Teka LSI3-1300 E

I have struggled for the last year with this Teka washer and dryer and it has nearly beaten me but not quite! It lives in the house that I look after which frequently has anything from 2 to 16 guests! mainly it is used for washing towels and sheets and it is sometimes on three or four times a day depending on how busy we are.

It can wash a 6kg load and can dry up to 3kgs with a maximum 1300 spin speed. It does actually wash the clothes quite well and has 5 programmes for resistant fabrics ranging from 30degrees to 90degrees, 5 programmes for mixed fabrics from30degrees to 60degrees and 3 for very delicate fabrics. There are 6 special programmes , cotton rinses, mixed rinses , fast spin, drain only, an All at 40degrees and the one we use almost exclusively the 30mins at 40degrees.

Why do we use this one so much ? This is the main problem with this machine. The control panel has been very badly thought out. It is very, very easy to miss the programme you want because the selector is so sensitive and very often, particularly at the start I found myself on the wrong, and invariable longer programme. This has happened to helpful guests too so it is not because I am ham fisted. 30 mins at 40degrees is the first click to the left on the selector and so has become the favourite wash programme.

Another problem is the weird way it indicates how much time is left before the washing has finished. There is a 60,30 and 15min indicator light. If the light is on 30 it means that you have less than 30 but more than 15 mins to wait, but if you wash is over 60mins you have no idea how much more over 60 to have to wait and there isn´t any chart of wash times in the hand book so you just have to guess..

The hand book is the most clumsily put together hand book that I have tried to read. On each page there are 5 different languages instead of putting all the info together for one language at a time making it really frustrating to find what you need.

The Final Straw (or peg)!

Two weeks ago I set my wash and pressed the start button on the left hand side of the line of 5 control buttons on the front and the whole unit fell into the inside of the machine! I couldnt stop the wash because the stop button was now inside and had to anxiously wait until it had completed its cycle watching it jig around in the spin cycle in a most alarming fashion, would it disappear completely into its inside? Would I be able to get it out again? Capt Splishsplash came in from checking the boats and I told him my dilemma. Luckily he is a man of great initiative and the next day we dragged the machine out and it is extremely heavy I can tell you. We then took the top off and found the unit was missing a plastic clip so luckily it happened when I was using it and not a guest. We then shoved a clothes peg between the unit and the rest of the clips and siliconed the whole thing together.

It´s still working but I really don´t like it. It takes forever to dry clothes and in fact I have given up using the dryer function completely, life just isn't long enough. I feel a lot better for writing this, I will not trouble you with a long review about how to use this machine because I feel you would be much better of buying something else unless you need a bit of extra agro in your life!

2 stars from me as it can acually wash clothes but please Teka re design your control panel!

Thanks for reading