miele W504 - cotton 95

here is a miele premier plus W504, today we are doing some towels on the cotton 95° cycle.

before writing anything further, i do want to say that you'll see a repeating glitch throughout the videos of this machine where it keeps wanting to drain in the early stages of the main wash. i didn't do much washing in the machine before filming it, so was not overly familiar with it at this time. it was usable despite this glitch, however in the time after i had finished filming it, the glitch got progressively worse and after a few weeks of disuse, it became unusable as it just didn't stop draining. this is a board fault and since filming, i have obtained 2 further boards for the machine - a second W504 board (awaiting testing) and a W556 board, which is currently modified to have a display and 1500rpm spin. may increase that to 1600 soon.

*i do NOT need/want advice for the glitch. it is very obviously a board fault and has already been rectified. although, i should not need to state this in the first place*

anyway, onto the actual cycle - the machine starts off with regular tumbles for the saturation, then moves onto an interesting fast-slow tumble pattern which it continues for the rest of the main wash. i want to say these are called hydromatic tumbles? but i couldn't tell you for sure. the current W556 board has an entirely different set of tumbles, which you will see in future when that board gets filmed.

the machine heats REALLY well, reaching 88°C, making it the highest recorded temperature on my channel so far. which means it's extremely lucky that i have enabled watercooling in the programmable settings mode. since the plumbing in the conservatory (where it will be used mainly) is old and not the best quality. i will say, i did kind-of expect a miele of this age to heat very well.

moving onto spins, the first interm will be attempted as a fast acceleration spin to begin with, then if it sudslocks, the machine will switch to the super slow acceleration spin (i forgot the official name for it). this is very smart and although i have hated seeing this in videos before, it actually was pretty nice to see in-person. interms are all 1000rpm, with a long hold on the wash interm and shorter holds on any remaining interms. the second interm had a nice waterlock which it powered right through without a problem.

the rinses on this machine are all really deep and quite long. it always fills up to quarter tub initially regardless of load, then begins properly rinsing. with bigger loads, the excess water gets absorbed (as you can see here). however, with smaller loads it remains as quarter tub level. this is incredibly wasteful considering this is WITHOUT water plus... and there is no "max rinse level" setting on this model either, as far as i can see (i was debating this at the time of filming, since it really seems like a max rinse level setting is enabled, but this is apparently just how these models rinse).

the final spin is performed in multiple phases, which is both somewhat interesting and somewhat annoying. it does reach a true 1300 (1304rpm, to be exact), and it holds this for ~1m20, which is acceptable but could be better. on the 60° cotton cycle, it holds for ~3m45, in the same way as IZ has its extended spin on the 60° cotton. i didn't know this pattern at the time of filming due to barely having used the machine.

the machine's performance was good but i somewhat expected better with how much praise these are given for their superior performance to other machines. the overall results are nothing special, about the same as most of my other machines. don't get me wrong, it performs well. but other machines can achieve the same results.

the seal still rubs on the drum a bit even to this day. it is not affecting use or performance but you can hear it when it happens. there isn't anything i can do about it really except run hot washes through it and let it gradually wear the seal down far enough for it to no longer be a problem.

and lastly, the shock absorbers are not at their best, but they are still doing their job and the machine never bangs or moves, so i don't feel a need to change them as they are not causing any issues.

please note when i talk about the age of the machine, it is from 2006, not 2001. when i revealed it i was given incorrect information, and have since found out the true age from date codes of internal components.

energy usage for this cycle was 2.436kWh.

00:00:00 - introduction, adding detergent, selecting cycle
00:06:05 - start and initial fill
00:06:25 - saturation and main wash (w/ drain glitching)
01:17:02 - highest temperature 88°C
01:22:06 - cooldown
01:23:15 - first intermediate spin 1000rpm (sudslock cutout - reached 250rpm)
01:25:25 - switch to super slow acceleration, successful attempt
01:31:31 - first rinse
01:43:28 - second intermediate spin 1000rpm (waterlock)
01:47:21 - softener rinse
01:58:38 - final spin 1300rpm
02:09:15 - end, unloading and results