The DO NOT BUY Edition

I had never even heard of these things before I moved here: the washer/dryer combo. I asked around in Bellingham and our friend Chris had used one when he lived in Japan, so it must have started in Europe/Asia where they save space and have all of their appliances in their kitchen. We've all seen those episodes of House Hunters.

I cannot emphasize this more - DO NOT BUY ONE. They are the laundry devil incarnate.

When I was getting a tour of this apartment, I asked where the dryer was because the closet it's located in clearly has space for a stackable set and I was only seeing one machine. Well, they pointed out, it's a double! A machine that washes and dries your clothes all in one!

What magic is this?

It's not magic I found out. It's bullshit.

Terry and I experimented with the machine when we first moved in. First we were messing with the electronic settings to try and select the correct configurations (too many options). When you select an option - normal wash, quick wash, delicates, extra spin, hot/cold, dry only, etc the damn thing adds more and more time onto the cycle. Terry called me into the bathroom where the laundry closet is and he was appalled at the reading after selecting the normal wash and dry cycle - ALMOST 5 HOURS it had indicated, before it was done.

No.

We messed with the selections and got a wash cycle that lasted for 30 minutes and then had to separately mess with the drying cycle after it was done. Dry for 30 minutes? How do you get it to "just dry" and not wash again?, is that the button? OH GOD it started washing again...and on and on. Anyway, it beeped after 30 minutes of sounding like an alien and our clothes were - you guessed it - wet. And not just damp either. Dripping. Ok, let's try another 30 minutes. How did we get it to "just dry" again? Yeah.

Want to know why our clothes weren't close to dry? This Satan machine uses a technique called steam drying. It dries your clothes by using hot water air...

After an hour of drying the clothes are still not all the way dry, but after reading online, turns out that's what is considered normal. We have to hang all of our clothes up immediately after the drying cycle is done to dry them completely with regular air and not water air. That's not it either. When the machine beeps to signal the end of the drying cycle it displays "Cd" and it locks the door. This symbol is still a mystery and we think it may mean child lock, but maybe it means "Crappy dryer" because it sucks. The only way to get the door to unlock is to turn the machine on and off again and wait about five minutes. Then the door will unlock. If you don't do this however, it will stay locked. I've returned thirty minutes after I heard the drying cycle beep and the door is still locked.

What a piece of crap.