My Co-op has 111 units total in three buildings. We have two laundry rooms: one with 4 gas dryers; two front loaded, water recycling regular size and one front loading giant size, also water recycling. The other laundry room has twice the capacity. We use Service Master. They redid our laundry rooms (new paint, floor tile, tables and chairs) along with the new machines. We like their service. The machines we selected have had some acceptance problems. We have a seven year lease and use pay cards.

Since we opted for the water-recycling machines, we do use less water however from an acceptance perspective, your wash water is someone else’s rinse water. This concept may not work well in a multi-family complex. The standing water in the tank can get a little ‘funky’ and one needs to use chlorine bleach from time to time to sterilize the recycling tank (not well noted). However, not everyone uses bleach.

Also, the normal capacity machines do not have a clear port to see what the laundry is doing and since the door locks, one can not confirm that it is actually ‘washing”. I know this is a fine point however this has also led to some resistance (I guess some people like to watch).

There is a pre-wash and regular cycle. You have to add detergent 2x: once for the pre-wash and once for the regular wash. If you don’t know this trick (and it is not well posted), all of you detergent you put in the pre-wash gets extracted and none is left for the wash cycle – means less cleaning. If you wait and put detergent in for both cycles, they clean fine. Note: you can not put liquid detergent for both cycles in at the same time – the detergent access points are not designed that way. Also, the giant wash has a shorter cycle – not sure why. Detergent and bleach can stain the stainless steel surface on the giant washer – so avoid that if you can.

After four years or so, we have not made money yet. The acceptance problem is such that some people go down the street to do their laundry. We had one incident where a shareholder just had to remove their laundry from a locked machine before the cycle was complete resulting in a ruined door which had to be replaced and they we had to install a security camera system in each of the rooms. We also had to add sprinklers to the room.

I am not sure yet what we will do when the contract is up. Few people are happy with the current situation however few people are really upset.