Part 2 of observations:

The SQ FF7 has a Soak option. This is nice.

SQ’s “Sanitize with Oxi” might be a bit of a joke, IMO, because is no internal heater. Instead, it wash tumbles the load for 60 minutes with whatever one’s water heater HOT comes in at and oxygen bleach added along with detergent. They count on the oxygen bleach to do the sanitizing. The owner’s manual must assume we are using liquid detergent because it says to put the oxy bleach in the bottom of the tub before loading the laundry.

I washed the dog beds on this cycle yesterday, with unscented (!) detergent. Thirty minutes into the 60-minute cycle, I paused it, took the temp, and it was 122°. I ended the cycle and ran a regular cycle because the beds might not survive another half-hour a their age. The beds smelled great when they came out; as clean as they did with our previous FL.

This is good to know, because in the future I can wash the dog beds on another cycle with HOT and oxygen bleach, and the machine allows me to add minutes to any wash cycle to bump up the wash time.

EXTRA RINSES – This is awesome! All cycles have two rinses, except the Quick Wash which has one. There is an option for EXTRA RINSE, in addition to the option for ALLERGY RINSE which is two more rinses. A grand total of five rinses for any given wash cycle can be had. Extra rinses can be added to Quick Wash for a max total of four rinses, but since it is a 4-minute wash cycle, it won’t get used often, if ever.

SPIN CYCLE option– this can also function like a ‘Rinse & Spin’ cycle. By adding options, the tub fills, agitates, and spins. The Miele didn’t have a soak option and there were a few times I wished it did. So that’s a win if, I ever want it.

The SQ FF7 comes only with a quick-start guide. Not much info but probably as much as the average consumer will read. For roadmap geeks like me, the Owner’s Manual is available online to anyone as a free .pdf download. It gives not only the cycle times but the minutes and seconds for each portion of every. single. cycle, rounded to the nearest ‘5’ minutes. Okay, I’m not that geeky, but it is handy when choosing which wash cycle to use because it is based on length of wash/tumble time. All tumble speeds/styles are the same except the Delicate cycle as a gentler one.

PEDESTAL - We had a SQ pedestal installed with this machine because I simply cannot get that far down to the floor to load and unload a FL washer without one. SQ pedestal is four inches shorter in height than the Miele pedestal and it is just a riser; there is no storage drawer built in. Lower riser + machine design means the tub is approx. six inches lower than my previous FL, and I feel the difference. Not a deal-breaker and I’ll survive. I’m just glad to have a pedestal!

So far, all our laundry is coming out very clean. We use Free/clear unscented laundry products 90% of the time, so any residual oils or dirt are not covered up with perfumes.

We kept the Miele dryer because it works well.Besides, the SQ dryer is 7 cu ft (why???) and we just don’t need that large of a dryer for a 3.5 cu ft washer load.

Additional observation:

Re: the HOT wash, there is a workaround. Today, I ran an empty load (no detergent & no soap) on HOT with pipes primed. This heats up the drum and tub. After five minutes, I canceled the cycle, and it all drained out. When I opened the door I could feel the heat & steam. Then I quickly loaded the laundry & detergent and began a new cycle on HOT. Fifteen minutes into that cycle, I paused it, took the temp of the laundry itself with a meat thermometer, and it was 134°F. That is good enough for me, fifteen minutes in. It IS a workaround that wastes maybe 5-7 gallons of water, and good to know if a really hot wash is ever necessary.

And thus is an example of how much heat is lost to the mass of the machine parts (and initial cold clothes). Fifteen mins into the wash you're 12°F higher than what the primed hot supply alone typically provides.

All this waste to achieve a hot wash load without heater is nonsense. I would have considered a speed queen if it had a heater. Thus why I went Miele. Love and hate Miele too, but someday maybe they will fix my machine to achieve full bliss.

Mark - I agree it is a waste of water and energy to heat it. For that reason, I will only do it on rare occasions, as needed, like if/when the dog is sick on her bed. My follow-up post was simply to share there is a workaround when necessary.

Luna, you make an excellent point; if we had children in the house we would probably be more concerned with scalds and burns. We have two water heaters (common in this area of Texas apparently) and the one that services the LR also services the kitchen and one bathroom which is seldom used. That is how I can get away with setting it higher. Still, it is set lower than its maximum.

Congrats Cavium! I hope you are very pleased with your new SQ FL washing machine! Your detailed posts are very helpful for those considering this model. Happy washing!

What Sea Sea said and more thanks, Cavimum.

The details are much appreciated and, I think, much in keeping with and as helpful as the rational and helpful discussion we saw in the Jeff Caban thread you mentioned.

One comment about scalding when water heaters are run at higher temperatures. Maybe you are one who sets your water heater to 140°F to limit risks of legionella? Maybe you occasionally boost the water heater to feed a nearby washer? Maybe you have other reasons? You can add a tempering (anti-scald) valve to the water-heater's hot-out line. An electronic one came with the Westinghouse water heater that I bought a couple of years ago. It has a take off for sending full (or boosted) heat to a washer or dishwasher while the water going to the household hot-faucets is limited to non-scalding temps. My nearby heaterless FL washer can get water at whatever hot temperature I want for a wash cycle while the household faucets get tempered, non-scalding water.

But, as has been said before, such solutions come with costs, trade-offs and inconveniences which some will find acceptable and some not.

Cavium,

As to your lack of an internal water heater, I'm sure you gave that hours of thought. Balanced that against the repair bills you've had and then thought some more. I have too for when it comes time for us to replace our SQ TL, which we are not in a hurry to do, just want to be informed and educated as we would need a smallish FL in our laundry area. Plus dh is tired of his dress shirts getting roughed up in our enthusiastic TL. Also we are in CA and while not actually impacted by droughts as far as water supply (top of the water chain and not part of the watershed) we are subject to penalty tier billing by our amount of gallons used on our bill by default being CA residents; the law of the land, if you will.

