**For those with long term stick shifting experience think about how often you wish for a clutch as you drive along in wintertime with your automatic shift transmission, especially a FWD one.** I have thought about it, and the answer is never. The front wheel drive POS Ford Tempo with an automatic and studed tires all around, no abs, is the easiest thing I've ever driven in the snow and freezing rain bar none. That includes rear wheel drive cars and pickups, 4x4 pickups and sport-utes. One negative with a clutch on ice, or mud for that matter is if you get stuck, it's hard if not impossible to rock the vehicle forward and back to get a tire back where it can get traction. Simple with an automatic.

This is what I found in internet. Please read this before you order this ab energizer... Good Luck! Good Morning America's consumer correspondent Greg Hunter found that the machines can cause minor skin burns. Experts told him that anyone who thinks that the devices alone will turn them into Mr. Universe is mistaken. The gadgets are based on electronic muscle stimulation, or EMS, a system that delivers an electric charge to make muscles contract. John Porcari, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Wisconsin, tested an EMS device similar to those on the market in a study commissioned by the American Council on Exercise. After eight weeks of using the device only, participants had no significant increases in muscle size or strength. "I think people are wasting their time," Porcari said. "I think they're better off spending their money on a personal trainer or buying a membership to a health club, or buying a home piece of exercise equipment that they're going to use." AbTronic declined any comment under advice of their attorney. Ab-Energizer also declined comment, and Fast-Abs did not return phone calls or e-mails sent by Good Morning America. Want Flat Abs? Order Now The Fast-Abs ad claims the technology makes it easy: "It's like our engineer shrunk half a gym of bulky, expensive exercise equipment into a little electronic miracle the size of a pack of matches." Victoria Delaney, a San Francisco Bay area woman who saw the AbTronic infomerical, was intrigued by the thought of achieving amazing abs just like the young woman in the commercial. "That's what I thought I was going to get," Delaney told Hunter, pointing to the buff young woman's flat stomach. After seeing the ad, she immediately reached for her telephone and credit card and ordered an AbTronic. Delaney thought the device would let her get trim while sitting around and reading a book or watching TV. "Sure, I thought it would be easy," Delaney said. Company Warns of Skin Burning Reports Delaney said she used her AbTronic religiously for three days, but then she said she had to stop because it gave her a number of minor but painful burns on her arms, stomach, both legs and her back, making it difficult to sit. When she looked at the instruction booklet later, Delaney discovered that the company warned that "skin irritation and burns ... have been reported." Though Delaney does not have any permanent injuries, her pride is a little scarred, and she feels nae for being taken, she said. But it is easy to see why people like Delaney might be drawn to the devices. Not only does the AbTronic infomercial show seemingly perfect men and women using it, the commercials claim that a University of Maryland study backs up products like theirs. "Their conclusion was that an electronic stimulation was much better than exercise alone, whether you use it as a supplement to your normal workout, or just by itself," a female co-host of the infomercial says. "That proves that you get better results by the use of the AbTronic fitness system," the male co-host chimes in. Machine Can't Do It Alone The University of Maryland scientist who conducted the study, Dr. Gad Alon, published an article about electronic muscle stimulation in 1987. He said that he believes high-quality EMS devices can strengthen the abdominal muscles, but that the AbTronic infomercial took his findings out of context. "In fact, we have used electrical stimulation on abdominal strengthening in a number of studies," he said. "And that particular one [AbTronic] does not look at all like the type of strengthening we do with electrical stimulation." Porcari acknowledges that medically approved EMS devices can play a useful role in rehabilitative medicine. But he says consumers can't comfortably get strong enough contractions from these infomerical devices to build "awesome abs" without real exercise. "To get the benefits, you have to make your muscles contract to a certain level, and that requires you to be able to withstand a lot of pain," he said. Dr. Julio Garcia, a Las Vegas plastic surgeon, appeared in the AbTronic infomercial touting the device. "The nice thing about the AbTronic system is you don't have to go to a gymnasium, where you have to do weight-lifting exercises, where we may have some other medical problems that prevent from doing that - whether it's high blood pressure or bad joints," Garcia says in the infomercial. Garcia told Hunter that although EMS. can help maintain muscle tone, it will not help people lose weight. He also said that the AbTronic commercial took some of his words out of context, and that the machine alone cannot help a person lose weight, lose inches and gain muscle definition. "It was my intent to talk about many things together - diet, exercise, and the machine," Garcia said. "It has apparently been portrayed as just a machine itself. And that's not what I was there to talk about." Delaney says she spent $150 on the AbTronic, and chalks it up to one of life's lessons that she hopes others can learn from. Her advice to anyone lured by the ab machine commercials is simple "Don't buy it," she said.

