sheets and linnens from an Org that I wash for. The smell is quite nice, and there are no suds at all. I like that. Works great for the 190 washes. I would take it back to Cosco. That can't be good for the Berrings in your Gorgious from loader. I placed a link for the Faks if you were thinking about buying it. For the money, it is not bad stuff.

http://www.globalfoodshop.com/catalog/category_417_Detergent.html

 

[dj-gabriele]

Just one word: Gosh! *jaws dropping* I can't believe how much that stuff has foamed!!! It took me a cup of dishwashing liquid to do that mess and it rinsed away as soon as the machine hit spin!!!

And only 180 rpm?!?!?! Wow! How long did it take to dry? I guess clothes were still dripping!

 

[washernut]

When I first got my Westinghouse space mates washer I was constantly over sudsing. Partially because everything had been washed in a top loader and there was residual soap that hadn't rinsed out completely. Plus, I had very soft water and at that time the only thing I would use was Tide or Oxydol. I can testify to how hard it is to get the suds out of one of these things once it's full...Thank god for that deep rinse!