Viewers REACT to Washer Stink Video!

Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. About 10 months ago, we published a video episode called, Get Rid of Front Loader Washer Stink. We had no idea of the amount of interest that video would generate. 10 months later, we've had well over 300,000 views on the video, and we've had nearly 1,000 comments. The good, the bad, and sometimes, frankly, the pretty ugly. But what it has proved to us is there's a lot of interest in this subject. And the purpose of today's episode is to give you some great insights from your fellow viewers. You're going to like what you see. Stay tuned. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here. Thanks for joining me today. Well, that video that we published earlier has had a lot of interest. And if you never got to see it, and you're lacking context for today's discussion, you can visit that by going to this link right up here and watching it there. Or stay tuned to the end of the time here, and you can pick up on the end card at the end of the episode. Or right now, you can just go down to the video description and pick up the link there. Now, a little bit of caveat here. If you are one of those people that absolutely dislikes front loaders, or if you've had such a positive experience with top loaders that this is of no interest to you, I'm giving you a chance. Bail now. Because what we're really doing is for those that really enjoy the front loader and think it is a good design, but would like to maximize their experience. And sometimes, we've talked about the whole scent generation that can occur in these machines, how to address that. Then stay tuned, because we're going to give you some great insights. Now, where did we get all these insights? From all those comments that came in of nearly a thousand comments as of the time of this filming. Now, there were the normal amount of what we could call trolls that called anybody that likes these kind of machines various levels of harsh names, or called us stupid for even considering that these are worthwhile. We're going to disregard that. And there were a lot of meaningful ones, well thought out arguments of why they preferred the top loaders. More power to you, and I'm sure you'll have a positive experience. Then there were several of you that really like the front loader. You like the way it works, but there were some problems or things you could maximize on, or you found value in some of the things we gave you. Well, that generated a lot of insights from people who've used these types of machines for a lot of years, and several professionals that are technicians and support people, repair people that gave further insights. And it's our pleasure to pass on some of those great insights. So let's get to it. Well, number one, biggest complaint that people have about these machines is what we talked about in the first video. And that is, they could stink sometimes. And where does that come from? Well, there are a couple reasons. One, it's not just that there are places inside the machine where water is easily retained and can set if you don't ventilate, but the fact that there's biological agents, whether it's the soil or other things that are in your clothes that end up in water that sits there, but also your laundry products. Some of the strongest feedback we've got, and we heard it many times over, was one of the biggest things you can do is to switch away from liquid detergents, pods, and use dry detergent to begin with. That greatly reduces the amount of biologicals that remain that becomes the target or the breeding ground for mildew and so forth. Another one is liquid softeners. Now, why? Why would it matter that you're using liquid products that can lead to stankiness? Well, it's because they are tallow base, highly purified tallow. What is tallow? Tallow is beef fat. And it is a biological organic type of material that allows mildew and other desirable reactions to happen that leads to these off-putting odors. So, if you don't use them or you use them sparingly, you're greatly going to reduce the stankiness. That was a great insight many of you gave. Second thing, use less of these products. We use dry detergent, very small amounts, because these are high-efficiency machines, and they cleanse by tumbling and running water through it and using the detergent through it. It doesn't take that much detergent to get done what you want done. And anytime you add more detergent, there's some faulty thinking here. Well, if this much gets clean, if I add this much, it'll get that much cleaner. Not so. Less is more in this situation. So, less fabric softener, less detergent. The next thing to keep in mind is, if you have softened water, you definitely need less of these types of products, simply because mineral conduct has been reduced. The pH of the water has been changed so that the soaps and anything, the rinsing agents, work much better. And those of you that have softened water, know that it also shows up in other areas, like in your dishwasher. You need less detergent and less spots occur. In the shower, you don't see as much calcium buildup on the showerhead or the walls. And that slick feeling you feel, that's really the oils on your skin that remain behind, that used to get washed away when you were using hard water. So, soft water really helps this. So, those are a couple of great insights that we've gotten so far. Well, does vinegar really work as a fabric softener? Yes, it does. And no, as one of my tongue-in-cheek viewers wrote in, I love my clothes smelling like Italian dressing. It doesn't stay that way at all. It rinses out. Why does it soften? Well, it's basic chemistry, my friends. Soaps are alkaline-based. Those of you took chemistry in high school or college, its pH is on one end of the scale. When you use vinegar, it is also known as acetic acid. So, the acid and the alkaline tend to neutralize each other and the clothes feel softer when indeed there's that soap crust or film that has been removed. That's how it's working. And it's economical and it also does other things to sanitize the machine. What are some other things that you can do? Well, here was a couple of top tips that came in. First of all, we've seen this dispenser here and we have purposely not dried out this machine. This is the way it looks right here when it first comes after a whole day of doing laundry. Well, you can see there's a lot of residual moisture that's left there and some product that is still there. Well, if this sits there like that too long over multiple days and especially in hotter times of the year, well you've created a place where stankiness can occur. So, after multiple times of laundering or at the time of a batch of laundering where the machine's going to sit for longer than a day, we take the time to swab this out and we think it's time well invested. But you know what? That's not all of it. One of you, thank you for this, made sure that we included this in this video. Notice if I push this tab and you're going to have the same type of thing in your type of machine. Notice that the whole dispenser comes out and now you could simply put it in the sink and let it drain. You could do that outside of