The Kenmore Space Saver Laundry Center Just Wasn't Made For Families
Written: Jan 08 '02 (Updated Jul 06 '04)
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Pros: fits in small spaces, occasionally clothes come out clean and dry
Cons: small capacity, mysterious stains, only lasted 5 years
The Bottom Line: Surely there are better Laundry Centers on the market. The low capacity means spending more time running the machine, and faster break-downs.
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| AliventiAsylum's Full Review: Kenmore 88732 Top Load Stacked Washer / Dryer |
The area we live in is largely made up of slab-houses. For those of you who don't know what that is (as I did not 10 years ago), those are houses built on slabs of concrete, rather than with foundations sunk into the ground and include basements.
That's right, no basement.
So where to put a washer and dryer?
For many years, all we could manage was a vertical washer/dryer unit. After killing the appliance which came with the house - about which we had no idea of the age - we invested about $800 in the Kenmore Space Saver Laundry Center.
I always trusted Sears and had grown up in a house that bought all of the appliances at Sears. My experience with this washer/dryer combination is one of the incidents which has permanently turned me off of buying appliances from Sears.
We only had the unit for about five years. Had? you ask. Yes, it's gone. But from shortly after we purchased it, we have had nothing but trouble.
The unit fit nicely in the closet outside of our bathroom which housed our washer/dryer unit. I liked the fact that this was a top-loading washer as opposed to the other unit which had been a front-load. I always had nightmares of the door opening and water spilling out through the house. The machine does boast a decent variety of wash selections, from gentle to heavy-duty, cold water to hot. There is no separate dispenser for the fabric softener, so I was one of those using the Downy ball.
The dryer also had a variety of settings from air-dry to high heat. A feature I liked was that the lint filter was at the back of the unit rather than in the door. When taking clean laundry out of the machine, I was not dragging them across the filter and getting lint all over them once again. However, the capacity isn't great on either the washer or dryer. One full-size quilt (not a down comforter, just a quilt) will pretty much fill up the machine.
One feature to be aware of is that if you are plugging the machine into a 220 watt outlet, there is a model which will allow you to operate both the washer and dryer at the same time. If you are using a 110 watt outlet, the machines cannot be operated at the same time.
The trouble began with mysterious grey stains which would appear on clothing at various intervals. It appeared to be a grease or oil stain, but we could never figure out what it actually was. I tried everything: running hot water, detergent, white vinegar, and bleach through the machine, but the stains returned. I took the wash tub apart and cleaned it. I had service calls at least five times, but no one could find the source of these mysterious stains. I tried different detergent. I tried different fabric softener. I tried no fabric softener. I tried liquid. I tried powder.
Finally, one technician said that it could possibly be the transmission and it would be over $400 if that's what it was. Of course, by this time the warranty was up (how convenient that none of them thought of this while the warranty was still in effect). The only way to tell if it was the transmission is to take the machine apart which would've cost a good chunk of change just in labor, and there was no guarantee that was the problem. I decided to just keep rewashing clothes which came out of the machine with the stains on them.
My other complaint is the capacity just isn't suited for a family. With five people, I was constantly running the machine. It seemed like I was doing five (or more) loads of laundry every day just to keep up. Coming home from vacations was a nightmare. Our down comforters had to be brought to the laundromat which cleaned them for $5.50 each.
I would guess that our running the machine as much as we did is what caused the dryer to conk out in December. No heat at all, just air blowing. The unit was only five years old.
That's the other problem. If one part of the Laundry Center is no good, you cannot just replace it. The whole unit has to be discarded.
We've remodeled our house, so we managed to squeeze a full-size washer and dryer into the spot by ripping out the wall between this closet and the hall closet. While I can understand the space issue, I would recommend passing on the Kenmore Space Saver Laundry Center.
© 2002 Patti Aliventi
revisions © 2004 Patti Aliventi
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 800
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