Difference between revisions of "Kenmore 44052"

Latest revision as of 18:23, 7 May 2007

Overview

The Kenmore 44052 is a front-loading, consumer electric washing machine with electronic controls. The controls are located on the front, just above the loading door, to allow stacking of another unit (such as a dryer) on top. (For practical purposes, the top unit will also need to have controls on the front in order for it to be usable when stacked; Sears makes at least one model of dryer designed to be stacked on top of the 44052.)

Reference

product page at Sears
rating/reviews at epinions.com

Notes

Model is also listed as the Kenmore 44252; the 44252 does not include "shown with optional 15 in. drawer pedestal Kenmore 46262 sold separately" in the description. It's not clear whether the different number is an order management convenience or whether the 44052 is actually slightly different in order to accomodate the pedestal. The manual is the same for both versions, and shows 44052 on the cover.

Disadvantages

The electronic controls do not give you any indication of where you are in the wash cycle, e.g. how long to the next spin, how long until finished, whether you've made it to the spin cycle etc. (although there is a light to tell you you're in the final spin).
There appears to be a delay of approximately two minutes between when you manually interrupt the cycle and when the door unlocks. Disconnecting the unit's electrical power either resets the timer or does not affect it.
Spin cycle not as effective as other front-load models (this may be due to a defective unit)
The balance sensor appears to be very sensitive to heavy objects (such as stuffed animals) in the load, and will refuse to go into high spin.
The final spin in the special "drain-and-spin" cycle is extremely finicky; in one instance, the washer refused to go into a spin in the drain-and-spin on a load of laundry which had just succeeded in going through a fast spin as part of a full wash cycle and then again as part of a rinse-and-spin.
According to a Sears service technician, the use of non-HE-compliant laundry soaps automatically voids the unit's warranty, although some service technicians will overlook this if sudsing does not appear to be an issue. (I was unable to find mention of this in the text of the user manual or the warranty, hwoever; the most mention of "HE" in either of those locations was an admonition to "look for this symbol on the detergent label" in the instructions for adding detergent, and a suggestion to "use a low-sudsing, high efficiency detergent" – note the lowercase spelling – in the instructions for dealing with oversudsing.)

Reviews

2006-03-01 Hypertwins vs. the Kenmore 44052

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[[Category:Appliances]]The [[Kenmore 44052]] is a front-loading, consumer electric washing machine with electronic controls. The controls are located on the front, just above the loading door, to allow stacking of another unit (such as a dryer) on top. (For practical purposes, the top unit will also need to have controls on the front in order for it to be usable when stacked; Sears makes at least one model of dryer designed to be stacked on top of the 44052.)
+==Overview==
+[[category:appliances]][[category:hardware]]The [[Kenmore 44052]] is a front-loading, consumer electric washing machine with electronic controls. The controls are located on the front, just above the loading door, to allow stacking of another unit (such as a dryer) on top. (For practical purposes, the top unit will also need to have controls on the front in order for it to be usable when stacked; Sears makes at least one model of dryer designed to be stacked on top of the 44052.)
 ==Reference==
 * [http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?pid=02644052000 product page] at Sears
@@ Line 17: / Line 18: @@
 ==Reviews==
-[ {{thehypertwins}} 19:04, 1 March 2006 (EST) ] We bought our unit to replace a broken [[Kenmore 40052]], and it was delivered the next day. The unit was on sale for $650, marked down from $800, but we were feeling paranoid about repairs (having just lost a comparably expensive unit &ndash; the 40052 &ndash; after only 5 years or so) and so opted for the Super-Duper Repair Plan which covered (for 5 years, with option to renew) annual service visits plus parts and labor if anything needs repairing, for about $260, which drove the total up to well over $900 with tax.
+* '''2006-03-01''' [[Hypertwins vs. the Kenmore 44052]]
-Part of the appeal of this model was the much larger opening, about 14.5 inches, versus less than 12 inches for our old 40052. (A more expensive model, the $900 [[Kenmore 46462]] which was marked down to $850 at the time, had only a 13.75 inch opening and a correspondingly smaller drum, although it had other advantages.)
-The first problem we noticed was that the electronic controls do not give you any indication of where you are in the cycle. This is an annoyance. We also noticed that clothes seemed to be coming out of the spin cycle substantially wetter than with our old unit when it was working properly. This is also a relatively minor issue. The real kicker came when we tried to wash some stuffed animals, and the 44052 refused to go into the spin cycle at all; the toys came out soaking wet, even after repeated spin cycles, which negates much of the energy efficiency savings though having to use heat instead of centrifugal force to do much of the drying. We ended up having to wash the toys one at a time, with a sheet tossed in to minimize the "bumping" as the toys were tumbled and thereby avoid setting off the "unbalanced" sensor; after that, all but the largest stuffed animals came out acceptably dry.
-At this point, we are seriously considering trading in this unit for a [[Kenmore 44102]], which hopefully will behave more like our old unit. It is not clear whether Sears will allow us to do this without charging further limbs for the privilege; watch this space.