LMAO,,, Miss Karen, I adore u after reading u'r "post & moan alert". U are woman after my own heart. However, I have a bit of an advantage, I myself am an appliance/HVAC tech, and although I'm pretty sure I'm not as old as u'r repairman, I was trained by those old farts & boy did I gain a wealth of knowledge and have the utmost respect for them. They most certainly DO know what they're talking about. And of course, we hate to see the new junk coming down the line that we have to try to figure out what the engineers were thinking when they dreamed this up, lack of electronic knowledge isn't possible in this business because there are way fewer of us like u'rself who opt for plain and simple and far, far too many millenials thinking that more expensive anand bells & whistles is better for the environment. please. They're just keeping up with the Jones'. Yes, the old fashioned top loaders do use more water, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for clean drawers! How about u? Lol Unfortunately, I'm looking for a new laundry pair since we are moving and I'll be damned,,,, they discontinued the good old direct drive models. Again, what the hell were thinking! I know hat they're thinking, "they're way to dependable and we gotta generate revenue." I just found u'r comments while doing some research and sure got a laugh with u. Hope u ended up with something descent. Tammy, former appliance

live_wire_oak, The LG washers like all other non-commercial large capacity washers in the USA operate off a 120V 15 amp circuit. With this design you cannot get more than about 1500 to 1600 watts of power out of the circuit. The motor/electronics used to operate everything else in the washer might take up to 500 watts or so of peak power (motors need a surge of power to get going and then use less to keep going) and maybe up to 250 watts of steady state power to operate. The power budget only allows about 1000 watts for the heater. When the LG machine is making steam it's not heating the water so the net additional energy being added to the tub is the same. re: "But then, about half of all Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. Science just isn't our forté, but hype certainly is." live_wire_oak, this was well said!!!! But then this is a subject for a whole different forum. luvmylg, We have been using FLers for the past 14 years. The first 13 of these years was serviced by an Asko. A truely wonderful machine in most respects (far from perfect, but still very very good) that churned through 10 to 15 loads a week without complaint until the end. Until the end it's only fault was a broken impeller where one of our kids play items got stuck and broke the impeller. This was half our fault for not checking his pockets and half Asko's fault for not having a good screen which would keep stuff away from the impeller. When the machine broke (electronics board failure) it was right at a time when we really needed a bigger machine but also didn't want to give up some of the nice cleaning aspects we got from the Asko. Bigger Miele machines were also being heavily rumored so we decided to get a serviceable, but temporary machine until Miele announced their product. At the time Home Depot was selling out their stock of Danby's at $300 (plus a $50 energy star rebate). I must say for $250 the Danby has been one great machine. It doesn't have anywhere near the quality and design of the Asko, but it has still been a very good performer. It has an internal water heater which will heat to 200F (very long cycle) and has controls which are simple and direct enough that you can get it to do pretty much anything you want. Now that the Miele W4840 is out, we will most likely get one of these once I finish reconfiguring our laundry room (moving the dryer to improve venting, and moving the washer location so a big machine will fit). So far most of the W4840 feedback on this forum has been good, but I'm also considering the Bosch Nexxt as well if some current info on this forum regarding how the Miele uses it's internal heater turn out to be true. Who knows, might also consider LG machines as well if Miele drops off the list. I like the solid heft of the Miele compared with other machines out there. I hope it's determined that Miele uses the internal heater in all cycles.

You do realize that the Bravos have electronic boards in them too don't you? I'm curious about your board problems before. I don't suppose you have a good surge protector on there? I'm wondering if you are having some surge issues. In fairness, yes, the lid and such is plastic on the F&P. But what's wrong with that? It won't rust! F&P is known for high quality construction where it counts. The early Cabrio/Oasis/Bravos had big issues with rusting on the metal components. I'm thinking it might be resolved since I don't hear much on it anymore but a plastic lid can't rust. F&P have very few moving parts and I'm told they're pretty good units for a DIYer to repair. There's not a lot of units that don't use electronic components. Just be sure you know what you're getting. Also be aware that a C/O/B claim of 4.7 cf capacity is misleading. They don't wash 4.7 cf worth of laundry. That's an (upward) adjusted figure to "compensate" for the lack of an agitator to "compare" washers. I believe the capacity of a C/O/B is about 3.8 cf IIRC. Someone else could probably give more detail on it. That does sound like a heckuva good price on that washer though.

I had a Bravos and hated it so much I sold it for pennies on the dollar. I think it was $1000 and I sold it for $100. I wish I could tell you the big tub is a wonderful thing but it's not. It doesn't put enough water into the tub and sometimes my clothes were not even wet. It was gross. Not to mention it was big so it often went out of balance and the clothes were in a huge wadded up ball when I extracted the clothes. They went too far when cutting down the water used to wash the clothes because it now does not get clothes clean or in some cases even wet. It's also a noisy machine and takes forever to wash clothes. My GE front loader does a much better job of cleaning clothes. I would never buy a top load High Efficiency machine again. The dryer was noisy too. I'm much happier with the set I have now which I think is the same GE set you mentioned in your post.