I have the Whirlpool Cabrio HE and it has halved the amount of laundry I do. Actually I should say the number of loads I do, I still do the same amount! I washes really well, rinses great (no rabbit hair left in the washer even after washing my bunny's bed), and does not have any vibration problems. It is very quite when washing. I have the 6600 model, I know there is a 6700 model now that uses less water, I would be a bit concered how well this would rinse, esp. if you are worried about getting pet hair out of bedding. I had a FLer briefly (it was a 3.8 cf, the Cabrio HE is 4.5 cf) and it held barely more than my old Kenmore TLer (which was top of the line and largest capacity 12 years ago), it did not get all the hair off of stuff, it did not rinse well, and even after several times being leveled it vibrated. My laundry room is on the first floor between the kitchen and dinning rooms, near the family room, and above a finished basement. From the basement, most of the noise the Cabrio makes comes from the water entering and leaving the machine, not much you can do about that sound. I did not get the matching dryer because I did not like it, I got the Whirlpool Duet dryer which I love. I did use the Cabrio washer with my old dryer for the first nine months and the amount of water removed by the high speed spin made an obvious difference in drying time. I do wash my husbands work cloths (he is an executive director in an investment group so that means lots of dress shirts and slacks) and it does a better job than my old TLer with these, less wrinkles coming out of the dryer. There are some other washers similar to the Cabrio, though you might want to steer clear of the Oasis, sounds like a lot of people are unhappy with it, plus Sears can be very difficult to deal with. I would reccomend Lowes or Home Depot if you have them by you. They both have good return policies (got my washer at Lowes and they exchanged twice before I got the Cabrio) and have good customer service. The extended warranties are also reasonable, and if you get an HE machine you should get the warranty just to be safe. Be careful with Best Buy, they charge a restocking fee on appliances, although you may be able to talk your way out of that. Hope I was able to help. Joanne

I have a LG waveforce washer which is based on the GE harmony, both made by LG. Ive had it for just over a month, though I havent experienced dry clothes or excesive sudsing in my machine (rock hard Water here) I can tell you this much. Your machine senses the load by how much resistance there is when it first starts and the impeller moves back and forth. The more resistance, them more water it will use to fill the load. I can and have used my cotton/normal cycle for sheets, but I do perfer to use my Bulky/beding cycle for it. It uses more water, and the sheets move around more "freely" As far as your water being soft, yes keep decreasing the detergent amount till you get the suds under control or changed detergents. I know if I add STTP to my wash, I can turn out some major suds, at least when I had a FL, making cool whip was not a problem LOL. Currently I can use Regular Tide, not HE lavender scent with no sudsing issue. Im sure my rock hard water has much to do with that. Plus al of tide Normal detergents do have a suds surpressor in them as stated on the tide website. I am more on a powder kick these days, it smells better and seems to work the same. I mainly use Tide and gain HE Recently Tried the new Wisk HE, works as good, smells decent, not too heavy and cheaper too. Persil rules though for cleaning performance and a truely clean rinse, but you gotta pay for it, not everyone cup of tea. I hope this helps you out some and keep us posted

A Charles H. Ullery paper presents a thorough assessment of water hardness classifications for the American Society of Agricultural Engineers. The ASAE Standard S-339 is: soft: 0-3.5 grains per gallon (gpg), moderate: 3.5-7.0 gpg, hard: 7.0-10.5 gpg, and very hard: over 10.5 gpg With your water @ 17gpg it is REALLY hard and that's without knowing the iron and manganese content. That means that most solutions to your water heating problem are doomed to shorter service and more frequent maintenance from the start and that is EXACTLY what you are complaining about with a softener... except a softener requires you to walk by and look at it once a week. You can opt for the storage tank and that will give you hot water and false security because all your plumbing, every appliance, and fixture will be seeing ludicrously hard water and that will cost you $$$ and usually at the most inopportune time. Like the old FRAM commercials said... you can pay me now or you can pay me later. ROs don't have to mounted under the sink. They can be installed in a basement or through the wall behind the kitchen sink. "... and that's one more thing to forget to do each week" Well, think of it as taking vitals... we can have a water doctor write the order for you. Without knowing the details of your water usage I can say that a correctly sized industry standard softener could be had for between $500 and $1000 online plus the cost of local install and at a higher price locally installed. "I understand softeners definitely have benefits and are very popular here on this forum. There seem to be more posts on that than anything else" As the cost of appliances and fixtures go up people seem more interested in getting the longest and most trouble free service life from those purchases. Few of us have more money than we know what to do with so we look for the best bang for the buck we can get. With respect, a correctly sized and set up softener with a modestly priced stand alone water heater is the most cost effective, simplest, and easiest to live with solution you can get. Let us know what you decide.

I use magicplan on my iPad, I got the app free but purchase plans for 2.50. If you tell me where the windows and doors are I can try some plans out and post here. Whether or not you can fit a washer/ drier in will depend on if you have lots of solid walls, if you are willing to sacrifice a large shower, have only a single sink and how many exterior walls you have if you live in an area that does not allow for exterior wall plumbing. I have a larger bath but it has windows on all three exterior walls so my plumbing for the shower was limited substantially. With smaller baths we really have to pare down and focus on our most important wishes. here is a quick plan that assumes you have no windows or issues with plumbing placement magicplan only allows for doors on outside walls but the door to the stackable laundry cubby should fit in the room too.