LG TROMM Steam Washer/Gas Dryer combo

LG TROMM Steam Washer/Gas Dryer combo I really like these machines. They are very nice looking, easy to use, and do a fairly good job of washing and drying my families clothes. We have four kids, so I'm doing laundry every day. I've had these machines about a year, and they still look and run like new - have note had a single problem with them.

First the good news: The machines are much more energy efficient than my old ones - my electric and gas bills have gone down. They have numerous settings for all different types of laundry. Super soiled baby clothes get really clean, and I can wash my cashmere sweaters on the "hand wash" setting, and the machine is very gentle. I'm not sure how the steam cleaner works, but when I push that button I feel I'm getting my kids clothes extra-clean. I have the ultra capacity machines, which are true to their name - I can wash sheets from two beds at the same time, which is awesome.

They are also super-quiet. In my home, they are in between my home office and my kids' bedrooms, and I cn run the machines day or night and they don't disturb anyone. The signal that tells you the load is done can be adjusted to be loud, soft, or off. They are pretty durable machines, too. One of my kids diapers accidentally went thru the wash, and although it was a huge nasty mess, the machine still works fine.

There are a ton of bells and whistles on these things, which brings me to some of the downside: Although nothing has gone wrong (yet), I worry that our local small-town appliance repair guy won't be able to fix it when it does.

Although I know it's supposed to be super-efficient in terms of water usage, I often feel the machine isn't using enough water. I like to see my clothes sloshing around, and they just don't seem to, even with the "extra water" button engaged. You have to use the front loader special HE (high efficiency) detergent, which doesn't produce a lot of bubbles. That's fine, except it's really hard to find at my small town's grocery store. I made the mistake of using a tiny amount of regular detergent once - bubbles everywhere that took forever to rinse out!

My other complaint with the washer is that the cycle takes a really long time. A normal load that I set to between normal and heavily soiled takes nearly 90 minutes to complete. I like the dryer for the most part. It is definitely faster than my old one, but the timed drying function only has options starting at 20 minutes - sometimes that's too long. Also, on both machines it is far too easy for my little ones to play with the buttons and change settings or turn off mid-cycle