I want a washing machine with a hot water valve

wendy tyler-batt
#1. August 4th, 2007, at 10:59 PM.

Very helpful article. Have just purchased a Bosch washing maching and lamenting the change ie cold fill only, much longer wash time and frankly no better/not as good result as my old zanussi. However am now clearer on the benefits of a cold fill only and heartened to know that not much hot water was used direct from hot fill anyway

Richard Bell
#2. August 9th, 2007, at 2:03 PM.

Reading the article on whether there is any benefit to getting a washing machine with both hot and cold valves I conclude that there isn’t currently much benefit , but that is largely because the models with both hot and cold valves have not been properrly designed to take full advantage of the hot supply. The article explains that both valves come on and because of the greater pressure in the cold line the machine fills up with mostly cold water. This is nothing more than sloppy design. with the benefit of modern microprocessor controls it should be easy to design a machine which runs to hot for a short while (to get hot water to come through) and then measures the temperature of the hot supply, before putting in the right mix of hot and cold to get the desired wash temperature. If the manufacturers aren’t capable of designing a machine which can do that, it is a pathetic state of affairs. In these days of environmental awareness failure to do such a simple thing to save energy in millions of homes should be unthinkable. I suggest there should be a top efficiency rating which can only be awarded to machines which can do this.

Paul Fielding
#4. August 17th, 2007, at 2:20 PM.

Really good advice from someone who wants it made simple!
We are a family who can’t use biological poweder for allergy reasons. Therefore the use of a cold fill only machine will be less of a benefit. However, as is pointed out, there arn’t many hot/cold fill about. also our washing machine is position a good distance away from the hot water tank, so I suspect that hot water rarely makes it to the machine during a fill.

Andrew Clark
#5. August 26th, 2007, at 1:32 PM.

Why has nobody mentioned the fact that if you “draw off” hot water using a tap beside the washing machine you can get “instant” hot water to your hot-fill. I have been doing this for years – now that all my hot water is heated by a crabon-neutral energy source (either wood or solar) I feel it is even more energy efficient.
As for water consumption, my house has a secondary return pipe on the hot water circuit with a temperature sensor fitted to the pump so that it only switches on when you turn a hot water tap on – you than turn the tap off, wait 5-10 minutes while the water circulates, then turn it on again, by which time the hot water only has ashort distance to travel and you don’t waster much down the drain.
However, I have been interested to read about the pros of cold fill only, especially the arguments about such a small volume of water being used anyway and the possibly improved wash performance? Also, I was dismayed to read that washing machines with hot and cold fill don’t use the hot wate very efficiently.
So would I be better off going for a hot and cold machine while they’re still available or going for a high-efficiency cold fill only machine? I am still minded to get an LG with hot and cold fill… comments please?

Andrew Clark
#7. August 27th, 2007, at 2:20 PM.

Thanks for the quick response, Andy. It at least confirms that my ideas are reasonably sound – and I like the LG machines anyway so I will probably go for one (before they delete their hot and cold fill arrangement from their range!)

Rob Beadle
#8. September 10th, 2007, at 11:19 PM.

Thanks for the advice on this. Whilst my current machine does use the hot water valve (and because all of the washing is undertaken in quick succession, the hot pipe does actually get hot and used) your advice on the demise of the hot water valve is far better understood than the

“Why have all the machines only a cold water inlet?” “Dunno”
“Do you have any machines with a hot water inlet?” “Dunno”
“Can you still get machines with a hot inlet?” “Dunno”

conversation I had with the salesperson at my local electrical store earlier this evening!

Rob

Maxine
#9. November 3rd, 2007, at 9:49 PM.

I absolutely hate my cold fill Hotpoint which has been nothing but trouble, even though I’ve alsways used Hotpoint in the past, this will be the last, unless they greatly improve. It won’t rinse soapowder away other than with water boiled from the kettle, so I’ve had to reluctantly switch to liquid or tablets and it has a horrible black sludge inside the top of the soap dispenser drawer housing and on the inside of the rubber seal around the drum. The engineer, on one of his countless visits tells me that this is a problem which is common with Hotpoint machines since they changed to cold fill. The washing never smells clean and certainly never seems as clean. I ahave had it 2 years and although it still works I am currently looking for a new HOT FILL model.

Mr Webb
#11. November 15th, 2007, at 8:08 PM.

