Those of you who have the HE front-loaders know how well they work on
all the ferret laundry. I want to tell you all of my experience with
mine, a Kenmore. We got it in 2003 upon buying this house, before Ginny
died and before I had so many ferrets to care for. The washer has done
many loads of ferret and hooman laundry. Recently it wouldn't spin,
just made a croaking sound, so finally called Sear for service. The
technician opened the front panel, unscrewed the front of the pump
housing and removed a HUGE wad of various fibers and ferret hair with a
little sawdust from the wood pellets. Ha, we think, problem solved. But
it continued to have problems, someone else came out, opened it and
cleaned further up the outlet pipe and thought it was fixed. Still had
problems so on the third try the pump was replaced and that fixed it.
We choose not to pay for the service contract so this wasn't too bad,
$140 for the service and $150 for the part. Sear also had a special
sale on the dryer tune-up so I had the tech open the dryer top and
unscrew the dryer vanes to clean out the wads of lint that had gotten
inside the plastic. There was plenty of dust in the housing at the
bottom of the dryer, too.

I always pull back the door gasket after a load and remove any fur that
has collected at the drain but obviously some goes through. My thought
to help prevent this in the future is to open the front of the machine
twice a year and open the pump housing and clean it well of any
accumulation. All it takes is a screwdriver or nutdriver. I always beat
off the bedding before washing but that's not enough so I have obtained
an old wringer washer to pre-wash the ferret loads and it is working
great to get off the worst of it. I don't have a basement so it is
outside and I am using the drain water on the garden-to-be . It really
deserves the term "gray water." I imagine an old automatic top-loader
would work well, too if it has the lint filter you can remove and
clean.

Carol J. Owens
Ferret Friends, Inc.
Tucson AZ

[Posted in FML 6725]