What does water factor represent in a clothes washer?

• A. Total gallons per cycle
• B. Gallons per minute
• C. Number of gallons per cycle per cubic foot that a washer uses
• D. Liters per cycle

Answer: (C)

Water factor measures how efficiently a washer uses water by normalizing water use to the machine’s size. It tells you how many gallons of water are used for each cycle per cubic foot of drum capacity. In formula form, it’s gallons per cycle divided by capacity in cubic feet, so the units are gallons per cycle per cubic foot. This sizing normalization lets you compare washers of different sizes on equal footing: a larger machine isn’t automatically worse if it uses water efficiently relative to its capacity. The metric isn’t just total gallons per cycle, nor gallons per minute, nor liters per cycle, which is why the best choice is the one that expresses gallons per cycle per cubic foot.