if you want to play with the bag culture technique, you can get bags made from panda film, and bulk perlite or tiny rockwool nuggets from carefreegarden.com its a run to waste system so you'll need a very large reservoir. i find watering short but often uses less water than watering long but not as often. my tomatoes outside in rockwool running to waste get 45 seconds every 45 minutes when the sun is pounding down on them. otherwise its 55 seconds every 4 hours. using 4gph drip stakes. i would start with a recirculating system so you can use a tds/ec meter to learn what the plant is doing. if the reading goes up, the plant is being overfertilized, if the reading goes down, the plant wants more fertilizer. in a system where the nutrient runs to waste, you cant really measure the runoff very easily to see what the plant is doing. im trying to say it helps to have a few grows under your belt before going with this method. there are plenty of recirculating drip systems out there. i learned on an american agritech jetstream system.

Thanks, everyone. For some reason, I am not receiving the notifications that I've gotten a response so I'm glad I came and checked! I do realized that any groove or dipped area in a plastic/tupperware won't get dry (or heaven forbid, it turn over and become a raincatcher!) but it's pretty clear to me that many of the euro models don't address the steam issue at all. This seems like a good solution but I'd only consider it because so many people rave about the quality of the Miele. Can I ask if it took an adjustment for loading? Some people love the capacity while others complain that it's so specifically oriented towards particularly-sized plates, bowls, cups, etc that it becomes frustrating and full of wasted space. We tend to have TALL glasses (24 oz Tervis Tumblers and a very tall wine glass set) - so that's tricky to fit with the KA cutlery rack but it's not designed exactly the same, I know. And, we have cutlery that has mother-of-pearl handles so the handle wouldn't fit in the small tynes of the cutlery rack. Do either of those sound hugely problematic to you? I don't know if I care as much about the auto close - my kids will think that's a fun feature to abuse. But, I do like the idea of the auto open for the drying situation. Thanks, everyone - it's about 50 minutes to the one distributor so I've only seen them once and it's not easy to just "pop" by to ask questions.

Thanks, Floortech, for replying to both of my posts. I also saw Bruce Park Avenue laminate with a "piano" finish and wasn't quite sure of the difference between the Bruce and the Diamond. As you said, both finishes are a high sheen. I guess that durability will be according to the AC rating.

Am I correct in assuming that Mexico is just the final assembly point, and the machines are designed elsewhere, with many imported parts? If so, do you think that assembly errors cause a significant number of washing machine problems? Sure, they'd be responsible for the "duh" problems, like a loose hose clamp in the machine causing a flood. But what about the ones like twisted clothes, or inadequate rinsing, where the service technician can't do anything, and says "working as designed"? Those sound more like design problems than assembly problems. Breakdowns because of seal or bearing failure, or circuit board failure, could be bad design, or could be due to improperly specified or badly sourced components. The final assembly point is irrelevant for problems with those causes.