My plumbing contractor warned me off of having a floor drain with vinyl flooring as they tend to leak around the drain opening. I don't have first hand knowledge of that. I would definately want the tub hooked into a drain, but I can see the "sled" effect might be valid. I have heard of people mounting front loads on rubber mats to cut down the vibration.

Today the Sears salesperson told us that LGs and Frigidaire washers should not be used on the second floor as their design makes them prone to vibration. We were looking at a Kenmore made by frigidare. I don't know if this is true but I do know that we had a Frigidare on the 2nd floor that vibrated horribly. We tried everything to decrease vibration and nothing worked.

We're in the very early stages of planning a 2nd floor laundry room, and I'm about 99% sold on the Samsung Silver washer. It has special vibration control technology.

We did look at the Samsung but it is a little out of my price range. Plus I wasn't sure how heathly the silver is and where it goes and how it effects the environment.

I think we are getting the Whirlpool Duets Sport 8500.

Crystal

Personally, I would tile it and install a drain. If not that, then vinyl with the washer in a tub. Once you stack the units, your talking about 250lbs. It won't move.

If you have an outside wall, you can put the drain from the tub to the outside.

If it's in a tub, then carpet as much as you want. If no tub, I would advice against any carpet.

You might look into those manual single handle water valves for the machine. Push handle up to use, down to shut off, and leave it off when not in use.

At first glance the floor drain idea sounds like a pretty good idea, but when you think about it, the only thing seperating the inside of your lovely home from a filthy sewer, is the U-bend water trap in the floor drain. No problem if you flush it regularly, but if you let it dry up you're going to be waking up to the lovely smell of sewer gas. However, this would work if it can be connected to another drain, and then have both drains flow into a U-bend trap. That way the other drain would presumably keep the U-bend closed off. I'm not a plumber though, so please treat this as speculation, not a suggestion.

As far as putting the washer in a tub is concerned, I tend to agree with your sales person. The risk is that it will lower the friction between the washer and the floor, and your washer will start walking all over the place.

It's true that a washer on a pedestal is going to weigh 250 lbs plus, but the problem is resonance between the washer and the floor, not that the washer isn't weighing enough, because these resonances are specifically caused by the washer being so heavy. So, if you have a vibration problem with the washer, it's specifically because the 250 lb weight of the washer is interacting with your flexible floor.

Weedmeister's suggestion regarding manual single handle water valves actually has quite a bit of merit, because if you think about it, you realize that you're dealing with probabilities here. Let's say for aurguments sake that the odds of you having a broken water hose is 100,000:1, and the chance that you would forget to turn the hose off is 100:1, you can calculate the chances of you having a flood as 10,000,000:1, and you've effectively turned the remote possibility of a flood from a broken hose into something that's impossible for all practical purposes. The trick lies in being able to train everyone who uses the washer to turn the valve handle to the off position after every wash load.