here. But more importantly, notice that the tunnel where that came out of, well looky there. There you've got some residue left from some of the powder detergent. Yes, if you're using liquid detergent that wouldn't most likely be there. But notice that even if I pulled this drawer out and dried it, if from time to time I don't reach in there and dry that out, I'm just inviting another place that stankiness can occur. All right, now I'm going to go ahead and put that back in. That's real easy to put back in and off camera. When I don't waste your time, I'll address what you saw there. Here's another thing that happens. Notice in here, you see a drum here and it doesn't matter whether it was a top loader or it's a front loader like this. All of these work with a drum inside a drum. For you top loader people, you see a drum and you open the lid, but there's really a drum outside of it where the water is rinsing through all the perforations in the drum. And the same is true with this design. I personally think this is a superior design because it uses a tumbling action instead of an agitator to get water through. In an agitator situation, the water is deep. Clothes are sitting more in it. It's almost like taking a bath. You're in the water that is washing you. And depending on how dirty you were when you first climbed in there, that's kind of, or you get it. Well, this idea here, the water, less water, less detergent, it's tumbling through and moving it to the outside drum. My point, the outer drum is going to collect, especially down here in the low point, it's going to tend to collect a lot of biologicals. And one of the number one source of the stinkiness that can occur in these types of units is because the outer drum gets fouled. Is it poor design? I don't think so. Several of you said you think it is, but think about this. Go to a commercial laundry, go to a hotel, someplace they're doing large amounts of laundry, or let's say a medical facility, a hospital. Notice all of the machines that they use are essentially larger versions of this, where the clothes are being cleansed by tumbling and running water through them in the first cycles with detergent, later on rinsing them and so forth. And then the higher spin speeds that occur in these machines allows it to be drier. Nonetheless, you're going to get some collection down here. And for those of you top loaders saying, I don't have this problem. Yes, you do. First time that you get a service person that really comes and takes it apart, you'll be really surprised what's under the agitator and down below. The reason you don't tend to smell it very often is because these type of washers have a hard seal that are required so that when it washes and fills up, it isn't going to spill out. And in a top loader, the top lid is simply cosmetic in the sense that it stops you from dumping things in there. It's safety also, but it is not a seal. As a matter of fact, it is open all the way around and it helps ventilation. But different purposes, different designs, but they all have an issue with having things collect down here. Well, how is that resolved? Well, look right here. There it is. Tub clean. So by using a tub clean cycle about once a month, one of you wrote in and said, I do this by doing a large load of sheets, white sheets, and I use a significant amount of bleach and run an extended cycle. I get clean, white, fresh smelling sheets, and a great tub cleanse at the same time and never had any problems. I think that's a pretty good idea. Now, if you don't want to do that, there are commercial products out there like a Fresh. Clorox has one. You can use Arm & Hammer washing soda, not baking soda. All of those items, when washed with very high temperature water, will get into that tub and rinse it away. So that's something else to keep in mind. Think of it this way. Your washing machine is washing your clothes. And let's be honest here. There's some nasties in clothes, especially during times of sickness. You get the idea. Or you got little ones in the house, or you got sheets that there was an accident. You get the picture. Well, where does that all go? Well, your washing machine is washing it. Most of it's being rinsed away. But folks, some of it's going to end up in some of the nooks and crannies. And you need to care for the washer. In other words, wash the washing machine. That's just good sense. Just a couple more things by way of review from the first video. When the machine is washing, water is being run through different areas to remove the soil as it's going. And one of the areas is right here at the bottom of the seal. You can see, we have not wiped this out, that as water lands in this, it's going to return back through there. It's going to catch some of the soap scum and that sort of thing right here. So from time to time, get that all wiped out. You don't have to do it very often, but take care of it. Some people said don't use vinegar because vinegar is an acid. Again, diluted. But I would just get that wiped out with something that leaves no residue. The second one is this area right here. And you can go back to our first video to show that you need to remove this every once a while. Clean it out and get rid of the big lint deposits that are done as the machine is doing its job. Again, got to wash the washer. It's taking care of you. Take care of it. One last point we're going to make, and that is back to the amount of detergent. This was a theme that came up over and over again from all of you. So it bears repeating. A little bit goes a long way. And here's a rule of thumb that one of the people that wrote in who has been in the industry for quite some time said, you can test to see whether or not you're using too much detergent. Thanks for the tip, by the way. One is just simply run a load of clothes without running any detergent and just see what you get. If you see a lot of suds showing up during the cycle, well, there was a lot of detergent left in the clothes that you didn't need. So reduce. In his case, he says he uses no more than a third of a cup, maybe a quarter cup of dry detergent. The other way you can find out is just run the machine without anything in it and see if you get a lot of suds showing up. If you do, that means you've got a lot of soap in the nooks and crannies that was not used for the laundering process and was excess. So tone it down. Well, I hope you found this to be helpful. And undoubtedly, this will unleash another whole flurry of conversation. We hope so. We think that's one of the great things about YouTube, of being able to interact with you, our viewer family. If you found this to be helpful or there's some other insights you would like to offer, feel free to do so in the comment section below. And if you found this to be helpful, why don't you like it? If you haven't seen the first episode, go back and visit it. Stay around for the end card in a few moments. And then if you like what we're doing, won't you please subscribe? That helps us to continue to produce great videos about the home, the shop, the garden, Maggie's kitchen, and just great product reviews. Hey, thanks for watching today. Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com.