Fisher&Paykel GWL11 Ecosmart Washing Machine: Beam This One Directly Into Your Laundry Room!
Written: Nov 29 '04
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Pros: Huge tub, plenty of cycles, less water, less drying time, two-year standard warranty.
Cons: Plastic lid opens to 90 degrees and can come down on head.
The Bottom Line: This next generation of washers saves water and drying time with a huge capacity is so amazing to watch and listen to as it runs, it's better than cable!
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| bntowen's Full Review: Fisher and Paykel GWL11 Top Load Washer |
It was a sunny crisp fall Saturday in Western North Carolina Stardate 111304. Most of the daddies around were playing with their kids at the park or washing their cars. Me? I had to do a little laundry. Well, not really a little, but a mound so big I needed a ski lift to get to the top. The day before caused the clothing crisis. With laundry baskets already brimming, the downstairs apartment toilet suffered a previously undetected blockage. The next unfortunate flusher was my oldest daughter whose nightmare came true as the 5gpf spilled its contents onto the floor seeping into the basement. Yes, I found an apartment with a basement. A great deal, and another Epinion. To absorb the crisis, my entire family used every towel in the place. Saturday laundry was a must. We have a Laundromat in the complex. I figured I'd use every washer and dryer and be out in an hour and a half. $19 of quarters and three hours later, I packed up my four girls, and headed for Lowes Appliance Department ready to buy.
I'd already done my e-homework on washers and dryers, and comparison shopped the stores. The "No Payments Til' January 2006" was appealing. Cruising the miles of appliance isles I searched for two things: big and bigger. I wanted enormous capacity without spending the college fund on a front loader. I already cracked the washer/dryer size code. Large isn't large, and extra large isn't large, extra plus mega doesn't get it. I needed "Super" for my heaviest washing days. I wanted 3.3 cubic feet of tub space large enough to install track lighting and sublet to a when not in use. Maytag and Whirlpool were on my hit list. I must report however, there was a near fatal mistake forming when I actually considered a GE because of size and stainless steel in the tub. At my weakest moment, a fin in the appliance water appeared "The Appliance Salesman". These people are trained to make friends, and take their money. This man was nice...and he took my money. However, he steered me away from the enormity of the GE, and shepherded me to the Maytags and Whirlpools. On the way there, I froze on amazement at the Fisher&Paykel.
The shark circled, and atop old man reading glasses he questioned my knowledge of Fisher&Paykel. I said they've made some of the most innovative toddler toys my kids have ever played with. He handed me his glasses used a "Hooked On Phonics" technique to help me pronounce what I could not read. The company is phonetically pronounced, "Fisher Pie-kel (Paykel rhyming with "Michael". He assured me it was a 30 year old company out of New Zealand breaking into the US market. He gave a staggering amount of stats, features, and warrantees we'll discuss later. However, I was prepared to buy a pair of high-end Ropers (Whirlpool made), and use the rest of the money for therapy. However, I resistance was futile when he brought out__ The Towel.
In sunk deep into a five gallon bucket of cold water was a plush bath towel. A "Cat-in-the-Hat" smile curled across his lips as he said, "I'll run this in the spin cycle, and it will be cold but dry. How did he know only an hour ago I was pumping quarters into Laundromat dryers like a drunken senior citizen at the quarter slots in Vegas all the while cursing under my breath as I reached in time after time to the dryer with the towels only to feel lukewarm dampness? With a poker face I said, "Sure, if you have the time." He poured the bucket's contents into the stainless Fisher&Paykel tub. Its gazillion perforations, and contoured agitator and 3.7 yes 3.7 cubic feet of tub gobbled up the five pound sopping wet towel. Trying to look not too interested, I poked the composite ring around the hatch. The tub smoothly swayed as if resting on giant springs. I asked how it did that. The sales-shark said, "The tub's resting in giant springs. I said with a Clint Eastwood-esque squint in my eyes, "So what [punk]?" He said, "Regular tubs have supports beside the tubs with springs suspending the tub so it can adjust an unbalanced load. But that wears out the springs faster as they are pulled instead of resting on the springs at the bottom." I still wasn't sold, VERY interested.
It wasn't until the lid was closed that I lost my reserve. At first, I drilled him with questions as to why the lid seemed plastic and not metal and how that would wear out. He said the composite lid can withstand hundreds of pounds of weight, and proceeded to hop up on the lid. This man wasn't a girlie-salesman, but a full-bodied individual on the hood of this washer. No buckling of the composite plastic. My four girls were overjoyed at the climbing potential. Hopping down, he kicked off the composite lid to demonstrate the easy cleaning around the lid joints and edges which cake-up with detergent and fuzz-balls. So he reattaches the lid, opens, and pours in the bucket's soaked towel and water contents. He has my eight-year-old holding the drain tube back over the empty bucket. He closes the lid, and pushes the back panel controls.