Large families do not have the time 7 days a week to wait for modern slow machines to wash everyones clothes etc.

Robert bryden
#12. December 6th, 2007, at 2:25 AM.

Live in high rise flats and cold fill only washing machine does not give enough water pressure to run machine.Wear can i purchase hot/cold machines

Maxine
#14. December 22nd, 2007, at 9:39 PM.

Thanks for the response, I can report that as of tonight and at just 27 months old, it has finally given up the ghost. Rather than pay for the call out/parts bill, I will probably look for a new machine, as I hate it anyway. With the problem you describe re the water pressure(although my old one didn’t have the same problem), are there any particularly good washers designed for this problem. Regarding the sludge, I have checked the valve, as you suggest, and all seems ok, and, since advised to do so by the repair man, have run a maintenance wash regularly, along with scrubbing inside the drawer and spooning out the gunk, inside the rubber seal. I can only conclude that the current machine is rubbish. The problem is that they always seem to go at the most inconvenient times(Saturday night, 2 days before Christmas) and living with 3 Rugby playing boys, a replacement is needed asap, not leaving much time to consider the choice of replacement machine thoroughly!!

jools
#16. December 30th, 2007, at 10:29 AM.

I need a new machine as my old servis has just about had it. The machine is hot/cold fill can I use my current cold fill pipe on a new machine, are they universal fittings? the pipes are only a year old and put on when i had a new kitchen fitted, i don’t want to mess about with the plumbing as it is excellent no leaks and i woyld like to keep it like this

Austin Milligan
#17. December 30th, 2007, at 6:00 PM.

Why don’t I just blank off the hot water supply line and use a cold fill only. My present machine has a hot & cold fill but your argument would suggest that I would be better off with cold fill.

If I did this would it harm the machine…Bosch maxx

Chris
#20. January 4th, 2008, at 12:49 AM.

I too am looking for a good HOT & COLD FILL washer/dryer. I want what I want, not what is currently available.

G. Bruce
#21. January 4th, 2008, at 10:10 PM.

Interesting article on just cold fill inlet on modern machines. I was thinking that hot fill could still be useful if somehow the incoming water temperature could be sensed with the appropriate program.

Also the temperature of the initial incoming water flow via the hot intake, is a lot warmer than the outside temperature of incoming cold flow, especially in the winter when it could be as low as two degrees if the intake is near the stop cock.

I would think that the two above combinations would save even more energy more energy, of course there is the extra cost of manufacture involved.

Aslan
#23. February 11th, 2008, at 1:27 AM.

Hi,

Interesting and enlightening reading.

I have a new Hotpoint machine, and on reading the above am a little concerned about how it will perform!

Anyway, it is a cold fill only machine according to the manual, but has both hot and cold inlets on the back. It’s been supplied with a Y-connector hose to connect to a cold supply.

The question I have is the hose is not long enough, and the old hoses I have (which are long enough) are separate for my old hot and cold inlet machine. Can I connect these two to the hot and cold inlets on the new machine despite it being a ‘cold only’.

Will this damage the machine/thermostat in any way?

Many thanks

cheryl
#25. February 16th, 2008, at 6:14 PM.

when we purchased a service washing for my mum she was very worried that it took 3 hours to do a 40 degree wash. If the instruction book had explained all of what you have said then my mum, who has had to phone service for them to explain all this would not have been worried. And I would not have needed to look on the this sight about the cold water fill but glad I did explains everything

wookey
#27. February 22nd, 2008, at 1:47 AM.

You mention the fact that given a low-pressure hot water feed and mains-pressure cold feed very litle hot water gets into the machine. However This would imply that machines are designed for the UK only, as most European countries have mains hot water and have had for a long time. Also mains hot water is becoming much more common over here, usually via mains pressure hot water tanks, but also via thermal stores/heat abnks where people are combining heat sources (wood-burner, solar, boilers).

I am in the process of fitting solar, will have mains hot water and have a short pipe run. It is madness that a machine can get an ‘A’ efficiency rating whilst heating up stone-cold water with expensive high-carbon electricity when there is a big tank full of low-carbon hot water available.

It seems odd that so much effort has gone into reducing water use, whilst these opportunities for energy-use reduction have been ignored. The market for solar-friendy machines is growing rapidly. I wonder which manufacturer will do something about it first?

Colin Stone
#29. March 13th, 2008, at 6:51 PM.

