Yeah, would make sense. But we have soft water and this HE front load. My wife was using soap like it was a top load and hard water. We found that the original cause of smells in our clothes was that the soap was never getting rinsed completely out because of the low water amount combined with the amount of soap used. Believe me, we have tried every possible combination you can find on front loads.
Here is a great site to find out who made your appliance, Appliance411 The Purchase: Who makes Sears Kenmore?
Thanks for all of the suggestions, I knew we wouldn't get a definitive answer on this because everybody has had good and bad experiences. Many people think the front loads clean better because the clothes aren't sitting in their own filthy water. Others say the top loads are better because they use more water.
I finally took the time to go through the manual and found what to clean and how often. They recommend cleaning out the filter in the front once a month and drain the water, which it has both items easily accessed next to each other. Well, found out my wife has only done this once in the past 7 years. (She's a complete neat freak, so I assumed she was taking care of that.) Can you guess where the smell was coming from? I would post a pic, but I think you get the idea. I've now bleach-soaked the filter, cleaned the rubber ring around the door and drained the old water. I ran it through a sanitize cycle with only bleach in there, and I think we have solved that issue. I couldn't see anything that looked like black mold, which I thought for sure was the issue.
Anyway, hopefully I've resolved that and I can sell this set with piece of mind and get the top of the line Samsung front load washer with touch screen input, (although my wife isn't sold on the touch screen. I love the ability to run a second cycle from my smartphone, but I like toys.) And then maybe maintain it the way it says to... :smile:
