First off -- thanks to everyone for responding. aquarius2101 -- Unfortunately, these machines are less than a year old, and I don't have the disposable cash to just toss a $2200 purchase in the dumpster, and make another 2k-ish purchase. unixisgoodforyou -- Well, if I can get another servicer to come out, I'll give it a shot. Not that I haven't thought of doing this, but half the time, the guy's a no-show and reschedules, or he's way late -- so it's hard to time ;0 sshrivastava -- I'm about to call Asko again, after a running a couple more of their ridiculous 'open closet door' tests. As I predicted (and they were unwilling to listen to), there was no change in performance. spewey -- Vent run is within spec... I hopped up in the attic and tape-measured everything out a while back. I have 2 90 degree turns of hard pipe (considered 4 feet each) and around an 8 foot or so run across the ceiling area. I did tape up that break in the line a long time ago also. dross - I haven't really noticed any problems with the Kirkland stuff once I adjusted quantity. Sometimes there are a few little suds on the bottom of the door, but it doesn't appear to be anything major (at least as far as I can tell). Anyhow, on to my new results with door open. Test 1 -- full load of colored cotton clothes (almost entirely 100% cotton -- some 95% and 97% cotton stuff) ran from 9:20 until 10:00 (including 5 minutes of cool down) - clothes still very wet ran from 10:00 until 10:20 (with 10 minutes cool) -- clothes still wet ran from 10:20 until 10:45 (with 5 minutes cool) -- still wet ran from 10:45 until 11:05 - still wet ran from 11:05 until 11:39 -- fairly damp ran from 11:39 to 12:27 ran from 12:30 to 1:25 total run time -- around 4 hours for one load! granted, some of this was 'cool down' time that I didn't catch right away, but c'mon, give me a break. As you can see, this is pretty annoying. I had the dryer set to extra dry, and it kept stopping on me for whatever reason (bad moisture sensor?). Each time it stopped, I opened the door, cleaned the lint filter if necessary, and if there were any items that were dry, I pulled them out, cleared the current dryer setting, and fired it up again. Test 2 -- 6 cotton towels (100% cotton) I have the exact breakdown written at home, but I believe I had to restart the load twice, and it took a total of 1 hour and 40 minutes to dry 6 towels. Pretty unacceptable. I've noticed that with the first load, some items seemed to just collect in the back portion of the dryer, and remained wetter than the other items. I also have pictures of the load sizes -- maybe someone could tell me if they'd consider the first load overloaded? I find it hard to believe 6 towels is overloading a dryer, but... it's worth having a basis for comparison. 6 towels colored cotton load Thanks again to everyone for responding -- as soon as I contact Asko, I'll update everyone...

Somonica, that price makes sense. The W1612 is a european "entry level" model with some "compromise" to make it a bit more affordable : polycarbonate doorframe vs stainless and painted sides vs enamel. Here in Europe it's in the same price range of the latest TOL Bosch Axxis (here aka EcoLogixx 8 ) Holly, IMHO you got a deal : the W1612 has true european cycle names and settings (e.g prewash is "prewash" and not "heavy soil" ; extended wash is set by default : the option here is "short", not "extended") BUT, despite it's able to boilwash too, it's delivered in north America as a 120v machine.

AHAM, BSH, GE, and Whirlpool commented that DOE should add a performance measure, particularly because at the higher efficiency levels, clothes washers are reaching the limit where product performance and consumer satisfaction may not be economically reached. I surely hope a performance measure will be implemented! With washers using less and less water, rinsing performance suffers. Our consumer magazine always test rinsing performance for washers and not a single unit does a *Good* job. I would welcome a rinsing rating to be added to the already existing European Energy Label. While this label has brought us some advantages - washers that don't receive an *A* grade for washing performance are no longer allowed to be sold and appliances got way more efficient overall - it also brought its drawbacks, namely cycle duration and water temp. My Whirlpool Duet, if set to the Energy Label cycle (Cottons 140F) and packed full, takes 3:45 hrs. (on a cold fill). That's a long time. LG's newest 24 inch model, as was found out by our consumer magazine, only heats to 110F instead of 140F when set to the Energy Label reference cycle. Even Miele washers now have cycles of three hours. All this is due to the fact that washers must deliver A-class cleaning but must also meet consumer's expectations of being super-efficient since the label makes comparing between different models so easy. While I naturally welcome efficient appliances, I don't welcome cycles that take half an afternoon to run and wash my clothes cooler than I set the washer for. Just like so many of you, I had to figure out myself how to program my washer to do what I want it to. The future will probably bring no-heat washers that spray a fine mist over the clothes to rinse them. No, wait! LG and Samsung washers already do this. :-/ On a more positive note, it also forces manufacturers to come up with innovative solutions that still get the job done. One example is the Solar Dryer by Miele (and Asko offers something similar, I think). Solar Dryer Now, while I donâÂÂt really see how washers came become much more efficient - I think dishwashers can. But thatâÂÂs a different forum. Alex Here is a link that might be useful: European Union energy label

I didn't read the other responses so some of this might be repetetive, but here's my story: We use cloth diapers on DD who is now 3 months old. We use disposables for traveling but that is the only time we use them (a jumbo pack will last 4-6 weeks in this case). The only reason we don't travel with cloth is because they take up too much room in the diaper bag and are messier than I want to deal with. I bought all my diapers from organic bebe.com. (No, I don't work for them.) (I believe jardine diapers has a good website too - has lots of FAQ on cloth diapering. Type the name in a search engine. I've never ordered from them though.) After trial and error and several orders I've decided that 3 dozen diapers and about 5 wraps is a good amount to have on hand. This leaves you doing laundry every other day. We only use the prefolds because it's the cheapest and not any less convenient than all-in-ones or fitted diapers. Plus, I don't have a lot of space to store several different kinds of diapers. With the prefolds, I just stack them up and put them on a shelf. Works very easily. We have a wet pail and a dry pail. Basically a wet pail is a bucket of water that we keep in the bathroom that has a presoak in it (we use BIZ - look in the laundry aisle). Poopy diapers go in here. We also have a dry soak that lives by the crib. It is a diaper pail with a trash bag in it. Wet diapers go in here. We were just using a wet pail but it was filling up too fast and I wasn't sure wet diapers needed to really "soak" anyhow. Since DD only has a poopy diaper about once a day it's very convenient to have the dry pail so close to the crib! The wet pail lives in the bathroom so that you can dump the solids in the toilet before allowing the diapers to soak. When it's time to do a wash I dump all the diapers in the washer and run it on hot. We use dreft detergent on the cloth diapers but any detergent will do. (Somebody gave it to us and I thought we should make sure baby's bum isn't sensitive to Tide or other detergents. Plus, somebody said Dreft gets the diapers the whitest-don't know if that's true or not. When we run out of Dreft we'll probably use the family detergent. I use Tide on all her clothes as well as ours.) I do not dry the wraps in the dryer. I let them air dry. But, I do use the dryer for the prefolds. When buying prefolds you want to make sure they are good quality. Chinese prefolds and Baby textiles are supposedly the best but I go by their absorbancy chart. 4x8x4 is what I buy. That means there are 8 layers of absorbancy in the middle and 4 layers on each side. You can also buy diapers in 4x6x4 or 2x4x2 depending on how much absorbancy you want. I don't go any less than 4x8x4. I also don't use pins. What's great about prefolds is they will fit into a wrap very easily. Just fold into thirds, slip into a wrap, and slip under baby, velcro up. I like the Bummis Super Whisper wrap. (Look at the www.organicbebe.com diaper packages.) I had no idea what I was doing when I decided to use cloth diapers. I placed several posts similar to this one (Kara_PA is a lifesaver!!!) to get a general idea of where to start. Like you, I wanted to use them for financial reasons and because they're better for the environment. I hate seeing all those disposables going into the landfill. I guess this is how I'm doing my part to help. My folks used cloth diapers so I got a lot of help from them. They taught me about the presoak and how to diaper the baby. Things have changed since my brothers and I were babies, but the basics are still the same. Some people don't like cloth because the clothes fit bulkier. That is true, but it's not that bad. Besides, I figure if I'm taking DD anywhere that really matters she'll be in disposables anyhow! Who cares how their clothes look around the house! If you do decide to cloth diaper you will go through all kinds of trial and error and find a system that works for you. And, like me, your system might even change a little until you're comfortable with what you have. We had several fitted and all in one diapers on hand until I decided they weren't that much better and I couldn't justify the cost. An all-in-one Bumkins diaper costs about $11 (give or take). It will last about 6 months according to the manufacturer. You can buy disposables cheaper than that! So, I sold all of my all-in-ones and fitted diapers on ebay! Don't hesitate to ask more questions! Good luck to you!