This lack of hot fill is crazy. My old Bosch H & C fill uses the hot water on a 40C wash – the pipes and soap dispenser are hot. I plugged in a kwh meter and a 40 and 60C wash only used 0.25kwh – a fifth of the power quoted in the showrooms for a 60C wash. It has nothing to do with the detergents – the manufacturers just want to save money by eliminating components. H & C fill machines can always be used as cold fill – perhaps even with a switch for low temp/bio powders. People on boast who get hot water from the engine, or those with solar panels have masses of hot water. I do not need to pay to heat up more. Where is the address of the wm manufacturers association.

Suzie
#30. March 26th, 2008, at 3:22 PM.

Hi. I have a machine with hot and cold fill but I rarely, if ever, use a cycle hotter than 40 degrees. I usually turn off the red and blue taps after a washing session but I would like to know if I need to turn the red one on at all as I probably don’t use any hot water fill, just cold?

Suzie
#32. April 17th, 2008, at 6:42 PM.

Thank you very much for your advice.

Mark
#33. April 29th, 2008, at 8:13 AM.

Hi. I have a mains pressure hot water system that gives MORE pressure from the hot taps in my house than the cold mains water. The tank is in the garage and it is quite a short run to the washing machine. A hot and cold fill machine might be a good idea in this scenario; it would almost certainly allow hot water in before filling completely.

But that got me thinking, what about fitting a thermostatic mixer valve behind a cold fill only machine, set to say 25 degrees C. Thus on a 30 degree program, the machine would only top up the temp by the necessary 5 degrees, thus using considerably less electricity and speeding up wash times?

Unless the flaw in my theory is that the machines use HUGE quantities of rinsing waterand would waste gallons of stored hot water whilst rinsing at 25C? Anyone know roughly how much is used for rinsing?

Nitch
#35. May 11th, 2008, at 5:55 PM.

I’ve been running off the cold water in the hot water pipes (into watering cans etc for use elsewhere) until it gets warm before putting on the washing machine for years. I also switch off the cold water for the first 5 minutes, so the higher pressure doesn’t swamp the machine with cold. We have solar heated water. However, it looks like my 24 year old machine is finally giving up the ghost. I’m quite depressed to think its not worth using the free hot water if I get a new one, though I suppose the good news is that most people use much less energy to wash their clothes these days.

pachmarhi
#36. June 22nd, 2008, at 10:40 AM.

Take a look at **** They use a manual thermostatic mixing valve by the washing machine. Set valve to appropriate temp for the first five mins (while the machine fills), then turn down to minimum for cold rinsing. Seems to work. I visited them too. We plan to do that when we move.

pachmarhi
#38. June 23rd, 2008, at 11:04 PM.

Hi Washerhelp. Apologies. Seems like they have moved the site. Correct url should be http://www.theyellowhouse.org.uk/

They had a mixing valve located at counter height. While it may not suit everyone, it certainly does work for some people.

Dave
#39. July 6th, 2008, at 9:30 PM.

Very interestingreading here all round.
I have a 25 year old Hoover Electron 1100. Sadly the drum bearings are about shot and I guess I’ll have to buy new soon.
My hot water comes from solar panels and the gas boiler as backup. It’s gravity fed and the cylinder is less than 3 feet away from the washer. Since long before having solar the hot water pipe to the washer tap has been 22mm to get a good flow.
Each week I wash, on average, 3 loads – 2 “whites economy” which is hot fill ONLY (60 degree wash) and 1 “non fast coloureds” which is hot and cold fill and washes at 40 degrees. I use ecover non bio automatic powder and enjoy excellent results. The whites washes last barely 90 minutes from start to end of last spin and the non fast coloureds are generally done in under an hour. Two questions:
1) does anyone know if the LG machines (which I have researched a lot but still can’t find an answer to this question) fill with ONLY Hot on the 60 degree washes and mixed hot and cold on the 40 degree
2) can any manufacturer or government agency give a really believable explanation as to how a solar water heated hoursehold doing lots of hot washes and few cool ones can possibly be better off with cold fill only?
Incidentally my Miele dishwasher will accept hot water fill which it gets from the solar heated cylinder and the standard wash time on that went down from 2 hours nd 25 minutes when it was on the cold feed only that my old dishwasher had to 1 hour 36 minutes on hot fill – nd I saw a difference in the electricity bill straight away.
IMHO this issue is nothing at all to do with energy saving but is simply a way to avoid addressing the issue of badly thought out plumbing arrangements leading to new, low water consumption machines, failing to draw hot water from older, ill-planned, hot water supplies and silly combi boilers that take so long to fire up that they don’t supply the hot soon enough.
Look forward to any info re the LG’s please.

