bobbi1023, dont give up your goal of having less chemicals in your life just because you bought a FL. I know many people who own FL (Mieles, Frigidaires, LGs, Samsungs and more) who all use "greener" options and are very happy with their laundry. Sometimes it takes a little trial and error to come up with the system that works for you (your water, your machine, your laundry). Ive learned that just because someone here tells you it works for them - doesnt mean it will work for you. I think towels will never be quite as soft coming out of a FL as from a TL (my opinion) but mine are plenty soft enough. I do buy good quality cotton and I have had no problems with smell or stiffness. It is recommended by many companies that sell good quality towels (Egyptian/pima) to NOT use fabric softener they must know something. Some people here will tell you theyve done it forever and I say good for them but Ill stick with the recommendation of the people who actually make the stuff and KNOW how to take care of it properly. Ive read that fabric softener can eat away at the towel fibre (Martha Stewart) - as can enzymes. See link to one example. I use a natural detergent with no enzymes or brighteners for my towels and sheets. I have an older FL which doesnt spin as fast as newer ones. My friend with the new LGs did comment her towels were not as soft too when she got her machine. I would wash in warm not hot as hot can damage the cotton fibres. I would also lower the spin speed if you can so the towels are a little more wet when they go into the dryer. That may sound strange but I think if they spend a little more time tumbling they will fluff more without frying. You may also want to try some dryer balls to help the fluffing (Nellies makes a nice pair and you can even add a soy based scent to them lavender is heavenly to me). I also give my towels a hard shake before I put them in the dryer. This helps to lift the loops and allows them to dry nicer (and fluffier). I do use some vinegar in the rinse for towels and while it doesnt make them "soft" it does do something to reverse the effects of detergent (something to do with hydrogen ions). Keep us posted on what works for you! I hope something will click.

Many thanks mrb and sshrivastava for your staying power on this thread! I apologize for the delay in my update: I have, like many others, been suffering from the flu. Well, at this point, let me take back my praise of Miele tech support...I am now actually pretty ticked off with them about the situation. Though I might as well chill out...it is only a washing machine. So my local tech (who is a tech like mentioned on another thread here, contracted by Miele, not actually Miele corporate) came out on Wednesday and shot in the new board. I told him that Miele was sending out a senior tech the next day to take data from the machine and asked that he leave the old board with me since they wanted it back at HQ. He is a very nice fellow and was fine with that. Needless to say, no big surprise, as predicted here, the new board is actually exactly the same as the old board on the delicates cycle...... After my local tech left I called and left a message with Miele to apprise them of the situation and giving them a heads up because my tech implied that perhaps their factory tech could reprogram the machine in the field. I was hoping the senior tech, if he knew ahead, would then be able to change the behavior of the delicates program. Very late in the day I got a voicemail message from the person at Miele who had been handling this, with all kinds of cover your behind language, saying that the service call from the central tech was now cancelled. They had now gone ahead with testing of the machine at Miele and their machine is doing the same thing.....filling on cold and no heater for delicates... DUH!!!!! I was furious. I had expressly told them, after numerous phone calls, waiting on hold, being told it was user error etc., that I did not want to rip my machine open unless it was clear that the program was not acting correctly. They swore up and down it should be heating on that cycle. I guess it is as everyone is saying...Miele tech support is now reading from the manual/script, and treats customers as idiots. The only reason I was talked into going ahead with the board replacement was that they promised this senior tech was coming by and i felt like I had their attention and that would lead to an opening of discussions to get this resolved. So yesterday I called Miele and got the person I had been dealing with. I let him know that I was extremely unhappy, especially with the fact that they pulled the service call from me at the last moment and that I had been telling them for over a month exactly what the machine was doing. Why noone could be bothered to verify it before now is completely ridiculous. I am now told that the issue has been turned over to the engineering dept. I have demanded that a supervisor or someone senior call me because I still do want to follow this up. However, since they are now muttering rubbish about this being "by design"...which is essentially a copout since it is very clear from the manual that the cycle should be capabable of a warm wash at least...I doubt it will go any further. And of course they are only saying this now after a month of swearing up and down that the machine should be giving a warm wash and using the heater.. @sshrivastava: I take your point about Miele COLD. I should clarify, on handwash, wool and delicates, the machine takes in ONLY from the COLD valve. Therefore, the COLD fill for those cycles is not 86 deg but whatever temp your incoming cold water supply is. Right now it is around 10C in Buffalo so my washing is ridiculously cold. On this point, pretty much if Miele wants to fix this cycle they would have to allow the machine to fill on a MIX of hot and cold, if ever to achieve 40C. The delicates cycle uses a LOT of water, which is its great appeal, and there is no other cycle like it on the machine. The 110V heater would definitely not be able to get that much water up to 40C in the wash time allotted for the cycle. My suspicion is that the delicates cycle on Miele has always been designed to fill only from the cold water valve, but with the old 220V heaters it was not a problem. I suspect that something was changed in the programming when Miele went to the 110V machines in the US. In any case, I told them right out it was not by DESIGN, but clearly a MISTAKE. So now I think I need to chill out about this. I have absolutely no intention of releasing my spare control board so at least I have that in reserve if I ever need it. I the mean while I think I have found that the dress shirts program could be used in lieu of delicates. The wash action is not quite so gently and the water level not as good. However it does use the heater. Therefore, as the machine fllls I can dump in a few extra pitchers of warm water manually down the hatch and let the heater take it from there....it is better than nothing. Doing this with the actual delicates cycle itself is useless I have found because the heater doest not engage at all. Therefore even dumping hot water straight from my faucet (over 55C water) down the hatch results in a pretty cold wash after you take into account heat loss due to the mass of the drum and the wash time. So I think the bottom line is that there are at least two useless cycles on this machine: Normal (no heater) and Delicates (cold only). I also think wool is pretty much useless in that WARM is not achieved by the heater in the cycle time and that cycle does not allow the extended option. @MRB: Thanks for your info about the gentle cycle. Here is what my service manual says: 2.2.2 Gentle Cycle Setting for gentle cycle. Selecting the gentle cycle reduces the drum movement. Fabrics are washed gently. For lightly soiled laundry. It does not say anything about which cycle it affects. So far as I can tell it is not affecting my delicates cycle. However, I am leaving it engaged because all the cycles look aggressive enough to me, even with it enabled. I would not be surprised if it is not actually doing anything....

