Specifications

The Idea
Years ago when life was simple, there were two types of
washers, traditional central post top-loaders and front-
loaders.
One washed by immersing clothes in a large volume of
water and one washed by tumbling them through a
small volume of water.
We used to waste endless time arguing which mode was best, because the very thing that made
each washer type good, is also what made it bad – that is of course Water.
The main benefit of a front-loader has been its water efficiency. But water is a wonderful thing,
it dilutes out a lot of the bad things in the wash. The dye, the sand, the dirt, the grass, the
micro-organisms. No matter how dedicated you are to saving water, when your child vomits in
their bed you soon yearn for the dilution effects of a full immersion wash.
Whichever way we look at things the lower water volumes of HE washers, whether you get the
clothes from the top or the side, can cause problems in the wash. But, with water consumption
increasingly becoming an issue in areas where water shortages are rife, and Government bodies
worldwide continuing to put pressure (e.g. rebates, legislation) on appliance manufacturers to
reduce water usage, we realised that we could no longer justify traditional top-loader water
consumption for the future of Fisher & Paykel laundry products.
Taking our inspiration from the automotive industry we thought, isn’t the ideal solution a washer
that can work in both front-loader and top-loader modes? We decided that we needed a hybrid
of both types of washer.
The Aim
The aim of the AquaSmart™ project was to design a High Efficiency top-loading washer - the
first top-loading washer capable of achieving a water factor of 6.0.
We aimed to develop a product that provided the best of both worlds – the ergonomics,
capacity and shorter cycles times of a top-loader, with the increased water efficiency of a front-
loader. Customers would no longer have to make a decision between buying a top-loading or
front-loading washer at the point of purchase; they would have all the features of both a
Traditional and High Efficiency washer in one.
We were able to take the opportunity to design a product with all these benefits, based on the
current SmartDrive™ platform. To overcome the water usage constraints of a traditional
agitator system, we decided to set out to design a new, low profile agitator wash system.