Epinioners, powering up this unit involves sight and sound comparable to The Starship: Enterprise. The light array taking the unit through the cycles is so ergonomically cool, it made me want to shave my head, put on a Federation Captain's uniform and say, "Engage!" when starting this machine. Those of you who like control will love this low rise panel on the back of the Fisher&Paykel GWL11. The five wash cycles include Permanent Press, Wool Washables, Delicate, Heavy Duty, and regular with a default to regular. But wait, there's! Another push-button contact-control lets me select the three basic water temperatures and three water levels. The next sections of selections pardon the alliteration/assonance combo was the four spin cycles: Fast, Med[ium], Slow, and Hold. Let's talk about the "Fast" spin cycle, and how it closed the sale. You thought I was kidding about the Star Trek theme regarding the NCC-GWL11. But there is cutting edge technology in this machine that matches its space-age design.
The 3.5 cubic feet in the tub is due to a 4" diameter contoured agitator. However, the tub was the roomiest top loading model on the Lowes showroom floor because of the 16" depth and 22" diameter stainless tub. Vertically challenged buyer require a step stool to gather the last few socks at the bottom on this tub. I strolled through Lowes a week later to look at the top-of-the-line "Super" division comparable Whirlpool, Maytag, and yes...GE. An aside, "Super" is a key word when in the bizarre world of appliance size class naming. You'd think "Large" and "Extra-Large" were close terms describing tub size. However, in that order is the order of size, i.e., "Large" = medium tub-size, "Extra Large" = large tub-size, and "Super" (for your heaviest washing days) = extra large tub-size. Yes Virginia, there is a "Super Plus" in some models covering models over 3.1 cubic feet. However, as in the movie "Crocodile Dundee" when the muggers brought out a switch blade knife and he said, "That's not a knife. Now this is a knife!" and he pulls out a machete. In New Zealand where Fishel&Paykel's are birthed, Super means 3.7 cubic feet. There's no major manufacturer in the top-loading consumer class washers.
The Lowes installation guys dropped off the owner's manual, but then pulled out an interactive training CD with online product/warrantee registration. My wife and I put the kids to bed early, popped popcorn, scurried downstairs to the basement and put the CD into our computer. It wasn't "The Matrix", but with text and a moving finger, it went through all the settings and options. We went back and forth through it to make sure we could navigate this ship. That's not an exaggeration. It's mildly programming a wash, and compared to the early 90s Whirlpool we owned, this required study and courage. We took our half-eaten bowl of popcorn back upstairs to take our NCC-GWL11 on her maiden voyage.
My wife was brave enough to push the "Power" button to see what the GWL11 sounds and looks like. Not only did this come with an owner's manual, but an interactive CD with on-line registration. This made the owner's manual actually make sense. I was so glad to see the CD because I was ready to pour a cup of power detergent around the close and hit the automatic settings. Immediately of the CD, I learned that the liquid or power soap or the bleach go in the center of the agitator. How you ask? The top of the agitator, with some effort, pops off, and the wash powder is poured into its center. Water comes into the tub from multiple jets, the tub slowly spins, and the clothes get an even distribution of water as the mammoth tub fills. Ninety degree form those multiple water jets is another water source the spreads out a wide swath of water across the top of the load, you guessed it, into the center of the slotted agitator. As the water fills, the power soap was dissolved into the water as it slowly spun without caking on the clothes. Soap, bleach, and softener pours in the amply vented artsy tooled agitator that up close without my medication looks like the tower at Isengard from Lord of the Rings. The softener, unlike the wash power/liquid and bleach, is placed on top of the convex shaped depression atop the agitator. The sweeping water jet dilutes and displaces the softener into the clothes. The energy use in one year for this washer is $17 for electric hot water heaters and $9 for a gas hot water heater for a miniscule 217Kwh/yr. Holy-save-the-world power efficiency Batman!
