Washing cloth is a breeze now !! . Review on IFB Digital

Edit May 2012: Stay away from IFB they have pathetic service, they changed my machine's faulty motherboard and ever since the wash quality has degraded like anything, they have replaced the motherboard with some old version which is less intelligent which I can observe the way the cycles operate on cloths. There are no ways you can escalate any issues and they have a very dumb call center who are fit for nothing, they can't even speak english, always had tough times whenever wanted to book a complaint.

First let me thank all mouthshut members who took pain to share their useful tips and their recommendation on various WM brands. . .

After much googling I decided to go for a front loading due it's sheer wash quality. Now comes the brands. . .too many. Well I short-listed between LG, Whirlpool and IFB. It was very tough deciding, based on market share and my friends feedback, decided to go with IFB.

Now the model selection. My requirement was, it should be fully automatic considering my selective laziness. It should remember what it was doing and resume from the same point post a power failure, especially considering the Bangalore power.

The only thing which met my requirement was Digital 5kg, so got it delivered.

Some Silicon services was the authorized service partner, who sent their engineer for the installation.

Promptly there was good follow-up from the IFB (Silicon) and the engineer turned home as committed, he studied the place and said every thing was okay, started the installation, gave a quick demo, sold some Protecta powder, Descal powder and some other small things.

I bought the extension pipe from them and bought some ready to use GI pipes (pre threaded), bends, stop tap from a local hardware shop, joined them with one another using teflon tape as a thread sealant, it's very easy, all you need are some tools. If you do not want a permanent water connection to machine, they have a ready made removable connecters to your normal water tap.

I also signed for an additional 2 year extended warranty for Rs 1500 (Thanks to mouthshut members who had given this advise)

Okay, now I know the installation is done by a Silicon technician and not by an IFB employee, I felt the technician had no clues about earth, neutral and phase of a power supply, doesn't have any knowledge on center of gravity nor he had a tool to level the machine.

Here are the tips to make sure your machine works without jumping from the floor and safeguarding the internal digital circuitry.

1 Make sure your wall socket has a proper earth point, the voltage between earth and neutral should be less than 2Volts and between phase and earth could be around 220 volts. (Take the help of an electrician or do some gooling and get a multimeter to check these yourself)

2 To level the machine for a noise free operation, use a simple transparent 5mm plastic pipe fill the water in it, and hold the pipe end to end on all the top corner of the machine in turns, you should see the water level is equal between all corners, if not you should loosen or tighten the machine height adjusting screws. (remember this is very important and those technicians will never do it properly, they want to runoff from the site, it is better if you do it yourself, anyway it's just one time activity, it's worth your time.

3 They will try to sell you a stabilizer of some unknown brand, stay away from it, you can buy a V-guard or some other reputed brand for nearly half of their price in the open market.

I believe we get some simple MCB (Switch) which provides high voltage and low voltage cutoff, this will be inexpensive.

This voltage cutoff is required I feel, since a low voltage or high voltage will burn out the motor which is the most expensive part of the machine. I need do little research here and buy one.

Now it was time for first wash, bought Surf excel matic front load and followed all the instructions in Manual.

Whew, believe me all my shirts were shining now. .I had never seen my shirts becoming so clean earlier in hand wash (as I said earlier I am selectively lazy, so that could have been reason as well), but nevertheless the wash quality is really good I felt. Drying is also pretty good, almost 75%.

Here are the few important features to look for in fully automatic front load machines.

1 Auto load balancing.

2 Temperature control.

3 Extra soak option.

4 Extra spin option.

5 Resume Memory in case of power failure.

6 Drain Pump.

7 Rat mesh (IFB thinks a stupid piece of plastic packing material sheet as a rat mesh, they should have provided a decent metal mesh which doesn't fall off like the one they have given now)

8 Delayed start.

9 Anticrease cycle.

From past 3 months washing cloths doesn't take my time anymore. I should pat my own back for deciding on a fully automatic FWM : - )