Soap Flakes in Washing Machine?

Boodle

I have just picked up a box of soap flakes for general cleaning. I had been planning to put some in the soap tray in the washing machine with vinegar in the fabric conditioner tray. I realise there are some recipes around for laundry using borax, soda crystals etc, but I wasn't planning on adding anything else to the machine - just the soap flakes for washing (we don't need a water softener) and vinegar for softening the clothes and de-greasing.

The thing is... the box (Dri-pak brand btw) states the soap flakes should not be used in the washing machine as "certain conditions" may make the soap flakes gel up and block the machine. Does anyone have any idea what "certain conditions" mean? Perhaps they are just covering themselves? Would the vinegar prevent this from happening, do you think? I live in a fairly soft water area. I run a very hot wash every week without any soap in the drawer for my white towels and to clear the pipes of soap residue. I wouldn't be using a huge amount of the soap flakes in each wash (which are always cold washes apart from that once a week hot cycle.) Does anyone have any thoughts? I'd really appreciate if anyone could share some advice x

Farway

I live in hard water area, but from experience of soft water [Highland Scotland for instance] I think using soap flakes will result in a lot of foam

most detergent has non foaming ingredients

You may find your kitchen turned into a bubble bath

BitterAndTwisted

Personally, I would only use soap flakes for hand-washing. As Farway said, using them in the machine could result in soap suds a-gogo. If you've bought the soap-flakes purely for using in the machine combine it with borax as this should result in no suds at all. At least that's the result of including borax in my version of "laundry gloop"

Boodle

Thanks guys I was going to use to for liquid soap too, but it looks like borax is the way to go for using it in the machine then. I thought borax was to soften the water so thought that would make more suds? I had planned to only put a small amount of soap flakes into the drawer and sort of experiement to see how well things were washed - say 1tsp or so at first and see how it goes.

kippers

A couple of months ago i made a washing powder using a recipe from the 'down to earth' blog. It used soda crystals, soap flakes and borax substitute. It washes well and is good for my skin as i suffer from excema.

I noticed the soap flake box says not to use in an automatic washing machine, so i asked on the 'down to earth' forum and they said it's ok to use as long as i use a water softner-so i have been using white vinegar with each wash.

I was just about to buy some more and then i started to worry about it again as i don't want to break my washing machine. I was wondering what other 'oldstylers' think?

zippychick

ive merged this with a previous thread asking the same question - it only has a few replies but it may be helpful

Zip