I needed to know this before I went ahead to buy the diminutive Bosch Axxis unit. It just seemed so small compared with the Maytag. But I couldn’t find the answer anywhere to the question about the capacity of the Maytag 510, so I decided to just measure it: first by calculating and second by filling the tub.
Measuring the tub is actually a bit awkward but it’s about 13” high (to the top row of holes, which is the recommended height for maximum load and the place from where they should be calculating volume) with a radius of about 11”. (The agitator is in the way making it hard to get right.)
So volume is radius squared, times ‘pi’, times the height.
Radius (11x11) x Pi (3.14) x Height 13 = 4939.22 square inches
divided by a cubic foot, which is 12x12x12 or 1728 cubic inches,
4939.22 ÷ 1728 = 2.86 cubic feet.
The difficulty measuing the tub accurately made me want to check with actual liquid volume measures. So …
A cubic foot is 7.4 gallons. (See conversion charts at: http://www.ookingdom.com/metric/factors)
I have a 1.5 quart pitcher. A gallon is 2.66 pitchers-full and a cubic foot is therefore (7.4 x 2.66) 19.7 pitchers.
I filled the washer tub twice with slightly different techniques and found that it was almost exactly 3.0 cubic feet (59 pitchers) to the highest row of holes.
I started this to see if the Bosch Axxis was smaller than the Maytag since it looks that way. But it’s actually bigger at 3.4 cubic feet. I believe that the extra .4 cubic feet must come in part from the volume lost to the presence of the agitator – one reason why front-loaders get more laundry into the “same” amount of space.
Casey
Casey Sokol, February 2009
