be used to determine whether the clothes washer is experiencing a suds lock condition or some other abnormal condition if the information is outside a certain expected range as well however this information may be used to determine the load size being washed so that the pretreatment cycle and later portions of the wash cycle may be altered and preferably optimized or adapted to effectively complete the cleaning and rinsing of the clothes but no more in order to avoid suds lock by using the measure of load size during the pretreatment cycle the rest of the pretreatment cycle can be optimized based on the load size information after the desired water level or pressure is detected as initially satisfied by the control 22 the washing machine is allowed to continue the normal pretreatment cycle where water is added to the system as requested by the control system for a first predetermined time the control then identifies the load size in a manner as previously discussed the inlet valve may be shut off regardless of whether water is called for by the control system when a second predetermined time is reached this second predetermined time may be defined based on the load size measure at this time the pretreatment step is completed and the machine proceeds through the rest of the cycle the process of not adding water will aid the system in avoiding suds lock which increases the performance of the cycle in another example of optimizing the rest of the pretreatment cycle based on the load size information the control system determines the total water fill times at preselected intervals depending on the total water fill time a.