If electronic sensors belong anywhere, it is in the rinse water. The military has refined sensors for taste and smell but a simple optical sensor in the final rinse would function as an excellent babysitter..this way no matter what size load or level of dirt you have the results are consistant. It's all rinsewater now days. Good question. I wash cold exclusively, have'nt gotten around to refining my wash method, why bother since I still have 2.5 gallons of cheap powder left. 2 words - Tide cold powder. The staber is rated at 18 pounds, I got it because it is a full size machine and I can wash enormous loads to be effecient since washing 8 versus 16 pounds DOUBLES every (every) expense associated with you washer. Therefore and due to the smallish staber tub, and because I wash cold exclusively, I have to run the tightest ship possible to still get results. Here is how to do it with any machine... Sure this machine takes 18 pounds in a pinch and is pretty effective due to the diamond tub shape, but with those loads one must use a prewash, which in the stabver functions as an extra rinse, but even here over time clothes will/might get dingy. (keep in mind i'm a bit of a complete slob, my laundry is absolutely filthy compared to average, just fine dust/dirt mostly and sand/oils)I do'nt really seperate whites entirely from greys also etc. Therefore, the clothes were getting dingy overtime. Because lack of hots means I do not set stains, if the clothes become dingy, I still have the option to erase the dingeness in the future. (I also air dry exclusively since incidently drier heat sets stains) over *time* oils - stains inevetably come out: I prefer this option..and by using multirinses I *now* have cured the dingy problem, and clothes last longer. I also use sunlight as an extended disinffectant I now sun dry everything. So to answer the cold question is simple and it involves 2 things being using the best *powder* and 2 watch your rinse water. Washing without seeing your rinse water is a shot in the dark I could not see doing it in any other way, so early on I modified the Staber so now I can check rinse on the fly. (a simple expansion chamber in the out line will work) When/if you elect to do it that way you can just dump the rinse water into a jar, in the beginning I would use up to seven rinses/jars, and these I photographed for refereance. It gets to a point where all your left with is dyes, so the water will have be a blue grey cast (do'nt go overboad on rinsewater!) This I proved by capping the jars tightly and letting them sit for a week then smelling them. I found a prewash with 1-2 extra rinses is about right. (remember I am using 16 pound fiiilthy loads) For comparison, the Staber does a prewash with 1-2 ounce soap, drains, wash with 1-2 ounce more soap, drains, rinse one, drains and rinse 2, drains. So I count that as 4 rinses. On top of this, I just add rinses till I'm satisfied, and this means on wash day I hang out doing work in the garage where the machine is so I can babysit when it starts rinsing. this way my wash is always on target. Before this, the staber at one point in the height of my filth which for me is always midsummer developed a bad smell. I did not attribute this to mold or build up Since the outer tub is still shiny, but to rinse water which sits at the bottom of the machine 1-2 inches deep. (this I *like* to prevent hard water deposits and salt concentration, and dried muck build up and oxygen resulting in rust and the inevitable outer tub leak) After one small wash the smell vanished. It's all rinse water now days. The staber incidently has a timer dial which allows me to program any one of a gillion different wash combinations, and It does'nt need a mondo hairy and vulnerable elecronics board.. some timer dials by the way only turn clockwise, this one goes either way which is ideal. I can do limitless rinses, in summer I use all the rinse on plants anyway. For a given amount of time, the staber also has the most agressive wash/rinse for a given tub design, which is the true measure of a good washer, Consumer Reports for instance does not take tub design into account, they just check results for a given electric program, which does'nt tell you which machine is able to pull the most efficiently for a given time when programmed optimally, which translates to great variance in expense and wear; commonly refered to as a lack of simple common sense on the part of CR. Washing always involves balance, programing from the start is barking up a comprimised tree since the animal is usually moving. You end up with either too much or not enough, usually to much.. the manual timer dial and the ability to open the machine any time is the only way I would ever wash. Many machines offer any number of extra rinses, the staber dial however allows me to adjust on the fly which is the best way, this way the inefficient redcoats are never coming.. want a worldclass machine program it to adjust rinse water based on an electrical sensor, but it still wo'nt beat user interface. This machine is also everest of gentle whith the most delicate item being pillows comforters. While the staber has a very good inner tub approach, on the other hand a 4800 with 4 cubic feet will I think match or exceed on average the staber 2 cubic feet approach, definately when using comforters, when washing 16 pounds I'm not so sure, also because the staber tub has the advantage of generating air/suds with it's splash, which has been found also by the japanese to be a big advantage in their Panasonic washers together with thier foam generators. The Staber for instance has a week spot in the center of say a big flannel sleeping bag, so as in any front loader one should load such an item so the part you lay on faces the outermost tub peripheral. (I tested this phenomena using ketchup) The 4800 will wash a big comforter much better than the Staber I would think. This is the main reason the 4.2 cubic foot LG is on top