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andyjawa wrote:One point. Never mix bleach with citric acid

Yeah, good advice that

I do not use chlorine bleach in the machine or stopped using it when someone told me it wasn’t good for the machine. Chlorine bleach contains sodium hydroxide which is used to stabilise it and give it a longer shelf life. This caustic soda is quite harsh for anything plastic. Which would be the inner tub and any other reservoirs water collects in.

What I use instead if I need to disinfect are Chlorine water purification tablets or NaDCC tablets. About three of them in LG’s tub clean of 15 litres is enough to produce a 200ppm sanitising solution. After the cycle is done it smells just like I put Clorox in there and very fresh

Suma tab D4 they’re called by Diversey. The precise dosage instructions leads me to believe this product is commercial grade.

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andyjawa wrote:“That brown stuff is the thing to remove. But we can’t see it. Maybe smell.” Look between the back of the door seal and front of the silver drum “gap”.

If no yuk there then you probably do not have that issue anywhere else.

What do you make of this? Link to three photos

it’s a dark grime that comes off when wiped with your finger. Someone had posted this on a local board. It’s a Samsung Eco Bubble of around six years. Only used liquid detergent in that machine and they were advised to use the same detergent to do tub cleans. I don’t believe plain detergent can clean the machine.

In addition, Samsung recommends not to use any cleaning product in their tub clean cycle. The reason is it drains whatever water it fills after five minutes. So any product will be flushed out and be a waste. The cycle itself is quite intensive but I don’t think it’s possible to clean with water alone and no cleaning products.

So I suggested he use Vanish powder. One scoop’s worth or 30gms in a Cottons 65 cycle with Intensive selected. Didn’t shift that grime, unfortunately.

I live in India so products like Affresh & Dr.Beckmans while available are expensive for just one use. People would use them yearly and that just isn’t often enough to be useful. The main ingredient in Affresh that does the cleaning is sodium percarbonate. Makes up 60-70{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of an Affresh tablet.

So I set about looking for alternatives and discovered Vanish powder contains oxygen bleach and is readily available and cheaper. No powdered detergent in India contains oxygen bleach. The way to test is 5gm in a thermos flask and then pour boiling water in. If there is oxygen bleach and if it’s viable you will get a fizz to foam overflowing out the flask. No detergent I tested did that even some that claimed ‘oxy’ power. Interestingly, even Bosch’s cleaner produced no fizz indicating it had expired much before its use-by date. Suspect the container isn’t airtight and got exposed in a humid environment.

We only get colour powder detergent here and if you want to clean whites then Vanish is it. Not quite as strong as Affresh but 25-50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} percarbonate will still do more than not. Can always be boosted by adding extra percarbonate.

But Vanish foams up a lot to the point a mere 20gms of it fills the machine fully. How to control the foam eluded me until I realised that adding some fabric was the answer. So the fix is to use three terry towels or hand towels or mops in the cycle and that keeps the foam below the halfway mark

Now they tell you not to do that because the imbalance sensors are disabled during the tub clean cycle. So if the machine goes out of balance during the spin it won’t be good for the machine. But the weight of those towels is under a kilo and in my experience has not caused any imbalance issues.

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andyjawa wrote:Most descalers will use Citric acid. Mainly because all spiders (the drum supports) are an aluminium alloy on all washing machines

That is what Aquasoftna contains. It’s just citric acid.

andyjawa wrote:One word of warning: no matter what you use it does not change the fact that old age use can damage the spider in anycase. A thin coating of snowy white lime is fine whereas a thick coating is troublesome whereas a more commonly seen covering of sloshy smelling usually a light/mid brown coloured layer is bad news that has in itself nothing to do with limescale but is more to do with deposits of, well basically, crap, detergent and dirt sludge – this is the stuff that rots out the spider due to attracting bacteria causing a rotted and so cracked spider arm/s which is very common these days of” you can save save money by using low low temperatures all the time” what they do not tell you is the end result that I have just told you!
That brown stuff is the thing to remove. But we can’t see it. Maybe smell.

The descaler I used was Aqua Softna descaler, the liquid lemon flash detergent acted as the sludge removing element effort in the mix.
Not much info in the sds for flash. Says its an all purpose cleaner

Would this be it ?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flash-Liquid-Powerful-Surface-Cleaner/dp/B01MU771IR/

Says it’s a floor cleaner. Cuts through grease and dirt. Can’t find anything corrosive that would harm the machine here.

This product is not available in my market. The closest I get to all-purpose floor cleaners is Lysol

It’s got cleaners and qats to disinfect as well. Will definitely remove any smells

Do you do an extra rinse cycle after or just run it at the hottest temperature and are done?

andyjawa wrote:That worked for 20 years I had it, 2 years by a relative before hand, and yes the spider did crack on mine at 18 years old – found and checked me records – still not a bad run as most spiders on these things commonly were toast at under 8 years old.
Plus you can also get stuffed by too much detergent being used. Always seemed more common when using liquid detergents at low temps.

18 years is an excellent run before a spider failure. These days electronic touchpanels are likely to give trouble within five years.

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Hoovermatic wrote:Just wondered if the washing machine cleaners available to buy in the supermarkets e.g Dr Beckmann were as good as getting rid of detergent residue as the ones available from Bosch etc?

Bosch has two cleaners AFAIK. One is a descaler and the other is a cleaner

Going by the ingredients of the cleaner (search for 00311925) that would be for removing liquid and fabric conditioner residue

However the descaler (search for 311921) I think would be better at powder detergent residue and limescale as it has citric acid.

Looking at the safety data sheet of Dr.Beckman’s ‘Service it’ product, it has the same ingredients as the bosch washing machine cleaner

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Re: Overloading A Washing Machine

Thx Ken, so better washing performance and reduced wear & tear on the machine as well as the clothes are the basis. Prudent, as clothes absorb water at various rates so a lighter starting load is safer long term. This has a direct bearing on what size washer to go for, people want cheap as they can get which means smaller and inevitably end up overloading more often.

As for percentages if one does the math, hands width from the top of the drum works out to 80{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} full and hands width from the top of the door opening is little less than 60{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} full. Visualizing in terms of volume rather than weight is easier. Ariel needs to revise their recommendation for better washing results 😀

If i may, a couple of follow up questions..

– As Ariel makes their dosing recommendation on a full load of 80{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} full and we are using 60{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}, does it mean one can deduct 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} detergent from Ariel’s recommendation for a full normal load and so on for lighter loads. Normal meaning light to medium soiled with soft water. Clothes are a mix of cotton & mixes. No delicates.

– the synthetic prgrams of washers state half load. Does your recommendation of a hands width already mean we are close to the washer makers recommendation or do we need to halve again, meaning 30{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} full instead of 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}.

Thanks

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Re: Overloading A Washing Machine

100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} is ruled out, my question is why is a just under 60{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} load recommended ?

60{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}load vs 80{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}load (by volume).

Would 80{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} load be considered overloading as well.

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