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After reading the smelly washer advice page here, I have done half a dozen maintenance washes at 90 degrees using separately:
(1) Arial powder (150ml),
(2) washing soda (300 grams),
(3) citric acid to descale (200 grams).
Unfortunately Affresh’s ingredient list suggests it will not do much more than I have tried.Unexpectedly, the smells seem worse after all these maintenance washes. Perhaps they are dislodging or exposing gunk and slime.
If there is remaining gunk, I am inclined to do even more maintenance washes using 300 or 400 grams of washing soda ad nothing else.
When I use only washing soda in a 90 degree maintenance wash I see foam up to about half way of the glass porthole. Could this be a sign of detergent residues in the machine? I vaguely recall not seeing any foam in times gone by when using washing soda, so perhaps the foam I get now is a sign of something.
Thank you for any advice.
BM
Link to smelly washer advice page: http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/f…hing-machines/Affresh has specific enzymes etc in it to target the problem.
Soda crystals, acid, vinegar etc, etc are all old wive’s tales, they don’t work. They’ll make it smell better/different but that’s about as much as they might do.
The foam you see is telling you there is residue in the machine and by the sound of it, it’s pretty bad.
K.
Hello Kwatt.
I downloaded Affresh’s data sheet. https://filebin.net/ftjd8fzl4x0g9rer It says it contains:
- Sodium bicarbonate which is less powerful than sodium carbonate for cleaning
- Citric acid which I used for scale but it is questionable that it will preserve its required acidity
- Sodium lauryl sulfate which is a scum free detergent
- Glucono-delta-lactone which has several uses but maybe for scale here
- Sodium starch glycolate which I think is some sort of chemical builder
- Sodium percarbonate which is a bleaching agent
- Sodium acetate not sure
- Magnesium stearate probably for bulk
I can’t see much there which I don’t already have from what I’ve been using, except perhaps the bleaching agent which I could add from a tub I have but it would be for disinfectant (rather than cleaning) purposes.
What you say about the suds when using soda crystals is interesting. As I understand it soda crystals (sodium carbonate) forms the bulk of a detergent powder like Ariel and I assumed it was the primary cleaner for maintenance washes. I don’t mind using Ariel instead of soda crystals but it always foams up and out of the drawer.
Perhaps the smelly gunk is above the water line inside the machine and lots of foam might be a good way to reach it — although there’s quite a lot to clean up afterwards!
If you have any further comments or advice, I would be interested.
They, like detergent manufacturers, aren’t going to tell anyone what’s in the secret sauce or come to think of it, KFC, McDonalds etc either. Kinda defeats the notion of it being “special”.
All the good stuff that makes it special, you will not get a list of.
Detergents use fillers and bulking agents that don’t do much, I suspect that’s what you’re seeing there. The active ingredients that are in much lower percentages you won’t.
The reason I expect you’re getting so much foam is that the machine is ram-packed with residues so regardless of what you do next the best course is to run boil/very hot washes until that clears and hope it does. Some that are really, really bad potentially never will or need stripped and the gunk scraped out of them.
K.
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