at CR, it solves the staber ketchup problem, but the trade off is weight/mass. I've washed my sleeping bags some 70 times, they are lasting veeery longtime and the wash is definately sufficient versus the laundry mat. I even keep the wash/spin on normal high speed. (do not wash a comforter on delicates in a staber! is my opinion) Bottomline the staber offers a hidden cost saving/operational advantages that I prefer by a wide margin due to the tub design, even if wash results (at 16 pounds) are not as good as a 4 cube foot machine. ..on detergent it's easy, go with Tide coldwater powder, it won a shootout out of around 30 detergents at CR. Cr found powders to be superior, tide cold liquid was way down on the ratings. Also since I wash cold, and with powder, I learned early on to dissolve the powder first. Critical. I place the powder in a glass jar with a half cup water and microwave and shake it, add more water, shake again. If I do not do this, the aggresive wash of the staber tub forces the powders into the clothes before it ever dissolves and it gets trapped in there when using full loads that ca'nt breathe as ideally. In the miel machine,I imagine using *my* powder would cause some of the powder to sit at the bottom of the *outer* tub undissolved, (, being sams club detergent) and you would run out and by some liquid persil to get clean clothes. This is because circular inner tubs as they spin cause centrifical force to hold water to the outer tub - (tiny tub holes can aggravate this) The Staber has big pencil sized holes, and because it doesn't use a space eating window, gets by with only 2 cubic feet of tub space. This is one reason many ahorizaxis machine manuals do'nt recommend powder, only HE. The tide cold water I suspect will not need to be dissolved before hand in any machine. It's good stuff. Lastly, on the staber anyway, I can use much more powder than the manual states and still have the machine spin out full speed and not suds lock since the machine breathes while shut and running, ulike machines with a sealed glass windows, and the inadvertant sensors needed to keep an eye on suds/spin speeds. I take full advantage of this by loading up to 5 ounces of powder into the prewash versus 2 ounces in the pre and 2 ounces in the wash which is how the staber is originally set up. Not sure if this is better but that's what I do. This also allows me to forfeit the stupid automatic detergent loader. With the Staber I can open it up and fiddle around at any given time - even on locked door by pulling out the timer and waiting 2 minutes. Some of us have hard water and it varies day to day, my water needs more detergent do to the hardness so the staber I think is a real advantage here. One last note, my pillows and comforters I wash every to weeks at most, and sometimes the wash water is brown, but I never need prewash or extra rinse with these ultra light items. (or it could be the fabric is producing less dye) I decided early on cold wash is the way to go, yes I know all about effects of cold and hot an certain varied protien or not and or saturated temperature activated oils stains etc., but I think in the real world it's not so cutdry, everything gets jumbled in the wash and if clothes become dingy it is a smorgashbord ding that can become set plus hot water has an effect on wear and expense. Not using drier is just another part of enhancing my cold wash performance, alittle detail here alittle detail their. The drier heat can set stains. I do have lint remaining on some fabrics, some fabrics are notorious for holding lint, but most of it pills into clumps that can be removed by hand especially with longer tumbling. As for wrinkles I simply fold the clothes when it is hot from the sun, after that body heat and movement does the rest. ..but yes omitting the drier is just another part of washing cold. Getting the details right can produce results when cold washing.. (to save timemoney ofcourse) It takes just as much effort to do it accurately as not and in this case much less when all is said and done. I recently set a world record 57.96 mpg in a stock Honda Civic non hybrid EX, and everyone thinks I did it with a tail wind on a test course at an average speed of 26, no, you do'nt have to suffer to get results. To rattle your brains I did it at an average freeway speed of around 70 mph. I realize this took alot of typing but once you get it down coldwater washing works. When I set the record it was on freeways and 30 percent city in cool (hot air is more efficient) still air, among other things, I would accelerate to 80 or so on down hills and flick it into neutral; after first ofcourse making sure the wheels/bearing/brakes were frictionless, so I no did'nt get there late afterall. I used speed memory basically - commonly known as energy retention in aeronautics, as in airplanes also in cars, weight (ballast) suddenly becomes an advantage. completley backwards to conventionally thoughtout physics, which says lightweight and lower averagspeed for efficientcy. it is the same with coldwater washing. The other tip that I havent tried yet for cold washing are the oxy bleaches which is how many hospitals are doing it. It is not always what you think will work but what actually does - hot might still get you cleanest I agree (currently) but itllcostya-

Would have been more considerate for you to start a new thread rather than pollute someone else's thread when your post has nothing to do with the thread's content. Regarding your water problems... There are a variety of less effective ways to attempt to treat water which you seem to have discovered but it really is as easy as 1-2-3 1. Certified lab test to determine what needs to be treated. 2. Have a water treatment professional evaluate the environment and decide on the most inclusive and comprehensive treatment and hardware required. 3. Have a water treatment professional install and configure the equipment for correct and efficient operation.