Sue
#41. July 9th, 2008, at 2:02 PM.

Hi there. thanks for a really useful website. I am looking for a washing machine for my small holiday cottage in a remote site with no mains electricity. We have a wind turbine (and generator which we try not to use too much) and gas heated hot water. We are just a couple so our washing needs are not huge. I was originally looking for a hot/cold fill machine but having read all this I wonder if I’d be better with a high energy performance cold fill machine. Any suggestions as to what models to look at please? (P.S. It must have one dimension which is no more than 53cms to fit through the doorway). A tall order I know but any help would be gratefully received.

Dave
#42. July 9th, 2008, at 5:02 PM.

Thanks to Washerhelp for the response – extremely useful and, if the info LG gave to you is accurate, also a very good system.

Dave

Sue
#44. July 13th, 2008, at 4:51 PM.

Thanks Washerhelp.

Frances
#45. July 30th, 2008, at 1:23 PM.

I have solar heating in combination with gas directly above my washing machine I need a machine with a hot fill so I can uterlise my hot water beter also I wash at 30- 40 degrees can you advise if there is any machine on the market which would fill my needs
reagards Frances

Albert
#46. July 30th, 2008, at 1:52 PM.

Hi, i have a new LGWD(M)-16331 H&C fill. Unfortunately on 60 and 90 degree washes it only draws a cup of hot from the combi and completes the wash using cold. If the hoses are reversed it still only draws the cup full and then washes in hot (thinking it is cold) if the cold is turned off it only draws the cup full then spends the rest of the cycle trying to draw cold!! I’ve written to L&G 3 times to try and find out how much hot it should draw on 60 and 90 washes for 4, 6 and 8kg loads without success. They give poor and misleading replies (as you suspected in an earlier post) and have directed me to a Government energy saving website!!! Basically LG customer service is useless so i think my next step is to go to trading standards, or are you aware of a better option? Readers should not touch an LG machine with a barge pole if you are considering it for it’s supposed H&C properties.

Dave
#48. July 30th, 2008, at 2:45 PM.

Very interesting experience Albert. I woudl very much like to hear anything else that you find out, from whatever source. I was on the point of buying an LG, precisely for H&C fill, a few weeks ago, then I cancelled the order when the local Hoover shop (who use dto service my Hoover washer) said they woudl never recommend LG. However, when I asked them *why* they don’t recommend they could only say “it’s not a brand we stock”. Not very helpful or informative; but your experience is most enlightening.
Going off at a tangent, I notice that LG launched their steam washer a while ago and that 2 other brands (stocked by Curry’s) now offer steam wash too. How long, I wonder, before everything comes full circle and other manufacturers start to do extra rinse water, higher level wash water, H&C fill, etc., etc., so that they can keep competing!!!! Before long someone will re-invent the wheel and we’ll have sensible washers again…………..I hope anyway!!!

Dave
#49. July 30th, 2008, at 2:50 PM.

Just an afterthought from my previous post…..Albert – you say you have a combi boiler……my (very limited) experience of those contraptions suggests that they take a significant length of time to deliver any warm water after opening the tap (the time for the boiler to trigger the ignition device, light the gas, then the flames actually get to work and finally some warm water). Something that Washerhelp said a while back is lurking in the back of my mind: I seem to recall a suggestion from an LG employee that their machines detect the temp. of the incoming water and if it’s not “to their liking” they cut off the hot and just use the cold. It’s only a thought, but could your “hot” water actually be too cold for the LG to recognise it and does it herefore assume that there is no hot in the hot supply and ignore it? Washerhalp – any ideas? or am I just barking up totally the wrong tree?

Dave
#52. July 30th, 2008, at 6:00 PM.

LOL! @ the Ariston rep! Sounds utterly typical. It’s so hard to believe anything these days, and the fact that so many companies are now just badges on someone else’s goods makes things even worse. (For exaple Hoover is really Candy with a Hoover badge ever since Hoover (Europe) was bought out by Candy after the Free Flights fiasco virtually bankrupted Hoover.)