You mentioned up thread that you are, to date, getting good results with your hot washes and things are clean. Dog beds I think you said. I believe you as we wash in hot at 140F in our SQ TL, use Borax when needed, powder detergent with oxygen bleach in it, or sometimes Dropps oxi pods if using liquid detergent. I tell ya, all our whites are bright doing that. Laundry is clean and fresh. I only have some staining on my rags once in a while from mystery substances. Might be hot sauce, maybe spaghetti sauce; don't know, but everything comes clean except for whatever that mystery stain might be. I don't pre-treat though. Might not be anything to look at if I did pre-treat. But I'm not going to pre-treat rags. I think a 170F or above (Bosch/Miele/Asko) wash cycle likely would erase those spots though.

I read just about the entire owner's manual (on line) for your model SQ FL a few months ago and I gave extra reads to the section on soak cycle as we do soaks here for lack of a true profile wash in a heated FL. I was intrigued with the length of time one could set the soaks for. Bonus points in our book for SQ FL. I know dh really perked up when I told him the soak function on your model could go for hours and hours and be gently tumbled during that time. He couldn't care less about washing machines, but he does like the results of soaks and pre-washes.

Time will tell if you are truly pleased, but I think you will be and perhaps in the areas that might be a step down for you coming from a Miele, it seems your improved rinsing is a big win for you to help balance it out. It seems we have to do some give and take when it comes to washers these days.

SEA SEA - there have been stains that did not come out of kitchen towels and clothing with the previous FL that had an internal water heater, and I pretreat everythjng, Go figure.

Oh! Well, there's that! Given this info, you might be more pleased than you think you'd be. Best of luck to you with the new washer. It's a solid washer and definately on our list of contenders. I do believe we'd be happy with it, and I think you'll be happy with it, but let us know how you get on with it. I've read so many glowing posts here of Miele and the like that we wonder what we'd miss out on. Then I also read posts about very costly repair bills with Miele...that's scary to people with a budget. Congrats! How exciting!

Lucky you!! I so much wanted a Speed Queen Frontloader, but my husband nixed it because of the price. We got a top-of-the-line Electrolux instead. It is very nice, but I still wish we had gotten the Queenie.

Cavium,

How's your towels coming out? Are they still fluffy or are they getting sort of matted or scratch or roughy? I ask because when we had our FLers, our towels all became scratchy and the loops were strangely matted down. One wash in our SQ TL freed all the loops.

SEA SEA - So far I have seen no change in the towels. No matter the brand, the 140°F hot in our former FL wash made them all stiff and scratchy and i gave them away and bought new ones. Over and over. I even tried RLR and GroVia in case it was a detergent residue issue, to no avail. A true WARM wash (100°F) has kept my newer Costco towels fairly soft in the former FL, though not as soft as brand new. I am sticking with that, including in the new SQ FL where i have not seen any noticeable change. I am allergic to fabric softeners and dryer sheets so water temp is all I have to work with.

Interesting thing is the few surviving towels from the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s are still soft. Go figure. The terry loops on those are much shorter than the current shaggy fashion. It is hard to know if loop length makes the difference, or cotton quality has changed for the worse, or a little of both.

Thanks for sharing the information. We are still struggling on the replacement for our old Miele.

Feb 10, 2022 (since Houzz doesn't put dates on posts) - Update to my experiences and observations with our new SQ FF7 FL washer :

It has been another month of using our new SQ FF& front-loader since my last post, and with each load of laundry I am becoming liking it more and more. Call it a honeymoon phase or whatever, it seems to be a good fit with our local 'moderately hard' water supply and I am quite happy with it.

-- With this new SQ FL washer there is no more "sudsapalooza" drama. What a relief. No more worries about over-dosing by even a half-teaspoon (2.5ml) of detergent. I can actually use a bit more detergent, sometimes the lowest line on the cap/scoop provided with detergent, with no problems.

-- Seeing some sudsy froth during a wash cycle is no longer cause for alarm. It will rinse out during that same wash cycle, usually with the first rinse.

-- No repeated rinse cycles (after cycle completion) or re-washing everything with more dirty laundry added and no detergent, to capture the excess detergent and flush it out.

-- I have figured out how to get the incoming water temps I want during the winter's frigid cold-fill mixing with hot water with excellent results.

-- This washer does as good or a better job at cleaning than our previous washer. Maybe it is the additional detergent I can use and better rinsing, instead of the carefully measured doses of 1 tsp, or 1/2 Tbsp, or 1 Tbsp, etc. I had to use with the previous washer.

-- Even with slightly increased detergent that I can add, clothing comes out soft and there have been no dermatological itching episodes so far from detergent residue.

What a nice post to see Cavium. I'm really pleased for you! Great information you are sharing here! Sounds like you are going to keep it :-)

SEA SEA - Yes, so far, so good. Fingers crossed!

Cavimum, any updates? :) Also, how many bath towels do you find you can wash at once, and can you fit a queen-sized quilt in the SQ? Thanks for the great details!

A queen size quilt will fit. I can't say if a Q-size puffy comforter would fit. That would have to be taken to the store and stuffed in before buying. Or someone else here with a SQ FL might be able to weigh in.

We have a Q-size matelassé bedspread that is just as thick as our quilts and even heavier (weighs 7-8 lbs) and the SQ handled it well.

We are empty nesters so don't have many towels to wash reglarly. Ours are very thick and I only have to wash two at a time plus the hand towels and wash cloths. The machine could easily handle four bath towels, and probably more if they aren't as thick as ours(Charisma hygrocotton from Costco).

HTH

Cavimum, thanks so much for taking the time to respond! Very helpful!