5 pumps for a front loader, at cold temperatures. 

- Subtract one pump if you’re washing at warmer temperatures, or if you have less than full loads 

+ Add one pump if you’re washing larger loads, or using top loaders as they consume more water.

There are two reasons laundry detergent companies keep their dosage recommendations vague. 

  1. It’s actually advantageous to them to make it difficult for you to know how many loads are in a bottle.

    Their theory is that in absence of this information you will use the next best cue; size, to determine value. And size is cheap to make, by diluting the performance and suggesting you use more.

    In fact, this is such a well known trick that the size of laundry bottles actually had to get regulated several years ago, because the race for ‘big’ value was creating so much extra packaging, consuming so much extra shelf space, and confusing customers, us, too much. 

    If you know us, you know our cost per load is more than 15% cheaper than the market average, but of course making sure you get that benefit really does depend on you not overdosing. 

  2. It’s also hard to do.

    Over the years, there have been 25 types of washing machines launched to market (front loader, top loader, HE, combo etc.etc). There are approximately 20 major washing machine manufacturers, and they each release approximately two new models per year, for the past 20 years.

    Now, this may not be a true fact at all, but based on our very vague maths, there might be as many as 10,000 different types of washing machines available and functional in the world today. ALL of these come with different performance recommendations from their manufacturers. So making a ‘one size fits all’ approach is quite hard. 

Our dosage recommendations used to be 4 pumps for an ‘average load’ front loader at 40 degrees. We’ve edited it a little, so that you can choose your own adventure, based on the knowledge you have at hand. 

 

Gosha Wirya