Smelly washing machines beware (Dri-pak Soda Crystals)

Member Name: taylor72

Product:	Dri-pak Soda Crystals
Date:	12/03/09 (316 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap and effective

Disadvantages: none I found

Around a week ago I noticed a rather unpleasant cabbage smell eminating from my washing machine every time I opened or closed the door - it got steadily more pungent until a couple of days ago when I took my "clean" washing out and noticed the cabbage smell was now transfering itself onto the clothes. I quickly pegged them out and was thankful it was a good dry day but knew this problem needed resolving.

After spending a while googling various ideas it became apparent there was an underlying theme - soda crystals.

I purchased these from tesco costing £0.64 for 1kg - it was the bag I bought for this job not the spray.

It comes exactly as shown above and claims to unblock grease from sinks and drains, shift heavy stains in washing and soften hard water and cut through the grease on cookers, pans and surfaces. For the purposes of this review I was trying it out to stop the foul aroma coming from my washing machine.

What did I do

I opened the packet with scissors and poured a large cupfull into the detergant drawer of my washing machine ( I had cleaned this area thoroughly before hand). It is a soft white powdery consistency with no aroma to it, then I set my washing machine to 90 degrees as recomended on the various sites I googled, I set it off with nothing else in it and waited for the cycle to finish.

Did it work

once finished I opened the door and was a little disappointed to still detect a slight cabbage smell, however I decided to pop in a wash load and wash as normal to see if it had worked at all. Upon opening the door after a normal 30 degree wash I was immediately greeted with a nice fresh smell, I could easily detect my detergant and softener smell and there was not even a hint of the cabbage aroma. I have done 4 loads of washing since then and the cabbage has definately been eliminated!

Recomended

After speaking to my mum she advised it is a good idea to do this once a month - called a maintaince wash - to give your machine a thorough internal clean - apparently consistently low temperatures and the use of gels / liquid mean detergant can build up in unseen areas and this is the cause of the smell.

Summary: Give it a go