Westy Combo Suds tragedy!

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I sent this note to Costco, via email, just now:

Hi. Please don't get me wrong. I love Costco. Generally high quality products and often the lowest prices around.

However, I must take you to task over your line of "HE Compatible" laundry detergents.

I have tried both the powder and liquid versions of your HE Compatible laundry detergent. In both cases I have found the products to product too much suds in my front loader to be effective for cleaning. In order to keep the suds level down, I have to add so little product that it doesn't have enough concentration to clean properly.

To make matters worse, the dosage instructions on your packaging are backwards. The instructions say to add more product for HE washers than for standard washers. In reality, one should almost always add less product for HE washers than for standard washers, in order to keep sudsing under control.

I would like to suggest that you go back to your supplier and work with them to produce a true HE laundry detergent, and to edit the dosage instructions on the packaging accordingly.

Thanks!
 
IMO those "HE" detergents are just a high-priced rip off.

I wonder why Costco does not market the "Institutional" stuff in the plastic bucket, to those who need really low-sudsing performance?

Oh, and don't forget FAB!
 
Funny thing, Lightedcontrols was with us all day and evening yesterday so I know she had nothing to do with that sudz-lock----but it sure has her signature all over it----hmmmmm------was the machine also seriously overloaded?
 
My own little experiment

I did a little custom detergent mixing yesterday. I split my towel load in two, including a thick terry bathrobe in one of the loads.

For the experiment, I used 2 oz of an STPP-silicate mixture, and 1 tsp of liquid surfactant NP-9. This worked well for the first load - minimal sudsing and good results.

Used the same dosing for the second load, but something went really wrong. I happened to look at the control panel mid-way and noticed it had gone into a suds-rinse mode before the wash cycle was over. Opened the door, and suds were 3/4 of the way up the drum. But luckily the washer had already drained most of the water so the suds were relatively dry and stiff, and didn't flow out of the aperature. I just let the machine do its thing and the final results were good as well.

NP-9 is a surfactant that was given to me by the chemical supply warehouse where I bought a lot of STPP a few years back. I hadn't used it much until now, and wanted to see if eliminating sodium carbonate from the mix, using 90%STPP and 10% sodium silicate instead, would result in softer terry cloth.

The verdict: not bad. Definitely softer than a carbonate laced powder would result in. Not quite as soft as a good liquid, like Safeway Ultra 2x free HE. Somewhere in between. Unfortunately I don't have a "softness meter" so the results are necessarily subjective and partly based on memory.

Don't know why the second load oversudsed, though. Maybe the bathrobe in the first load was dirty enough, or once treated with fabric softener, so that it suppressed the suds. Maybe there was excess residual detergent on some of the towels in the second load. I know that if I repeat this particular formulation I'll only add the STPP at first, then check the suds level, and then add 1/2 tsp of the surfactant and check the suds level again, adding more if needed to achieve light sudsing.

Oh, yah, I have a whole gallon of the NP-9, plenty for a lot of experiments ;-)
 
Hello fellow over-sudsers.

We've all been in situations where we are completely in the dark about something painfully obvious to someone else. Every one here knows that a higher dose of soap for an HE is ludicrous beyond belief. How did a mistake that grand ever get so far, i.e., so far up the editorial food chain-- and worse !--remain there all these years? Boggles de mind!
 
Just have to put in my "two cents worth"

I have a five gallon pail of Kirkland soap and after a couple of loads in the 118, a FL, a Maytag wringer and a regular TL, I refuse to use it for anything other than mopping the floor in the wash studio!

It not only creates way too many suds but in my estimation it also does a very inferior job of cleaning.

Dick
 
I think there are two different Kirkland detergent pails. The round five gallon bucket is high sudsing. The square "institutional" bucket is supposed to be low sudsing.

However, I haven't tried either. Both are mostly sodium carbonate - washing soda, with no enzymes. Which explains their mediocre performance.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
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.
 
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!
 
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.
 

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