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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Because it’s not obvious to most customers that a corner’s been cut. Same reason most new construction in the US sucks.

You can safely put a washer and dryer on the upper floor of a house if you add a proper floor drain, but you’re unlikely to see anyone add a floor drain in new construction because buyers aren’t looking for it. Now multiply that by everything a buyer isn’t looking for and you’re talking real money.

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> You can safely put a washer and dryer on the upper floor of a house if you add a proper floor drain

European here, we've always been placing washer/dryer stacks in our bathrooms without needing floor drains. We have machines with a system called Aquastop [1] that stop the water flow if the machine detects a leak inside the system.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquastop

There’s a wide range of such designs due to the various different failure modes from false positives to the kinds of leaks resulting in 10’s of thousands in damages they are supposed to prevent.

In Denmark and I think Sweden it's a requirement that a washing machine is in a room with a floor drain.

Therefore the washing machine is usually in the bathroom, and the shower drain serves both purposes.

What brand of washer do you use so I can studiously avoid it?

If the seal between the washing machine and the water supply fails it doesn’t matter which brand you’re using.

They have improved over time, but you need to have a drain for the washing machine anyway so the cost is quite low vs the rather extreme damage a leak can cause.

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