My understanding of it is that the energy it takes to spin the motor is almost insignificant compared to the amount of energy it takes to heat up all the water that a top loader uses in it’s short cycle.
Ok, but what if you only wash your laundry in cold?
Part of it is bound to have something to do with the speed they operate at, as well, I would think. The way you get worse mileage if you’re driving 85 than if you’re driving 45, even though you get there faster.
That might make a difference. Might not.
We just switched to a front loader so I’ve been thinking about this very topic for two weeks now.
A top loader, fills the tub then agitates it by moving rapidly between clockwise and counter-clockwise. Shifting directions should use quite a bit of energy.
The front loader, uses less water (therefore less mass and less inertia) and rotates slowly letting the clothes fall and smush around. Mine switches directions every now and then, but its nothing like the agitator of a top loader.
So even in cold, I can see an argument for less power used. It probably isn’t that significant a difference though.
The big difference is drying time. My front loader spins like a demon. The clothes are significantly drier after washing than from my top loader. This reduction in moisture makes for much faster dry time and therefore less energy. My old washer/dryer had a very fast wash and long dry time such that I’d have to wait for clothes to dry before moving more from the washer to the dryer. Now the dryer finishes before the next wash is done.
(first of she being me girls like football too) Anyways the light doesn’t like you so it lies. lol I don’t know. Home washers are different I guess. They have more adjustable settings. I haven’t used a home washer since I lived at home. (with parents) But as far as I know the manuals never indicated the spin cycle being any different and we just had new ones put in about a year ago. And there are 3 that less than that.
Don’t get me started. The laundry in this house was built to accommodate a front loader and, short of an extremely expensive refit, there’s no way to fit my 12 year old top loader in. The front loaders on the market here are insanely slow and (IMO) don’t do as good a job but it’s true that they use way less water. The $2000 front loader that I didn’t buy had a “quick wash” option that would do 2 kilos of lightly-soiled laundry in 15 minutes, which meant if you babysat the machine and swapped the loads over every 15 minutes you could wash 8 kilos of lightly soiled clothing in an hour. Meanwhile, my 20th century mid-priced top loader (and every other top loader I’ve ever used) can do 8 kilos on heavy duty in under an hour and didn’t need me popping in every quarter of an hour to check on it.