However, its depth hints at the amazing technology surrounding the internal drive. There are no belts, gears, or transmission in this machine. All other models have belts that turn the agitator, and more importantly spin the tub to extract water before throwing the clean clothes in the dryer. The faster the spin and the longer the spin cycle the dryer the clothes. Almost every washing machine spins the tub up to 1000 rpms and then immediately gears down because of the wear and tear on the motor, gears, and transmission. The Fisher&Paykel GWL11 uses DC magnetic repulsion technology to suspend the tub on a opposite polarized magnetic field. It floats the tub in midair like the high-speed Japanese trains over the track. Without resistance, which is futile, the tub can agitate and spin at high rpm, virtually frictionless speeds. This model spent 6 minutes in the "Fast" spin cycle at 1000rpms! When the terribly unbalanced load began to spin, it was so, so, quiet. When the cycle ended, the salesman opened the lid, and my eight-year-old daughter opened the lid and dove to the bottom of the tub with feet dangling. She pulled out the once soaked towel. It was cool but barely damp, and I mean barely! It was as if it had been partially dried. It was impressive enough with its two-year (rather than the standard one-year) warrantee for me to jump from a $300 to a $599 price range. There are three other spin settings including Medium (300rpm), Slow (100rpm), and Hold to pull your delicates and hang them out to drip-dry out after the wash cycle without diving your hand into a vortex of spinning death
I led off in amazement at the spin settings, and almost forgot the myriad of other programmable features. The most popular of which are the Fisher&Paykel's 5 wash settings: Permanent Press, Wool Washables, Delicate, Heavy Duty, and Regular. Within that was setting array, you probably noticed "Wool Washables". As noted earlier in this article, Fisher/Paykel's stationed in New Zealand. There are more sheep on this island than residents. There's no way this machine could last 30 years in wool-city without handling the "un-handleable" wool. However, the setting sets the water and temperature gradation especially formulated for maintaining wool's elasticity. The other notable was "Heavy Duty". In this cycle, the agitation time is lengthened without greater twisting of the clothes. Since I'm on the topic of agitation, let's talk about the automatic setting. There are three standard water level settings with the fourth being "Automatic".
There was an episode in the original Star Trek series in which an old 20th century Earth probe collided and merged programs with an alien probe sent to cleanse planets of carbon-based organisms such as all the humans on the Enterprise and on Earth. The Isengard-like agitator comes to life with R2D2-like bleeping (technical appliance term). But on the "Automatic" water level setting, the 3.7 cubic foot stainless tub fills to the level of the clothes, there's an eerier silence (except for my wife and my popcorn crunching), and the probe/agitator whirs, turns, whirs, turns the other way, and bleeps. After the bleep. More water pours into the tub because its long range drag sensor detected too much pull on the center post therefore requiring the load to float in more water. It did this for five minutes, reached a water level within normal parameters, and proceeded on impulse power agitating the clothes while the tub orbited in the opposite direction. WOW! Is all we could say as popcorn tumbled to the floor. When it leaves the washing cycle, the transition to spin sounds like a Star Ship going into warp. My cat was frightened in a predatory sort of way and laid near our feet staring at the machine wondering if she should pounce or beam down to the litter box.
What you may be thinking is the gentle agitation may not clean as well as my current clothes-torquing machine. However, I'm here to say as a father of four there's cleaner socks, stained shirt-fronts, and knees on pants far superior to the Whirlpool I recently sold with our house. I think it's the full dilution of the wash powder distributed more evenly throughout the roomy 3.7 cubic foot tub allowing detergent full penetration potential. If all those buttons weren't enough, there are choices for quick loads called "Time Saver", soak, and softener rinse if you forgot or want to start the cycle there.. There's also a button tree for delayed wash-starts of 9, 3, and 1 hour later. Lastly, there is the "Favorite" button. This button holds your favorite selections as...well...selected in case untrained hands fire off a load in between your well programmed wash. Really lastly, there is a "Lid Locked" feature in which the lid locks during the aforementioned mind-numbing vortexes of death spin cycles. Here is the only serious Fisher&Paykel GWL11 criticism. The plastic lid doesn't open far enough back. I know now why the lid's made of this indestructible plastic. When is comes down, and hits me on the head as I load, I am annoyed and not unconscious and annoyed.
So far we've washed three sets of bed linens in one load, a queen-size comforter with tub room to spare in a load, and an entire heaping hamper of clothes that floated freely in the big-fat tub. Our drying time has been reduced by about 30 - 40 minutes per full-size load. It makes weird noises that take some getting used to but bottom line this model is as quiet as a Tribble. Lowes has a more expensive Fisher&Paykel washer, but the machine this man (and family) needs. At $599.00, you're thinking, "Zowie!" However, the energy/water savings in the washing and especially in the drying is worth the extra cost. It has the size of a front loader with more but kinder and gentler agitation that the front loaders requiring a home equity line to purchase. Also lastly, lastly, really lastly, this Fisher&Paykel came with a standard two year warranty instead of the industry's standard one year. This is likely because of their need to break into the US market and the lack of moving parts that need replacing.
If you made it to the end of this, simply put, this machine comes highly recommended...there, I finally said it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 599.00
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Epinions.com ID:
bntowen
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Member: Bradford Owen
Location: North Carolina Mountains, USA
Reviews written: 44
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
Father of five, full-time shrink, part-time writer, actor, referee, living on a massive 3/4acre estate.
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