Use HE (high efficiency) detergent

Congratulations on your new purchase!

The first thing I would recommend would be to use no more than 2-3 TBS of detergent. If your clothes come out nice and clean, try reducing that to 1-2 TBS until you feel that you've reached a threshold. One of the biggest problems with front loaders is over or under dosing of detergent. There is no right or wrong amount, but unless you have super hard water with some other horrible qualities the manufacturer's recommendation on the detergent box is extreme overkill.

To give you an example, I recently bought a couple of boxes of Persil detergent. The most conservative recommendation on the box was for 4-6 TBS. I am using 1 TBS with great results. My wash drum is about half the size of yours, so I wouldn't be surprised if you needed 2 TBS to wash a full load. That's if you have soft water. Add more for harder water conditions.

Other than that, let us know how things go!

Thanks, stingo and sshrivastava--will do.

My advice would differ from sshrivastava's. I think the advice to reduce detergent dosage is too freely given and repeated, with the result that people don't get their laundry clean. Maybe you can limit the dosage severely if your water is extremely soft, or you don't wash dirty stuff (anything that touches the body is dirty). And if you're washing a small load, you can reduce the dosage accordingly. And maybe if you have a washer that doesn't rinse properly, you're forced to limit the dosage. But it just doesn't make sense that recommended dosages would be too large, on average.

I've heard the argument, "the manufacturers want you to use more detergent so they'll make more money". I think the profit argument goes the other way. If you were going to sell a package of detergent labeled for 32 washes, would it make economic sense for you to include, say, four times as much active ingredients as really needed for 32 average washes, under average conditions?

Also, recommending a specific quantity, without reference to the type of detergent, doesn't make sense, sorry.

I would follow the recommendation of the washer manufacturer. In the W4840 manual, Miele in turn recommends following detergent directions. Then, make adjustments if necessary. I've been using the recommended dosage of Sears powdered detergent and haven't had any problems. For very small loads, I'll use as little as half the recommended dosage (1/2 scoop). Recently I've been adding STPP to the loads I do myself. My family doesn't find it necessary for their washes, since the Miele with cheap Sears detergent alone does an outstanding job. But since I saw the amazing additional difference STPP makes, I don't want to go back.

Specific Miele advice: See if the Normal cycle on the W4842 uses the internal water heater. It doesn't on the W4840, and I use the Custom cycle in place of Normal. To find out if it's using the heater, plug the machine in through a Kill-A-Watt box, run a load at a temperature that'll definitely need to be heated (like Hot, 140F, if your water heater is at 120F), and see if the wattage goes above 1000W a few minutes into the cycle.

You're killing me, Suburbanmd! It doesn't make any sense to suggest people use than what's recommended on the box given the large number of complaints we see in here about mold and smelly laundry? And it's just fine to tell people to dump phosphates into their laundry in the form of STPP and to tell them to monitor the wattage usage of their heater by plugging the machine into some crazy contraption? Can we get a grip on reality here?

More people would agree than disagree that the dosage recommendation on the side of the box is high. I believe I was clear in my email that my recommendations were based on what it said on the side of my box of Persil. It's a little silly to put your blinders on and just do what the box says if you can cut down on the detergent, the impact on the environment, and the hit to your pocketbook. It's quite obvious if a certain amount of detergent is too much or too little - too little and your clothes won't get clean, too much and you'll be fighting suds.

Unless you're using Charlie's Soap, in which case you apparently need to use it for a month before making any kind of determinations. Even then you need to twirl around twice and do a rain dance before pressing START. No offense to anyone, but let's keep it simple for goodness sake.

I've seen lots of proposed reasons for buildup leading to mold and smelly laundry -- liquid detergent, fabric softener, too-cold water, too little detergent (leaves undissolved body oils in the machine). Too much detergent has probably also made the list.

Let's see, your detergent recommends 4-6 tbsp. Your drum is half the usual size, so cut it in half, 2-3 tbsp. Cut it in half again because your water is soft, and it's 1-1.5 tbsp, round that down to 1 tbsp, what you're using. Sounds like 4-6 tbsp may be just about right, for typical drum size and not-so-soft water. Upper end of the range for really dirty loads.

If the W4822 doesn't use the heater in the Normal cycle (like the W4840), it's important for the OP to know. Easiest way to find out for sure, is to use a Kill-A-Watt meter. Not a lot of cost and effort to make sure you're using your new washing machine to best advantage.

