Our new high efficiency washer and dryer set finally arrived yesterday. Yeah! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m thrilled to be doing laundry. Now that’s something you don’t hear everyday, is it?

The delivery men arrived early Saturday morning, something like 8:30 am. They were very quick in removing our old very heavy washer and dryer and then bringing our new set downstairs to the basement.

I thought I would have been able to try out the new washer and dryer by yesterday afternoon but it took forever getting everything set up! The old dryer was connected directly to our fuse box and we were going to hook up the new dryer that way, but in the end we decided to put in a new 240v plug so Chris had to run around to a few stores to try to get the correct junction box and cover etc so that killed a couple of hours right there.

We also bought two pedestals to put the new dryer and washer on because front load washer and dryers would require a lot of bending otherwise since the doors are so low to the ground. With my back being really bad lately we thought it would be good to have the machines higher. Boy do they ever look huge now that they’re up on the pedestals!

Between putting in a new electrical hook up for the dryer, attaching the pedestals and leveling the machines, cleaning and reassembling the old exhaust venting and then trying to get someone to help us lift the machines in to place (my husband didn’t want me to do too much because of my back) we figure it took us about 15 hours to set up the machines!

So I didn’t actually do my first wash with the new HE front loader until about 4:30 pm this afternoon! As I expected, my husband and I watched the machine wet and tumble the laundry for a little while before going back upstairs to wait for it to finish the wash.

We were amazed at how quite the washer is! It’s like 500 times quieter than our old 43 year old washer! The noisiest part is when the pump drains the water from the machine and it’s not the pump that makes much noise it’s just the water and air going through the drainage hose. It kind of sounds like one of those Australian instruments that they play at the start of Survivor. LOL However it’s still quieter than all aspects of our other washing machine!

Our dryer is a lot quieter than our old one as well! Yes it’s a little louder than the washer, but it only makes half or less noise than our old dryer. When we had the old dryer it always seemed that we were drying clothes at night and it was so load that we had to turn the TV up quite a bit if we were watching it .. and that’s from a dryer in the basement! The new one’s quiet enough to not interfere sound wise with what we’re doing upstairs.

Oh and it’s fast! We put our first load in to dry and the sensor estimated that it would be about 43 minutes, but after a few minutes of tumbling it readjusted the time to 25 minutes. Remember I said we’d put a load in our old washer for say 45 or 50 minutes and it still wouldn’t be dry when it was done so we’d have to put it in again for another 20 to 40 minutes. So I guess the new dryer (thanks to the super spinning the washer does) cut drying time by maybe as much as 60% compared to our old dryer.

I’m sure we’re going to save a lot of money with the new washer and dryer – especially when compared to our old 43 year old machines! Now if only we could cut some of our other bills and expenses, like finding cheaper car insurance we’d be set!

If I weren’t so tired and headachey I’d have taken some pictures of our new washer and dryer and the clothes spinning around. Maybe next time!

For those of you with high efficiency front load washing machines and driers were you amazed at how quiet they were too? Are you happy with your front loaders?