Thanks gates1, I sort of figured it was something like that. I too would like the Miele but their left hand dryer/right hand washer is backward to my set up. There are rumours that they may be changing the W4XXX series and I've seen a photo of them with the washer on the left. I'm currently debating whether to get a CR top performer that's not Miele for now. If I get 6 years from it I'll be happy and then I'll get the Miele when (and if) the changes are available. I'm just concerned that what I pick will clean well. That is my one big prerequisite. It's installed in my basement laundry which was just done 2 years ago (and I love) so I'm not concerned about vibration. I want it to clean really well. I noticed there were a few other machines that cleaned "excellent" but many that cleaned "very well". I've looked at everything and I have to say the LGs make me happy ... I don't know what it is about them but they seem very well built compared to others (like Whirlpool). Little details like the detergent tray sliding so smoothly and the solidness of their door, etc, etc ... It's been a tough call for me but time is running out on my current machine and I will have to decide this week. I'd like new machines here by Friday.

mysteryclock I just had my Axxis dryer fixed once and for all. What an ordeal. Really would have been easy if I got the right repairman right off the bat. I've been all over this forum trying to figure out what has been up with my machine. I knew it wasn't right. It just took forever to dry and then eventually i kept getting this huge puddle of water under the machine after a while. It was drying sometimes and acting funny at others. Ultimately after 4 service calls and replacing all the parts on the entire dryer, it turned out to be the heater. For anyone with a condensation dryer, i cannot stress this enough- get your machine checked once in a while. I had 4 blissful years with it and it was telling me gently that something was wrong by slowly wigging out. If i would have had it looked at when it was just acting weird, I would have had to replace far less! I got a GREAT Bosch tech, who i would highly recommend to anyone in the LA/Pasadena area. It took me a while to find him but he fixed the problem in less than an hour once he diagnosed it. If anyone wants to have their Bosch or other German appliance fixed, call Ricky at Appliance Masters. I've heard some of their techs are not so hot. This guy was a senior tech and he was the best. After all the drama with this machine and service call after service call, i'd say this guy has a halo and angel wings! He fixed it in less than a hour once the parts were ordered. These high end German appliances are great unless something is off. I have had probably 5 repairmen with my various German appliances in the last 6 months. All of the good ones said the same thing- great appliances unless you are having a problem with them. I guess the moral of the story is- it's better to pay a bit to maintain and get check ups once in a while rather than wait until the machine goes up in flames or in my case out in a puddle of vaguely warm water. All it needed was a new heater, not a complete overhaul, which i wound up with anyway. In my house full of Gaggenau, Liebherr and Bosch, call me converted. I'm going to get these insanely expensive appliances looked at frequently so they stay calibrated. It seems to make all the difference in the world. I'm humbled and feel kind of bad that this was such a colossal headache. I still love my washer and dryer. It's the best purchase I've made, with a close second being the Gaggenau dishwasher. I love me some German appliances!!

Silver is actually a great natural antibiotic if you use the proper formulation. There is a product on the market called Silver Biotics that I use ALL the time and I wouldn't be without it. I've used it for my cat, he had a sore on his paw that was really infected and smelled really bad, after a few days of silver biotics, it was healed up and the infection was gone. I've used it several times when I felt something coming on. My point is I think you're safe with the silver care in your washer. Back in the older days there was a condition that caused your skin to turn blue/gray from people taking silver supplements but they were ingesting silver in very high concentrations. Another interesting footnote.....During the plague, a lot of the "rich" people seemed to survive and it was suggested that perhaps it was because they could afford "silver" utensils ...I've also heard where people who were sick would drop silver coins in a glass of water and drink the glass of water to fight infection. Silver is great if used properly.

Well, I'm having some of the same adjustment issues with my new FL because I also used liquid detergent and OxiClean powder together in my old TL, predissolved in the wash water before clothes were added. And I'm just not accustomed to using powdered detergents. Before my recent research, I had just assumed that liquids are better. Oxygen bleach works "best" at higher temperatures, meaning it works much faster. But it will also work in cooler water if you give it LOTS of time to soak. I got that tip from Cooks Illustrated, when they tested stain removers. They said that if you don't want to pretreat, OxiClean will get out almost any stain, IF you give it 30 minutes, or ideally 60 minutes, to work. It works for up to 6 hours or so. So, I substituted time for temperature for fabrics I thought couldn't take the heat. With a FL that lets you dispense either liquid or powder but not both, if you want the cleaning power of OxiClean, you should use a powdered detergent: - Tide HE powder - Gain HE powder - Persil Universal Powder (NOTE: there may be other brands similarly formulated, but I have only researched these so far.) Think of these powdered detergents as already containing OxiClean --- PLUS other cleaning agents needed for dirty laundry. OxiClean contains: - sodium carbonate (55-65%) - sodium percarbonate (aka sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate or oxygen bleach) (30-40%) - ethoxylated alcohol C12-16 (2-4%) Sodium carbonate is sometimes called a "builder" because it "softens" mineral ions in hard water. It also buffers a solution to a high pH, which makes other cleaning agents like surfactants work more effectively. Most of the soils and stains in fabrics are acidic, and the high pH helps break them down. Sodium percarbonate is oxygen bleach. It contains a molecule H2O2, which has an unstable, reactive oxygen molecule that's eager to break away and go off on its own, leaving H2O behind. The oxygen molecule oxidizes stains in fabrics. (It's kind of interesting that this same process happens inside our bodies, where the reactive oxygen molecules are called free radicals. Strongly-colored plant-based foods, like berries, coffee, tea, curcumin, etc., contain antioxidants that neutralize the free radicals that otherwise wreak havoc on cells. It's the same reaction as in your laundry. With laundry, we think of the oxygen as getting rid of the berry stain, and in our bodies, we think of the berries as getting rid of the free radical oxygen molecules.) Ethoxylated alcohol is a surfactant, which is needed to remove oils from items being cleaned, to make OxiClean an "all-purpose" cleaner and stain remover. OxiClean, however, does NOT contain enough surfactant to remove the oily body soils in a load of laundry. The powdered detergents I discussed in my post above (Tide, Gain, Persil) contain those exact same ingredients, PLUS add more to make the formula better for cleaning laundry. Think of them as OxiClean PLUS: - an oxygen bleach activator, to make the oxygen bleach work even if the wash temperature is not super hot - more surfactants, because oily body soils are a main component of dirty laundry - a hard-water builder system that's more effective than sodium carbonate - a polymer or emulsifier to keep the soils away from the fabrics once they've been pulled off by the surfactants - protease enzyme to break down protein-based stains like blood, grass, etc into small particles. The oxygen bleach can then break down those small particles much faster than it otherwise would. - optical brightener. All white and light-to-medium colored fabrics contain these, and refreshing them in the laundry makes the fabrics LOOK dramatically brighter and cleaner. - ingredients to stabilize the oxygen bleach so that it doesn't react with the moisture in the air while it's sitting on the shelf Those ingredients are like a cleaning orchestra, where the ingredients are more effective together than they would be separately. I do not think you will gain any cleaning power by adding liquid detergent. Everything you need for cleaning (mainly, the additional surfactants) is already in the powder detergent. And all the OxiClean ingredients are already in it too. To make these powder detergents work their best, use hot wash temperatures OR longer soak times. (Or both, if you have horrific stains.) The activator in Tide/Gain makes the oxygen bleach work better at lower wash temperature, 30-40 C (84-104 F). Above 40C/104F, the activator in Persil works equally well. So in general, Tide/Gain will clean better in American machines and for users who choose "warm" as the wash temperature to be more gentle to fabrics.