Whether or not phosphates are a problem is a local question. I have a septic tank far from any body of water, so the phosphates affect only my property. If your water goes through a sewage treatment plant that removes phosphates, and the capacity isn't maxed out, your added phosphate won't end up in a lake or stream. And the coming bans on phosphate in dishwasher detergent are going to reduce the phosphate load on the plants. Or maybe your sewage treatment plant discharges into an ocean where phosphates won't cause a problem.

The way your posting is written, the 2-3 tbsp recommendation isn't qualified by the kind of detergent, though you may have meant it that way.

my vote is with sshrivastava on this one. you want the minimum detergent to get things clean. more detergent doesnt get clothes more clean - they are either clean or not.

the flip side to cleaning is rinsing and that is where too much deteregent is a problem. it is now harder to rinse out more detergent

you find the right amount but it is generally lower than you think

Can't wait to hear how you like them. We have been holding out buy a new washer and dryer until these came out, because my wife wants the chocolate brown set!

Yep, too much detergent isn't good either, and I didn't say anyone should use too much. I just said to start from the washer manufacturer's recommendation (which may refer to the detergent package), and adjust from there. Incidentally, the manual for my LG (that I had for only a few days) said to use half the detergent package recommendation, and I did that. Didn't have the machine long enough to know how it would work out. My Miele manual says to follow the detergent package.

My intention was to recommend a starting point, not for someone to think it was a black or white thing. If you want to get the detergent dose just right, you need to know something about your water chemistry. I just didn't want lsandler to think we're a bunch of obsessed laundry freaks! OH wait a minute... we are!

haha!

Let's use my Asko manual's recommendation, and work from there. I have a W6761, which has a 5 kg (11 lb) capacity. I can't find any information on the drum volume, but for argument's sake let's assume the Miele W4842 has at least double the drum size. The Asko manual recommends the following detergent amounts:

Soft water: 1 TBS
Medium hard water: 1.5 TBS
Hard water: 2.5 TBS

Presuming that laundry volume, therefore detergent amount, scales linearly with drum volume we are looking at roughly 3 TBS for the Miele W4842. If you have soft water then 2 TBS, and 5 TBS if you have hard water. This is how I formulated my recommendation, and I still think it's a good starting point. Miele dishwashers digitally measure the hardness of the water they use, I wonder why they didn't include that technology in the W4842 washing machine. It would have been a great addition.

I think it's silly to blindly follow the detergent manufacturer's recommendation. How can they know how big your machine is, or how much water your particular machine uses? If I followed the recommendation on the detergent box, I would have suds all over the floor. What size of washer did these manufacturers use when they formulated their recommendations? Don't you think it's peculiar that regular Tide, which is designed for top loaders that use 40 gallons or more of water per load, has the same size scoop and the same dosage instructions as Tide HE which is to be used in front load machines that use 80% less water?

I'd love to hear your experience with the W4842. I'm toying with the idea of getting this same machine myself, I'm starting to outgrow my Asko.

Many people have hard water...recommending a teaspoon or even a tablespoon where I live is just pure nonsense...the residual soap left on my underwear would do a better job(well not really as I have hard water so there will be no soap left)...
We need to follow the manufactures recommendations here.
Always blows me away when people arbitrarily decide they know more than companies with R&D facilities...I understand it might work for you but please don't assume it's correct for everyone...

LIP2000

Most people who have hard water know they have hard water and also have a brain to understand that what they read here are just ideas and recommendations, not rules or laws that need to be mindlessly followed like so many religions.

How are these units working out for you? Do you like them? Have you experienced any challenges? I would love to hear your experiences.

Can't a person just add something like Calgon water softener to the load and get away with 1TBL of detergent?? Seems to me, that would be the easiest thing to do and perhaps most economical, especially when using big buck detergent like Persil???

Are we supposed to use water softeners in these washers, or do they contribute to mold as well? Anybody?

Off the detergent subject, does anyone who owns this set ever wash King size comforters or is that too much of a load? It's not a real thick comforter-

No need for softener...just use the correct amount listed on the product as they are mostly set for hard water...
the problem is more if you have soft water as you will have too much suds and possibly too much soap being left on the clothes(thus people with soft water wanting additional cycles to wash out the soap)...