Let us know how it works out.

A couple of things that might help to point out relative to the motherly advice (sometimes hearing it from a third party's experience may carry more weight than from family.)

1. Current HE liquid detergents (like your Tide liquid) are much more concentrated than detergents used to be, so a little goes a lot further than it would have back when she was learning from her mother and your recent TL washer.

2. The key to effective detergent use is matching the detergent dose to the volume of water and volume of laundry in the washload. TL washers use a much greater volume of water (even more so when mother was training her). With a TL washer, one needs a larger quantity of detergent to match even in current HE models. However, FL models, because they use a different washing mechanism, require much less water and, thus, need a correspondingly lesser dose. Of course, dosage also will vary with the degree of soiling.

Here's another point that may, perhaps, ease the transition from your former TL to your newly acquired SQ FL model. If you put too much water into a FL, the clothes just float in the water and can't tumble properly to get clean. The tumbling also pushes rinse water through to remove the detergent which, again, doesn't happen when tumbling is inhibited.

Something similar happens when overloading on detergent in a FL washer. Lots of detergent means lots of suds. Lots of suds cushion the laundry against the tumbling that moves the detergent through the clothing and also interferes with the mechanics of rinsing. (And, way too much detergent can cause a FL to shut down with a "Suds Lock" error.)

Hope this helps.

It does help, thanks.

Well, she was out so I did the whites load with 2 tbsp of liquid, and half as much liquid bleach and half as much softener as she uses so we'll see what she thinks of the load when she gets back (he says trembling with fear!).

If you have tons of suds then the amount of detergent you added was too much. I've done it on my FL a few times. It goes into over sudsing mode and then starts doing a crazy amount of rinses and adds a crazy amount of time to the cycle.

Keep in mind that there's as much soil and fabric in the frontloader load as there is in an equivalent toploader load, even if the water volume is less, so the dosage still needs to be sufficient to handle the soiling.

Pause the machine a few mins after filling is finished and everything is nicely mixed-up to check if the water is slippery ... IF your SQ model allows pausing/unlocking and then continuing the cycle. I read somewhere recently a report from someone who said their SQ will cancel/drain and abort the cycle if paused ... although it's possible they were pressing the Pause button too long (which typically does make it function as a Cancel instead of a Pause).

That was Cavimum who reported about the way the current SQ FF7 models' pause function works when adding a garment. Cavimum says that her machine will drain before unlocking the door to allow the addition and will then add some water back on restart. SQ support confirmed this to her. Apparently, SQ supposes that the load will already have absorbed enough detergent that the partial refill won’t be a problem. Here's the thread: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6214128/our-new-speed-queen-ff7-front-load-washer-observations#n=19

FWIW, I recently confirmed this with the local SQ dealer.

jwvideo - yes, that was me and I confirmed it by calling SQ. When one does this inside the first five minutes of the wash cycle, how does one really know if all the laundry has been saturated with detergent? I had to retrain myself to just not add anyrhing once the cycle has begun.

I don't know if this will happen on your machine, but my old machine would begin the rinse cycle over and over and over to try to get rid of the excess suds, but sometimes the suds were up over the whole window and then it would just stop and wait and wait and wait for the suds to go down before starting the rinses again. I could speed it up by adding fabric softener or a lot of vinegar. I don't use fabric softener, but bought some for just this purpose.

I'd get this with only 3 tbsp of liquid tide if the load wasn't super dirty .

“I learned that we were using loads that were too small”

Why do you think this? As I commented on your other thread that was entitled ”Really? 2 tablespoons of detergent?”, I run small loads all the time. Even one-item loads if need be. My front loader will fill the drum according to the size of the load. I have never had a problem in this regard, nor in a stuffed-full load either. Your FL should be able to run small loads fine. You did not explain why you think it will not.

M Miller,

From the Speed Queen FL user manual:

Smaller loads can create an unbalanced condition and cause premature wear on the washer. Do not hesitate to fill the entire inner drum of the washer. The load will compress a great deal when wet. This allows room for proper tumbling.

In addition, to potentially "improper tumbling", and "premature wear" I don't think a load 4 times as large uses 4 times the water. This is a bit of an empirical guess, but smaller loads do appear to use proportionately more water.

There's a minimum amount of water that's required to fill the outer/lower space of the tub before it rises into the drum to reach the clothes.

Consider a particular old-style 1976 Whirlpool 18 lb capacity toploader. The lowest water level was 12 gallons, with three higher choices each 5 gallons more added to what's already there to a maximum of 27 gals. Thus a small load of 1, 2, even 3 shirts (low level could handle a few more than that) would take 24 gals + spray rinses. A full fill could handle much more than 4-12 shirts, but a full fill was only 15 gals more water than low (12+5+5+5 = 27), not 36 gals more (12+12+12+12 = 48). The curve is lessened nowadays with frontloaders and HE toploaders but it's still a factor. There's also the consideration that much of the machine's operational time for the various cycle sequences is the same or nearly so for a small vs. large load, so numerous small loads cause more wear-and-tear operational time on the machine than less-frequent large loads.

@ken c - OK, so it’s your Speed Queen that has that load size constraint. There are many front loaders that do not. While people on this forum are SQ fans, what you described is one more reason I would not be!

M Miller, No I had heard that in regards to another front loader on here - don't remember which. It's what prompted me to look in the SQ manual and come across the paragraph I posted above. I don't think it is peculiar to SpeedQueen. Hopefully dadoes will chip in and clarify, he seems to be the most knowledgeable machine person around here.

FWIW, I have done a few small loads (1-4 items) in our SQ FL and they were fine. No problem with a winter jacket as only item.

The primary concern for a single item in any washer, whether front- or toploader, is whether the machine can successfully spin the item. Control systems and tub support designs vary in ability and methods to handle it. One nylon nightgown isn't going to be a problem for any washer. One bathmat or one bath towel or one pair of jeans is much more likely to be a challenge. One jacket, too, but depends on the construction and absorbancy of it. Some control designs will spin and pause repeatedly at slow RPM rates to progressively extract water to reduce the weight of the item until they can get going faster. Some will try X number of times and give up. Some will reduce the maximum RPM to compensate. Some have vibration sensors (acceleratometers) integral to the control board and will attempt to quickly speed-up past the point of excess vibration. Some (including recent Speed Queen frontloaders) have gyroscopic balance rings integral to the drum which have liquid and/or free-floating weights that move in response to tub oscillations to a position opposite of the clothes mass to counter the off-balance (within the extent that they can do so). Toploaders may also have balance rings.

Adding to what Dadoes said about "tub support designs," there are a couple of other things to bear in mind with your Speed Queen FL.

Make of it what you will, but Speed Queen touts a design-life of 20,000 hours. That's because the machines are marketed for on-premises laundry as much as (and maybe more than) for ordinary residential use. That means they are supposed to be able to be run constantly, day-in-and-day-out. Your rate of use (presumably) is much lower than that, eh? I'd factor in those points when interpreting the user guide's caution about smaller loads causing "premature wear."

Also reinforcing Dadoes point about single heavy items --- my FL washer isn't a SQ, but when I need to wash a single weighty-when-wet item, I'll add something so there is some counterbalance and my machine doesn't thump when it spins. Say, I'll wash two bath mats instead of just one at a time. Or, when washing my winter-weight down jacket, I may add a large bath towel which will get plastered to the opposite side of the drum as the machine starts the draining and spinning part of the wash cycle.