Yes. If you haven't already figured this out, there are numbers of how-to-do-it posts here starting with the "Featured Answer" at the top of this thread. Because Houzz displays only part of the Featured Answer, you want to click on the faint "read more" line to get Houzz to display the rest of that detailed post by Luna123456. Also, there are something like 1.1k additional posts in this thread, most of which are not initially displayed. On my computer, I have to display all the posts before I can do a full search of the thread. Houzz makes you look below the "Featured Answer" to find the fine print which currently reads "see 1037 more comments." You may have to click a "See more comments" several times to get Houzz to display all of the posts. Then you can do a terms search (CTRL-F calls up a search box on MS Windows computers.) That will get you the posts with recommendations on specific brands of detergents and oxy liquids to use with DIY refilling.

Thank you for the responses! Looks like 1 hour+ is pretty standard. I often forget about the wash until it's been done for awhile anyways so when it comes to wash times I'm mostly concerned about those mornings when I realize my kids have no clean pants... However, I may not need to make this decision at all! The reason we were looking for a washer in the first place is because our 1995 Maytag Dependable Care washer (which the previous owners of our house left behind) was leaking. The shut-off valves were ancient so we couldn't turn off the water to check things out. Finally had the plumber come out to change the valves and he discovered the lines to the washer were leaking. He replaced those too and (so far, fingers crossed!) it seems we're back in business. I am still eyeing a new washer, though. We stayed at an Airbnb that had a new front loader and the clothes seemed to come out so much cleaner than at home. I didn't look at the brand, but it was definitely not Miele. So there's the conundrum. Do we keep an old and (so far) reliable machine which we can likely fix ourselves but which doesn't wash as well, or do we spring for a new machine which, if something does fail, requires incredibly expensive repairs. Hence the reason I was looking at Mieles -- the reliable reputation.