Washers & Dryers

Washers and Dryers

The obvious difference in washing machines in France and in the U.S. is the size. In France all the washing machines are what people in the States would call apartment sized machines. And dryers are just now becoming popular. Most people in France hang their clothes to dry.

Fortunately, it is just the two of us and a small washer and dryer work just fine. We picked out the machines (after much research on Amazon and reading customer reviews) and they delivered in a couple of days. The delivery men set them in place, hooked up the water and drain and plugged them in, said good bye, and left us the manuals in French.

You know how every manual we get in America has two, three, or even seven languages in it? Well, that’s not the case here. It’s only French in almost every product we have bought.

Get out the iPad and translator. Alice did a good job of figuring out the different settings. Then I noticed an interesting aspect of our dryer. It had no vent to the outside. Weird, but it worked just fine.

Then about a week later we get a ringing from the dryer and it has shut down during the middle of a load. The door is locked. The on light is blinking. Finally, we determine there is a water reservoir at the bottom of the machine. The dryer is a “Condenser” and it sucks the moisture from the clothing and condenses it into a reservoir that needs to be emptied periodically. 

Then one day while sitting in the little water closet watching the clothes go round in the washer, I noticed something that struck me as strange. The clothes don’t just spin around getting agitated the entire time they are washing as they do in American washing machines. They get little breaks. The washer spins clockwise for five seconds and then gives the clothes a rest. It then spins them in the opposite direction for five seconds and gives them another respite from the work-out of sudsing and cleansing. Wow, even the French machines are designed with courtesy and respect, how thoughtful of the clothing to give them little breaks. 

The French are also very energy conscious, probably because electricity is expensive here. The washer and dryer both have delays so that they can be set to come on during the night when energy costs are substantially reduced. In fact one of the biggest concerns on the Amazon reviews among customers was the delay timer. 

One final note: Alice discovered that the single outlet would not power both the washer and dryer at the same time. She can only run either the washer or the dryer, but not both simultaneously.  

Our neighbor's traditional French dryer.