Here’s an interesting thought: my Hoover washer has 3 indicator lights: “on”, “Crease Guard” and “HEATER” – I wonder how many current manufacturers would be willing to place such an indicator on the front of their machines so that the user can *really* see when the heater is in use and judge for themselves how economical the machine really is (regardless of what fill options there are) *whilst it is actually running”. I have not seen any machines with anything like this for almost as long as I can remember. I would not mind betting that most manufacturers would suffer a big fall in sales if their machines started to display this sort of thing.

ANN SHAW
#54. August 14th, 2008, at 2:58 PM.

This was a very interesting article. My old Whirlpool machine is a hot and cold fill (we have a constant hot water supply and we run off the cold before starting the wash) and it has done stirling service over the last few years. I bought it because my Bosch broke down and didn’t expect much from it because it was only about £300, which was quite cheap at the time.

However, A YEAR AGO, and goodness only knows how – he never goes anywhere – my husband managed to pick up some kind of either lice or scabies infestation – doctors can’t agree on which and treatments don’t work, so a year later WE still have it.

I’ve managed to keep it to ourselves and our 2 sons haven’t been affected, I’m glad to say, and I think this is because for the last year, that poor old machine has been running on a hot wash (95 degrees) for 20 out of every 24 hours every weekend and holiday and for 9 hours on working days. It doesn’t do modern fabrics much good, but hey – who cares, I’ve got an iron!

However, the old Whirlpool is on its last legs and making an awful noise – as well it might after such treatment. Now I need a new machine and am confronted with only cold fill machines, which take much longer to complete a hot wash (the old one does it in 135-140 minutes whereas new ones only claim something over 180 minutes). It’s not the extra power use I’m bothered about here, but the extra time – that 40 minutes per wash will mean longer delays in getting washing out and dried. I can only just keep up as it is because every weekend is spent putting in and taking out washing, from 6 am to putting the last wash on at midnight and letting it run into the night. I can’t do so much on week days because I have to go out to work.

So I need a hot fill machine. I have looked at the LG WM16331FDK on the internet but it doesn’t indicate how hot a wash I can get from it. We live in a remote area, so I would have to order what I buy without seeing it. I’d be glad if you can advise on this point, or on how I could get that information.

Alternatively, I have been thinking about an old-fashioned non-automatic machine – 40 years ago I used to have a lovely old washer which boiled if needed and had a huge agitator to stop the clothes tangling plus a powered wringer. OK – it was a long time ago, and I can’t remember the manufacturer, but that was a good machine. I’ve been searching the internet, but even the twin tubs available don’t look solid enough and are not makes that I have heard of.

Have you any advice on that?

Regards

Ann

Dave
#56. August 15th, 2008, at 12:12 AM.

Is it my imagination or have a whole load of posts to this board suddenly disappeared? Including all the ones with information from Miele via me? Or have I muddled up which board has which thread? Or is it just my PC? (or woudl you rather be a fish?! )

Dave
#57. August 15th, 2008, at 12:13 AM.

Ignore my last post (or, moderator – remove it and this if you like) I DID mix up which board I was reading.

Sorry

ANN SHAW
#58. August 15th, 2008, at 10:19 AM.

Just received this reply from LG -

When a unit has both hot and cold fill connect it will perform these functions:

The unit will only take in water from the hot tank if its temperature is lower than the programme selected

“Usually water in hot tanks is around 60 °C, so if a 95°C programme is selected, then it will take the water directly from the hot tank.

When the temperature selected is 40 °C or lower, only the cold valve works. The unit lets in cold water and heats it to the required temperature.”

So that’s pretty clear – it will take the direct hot water and use it to attain the higher temperature on a hot wash but it will not use water from the hot intake on a wash of 40 degrees or less.

My son has suggested to me that with the way I am using the washing machine at present, I’d probably be better, though to buy a really cheap one with only a cold fill meantime, run it into the ground and when we have solved our problem with unwelcome visitors, then to buy a more expensive LG one. I’m thinking about that idea because I still will want a hot wash for bedding and towels once this is all over.

Thanks for your help.

Silver Topsy
#62. August 25th, 2008, at 7:39 PM.

The plumbing worries me. If the hot hose is taken off for the new cold fill washing machine, I can imagine the old (hot) pipe which now has nothing on the end of it, could well leak, and I hate leaks. Why can’t the people with hot and cold plumbing still buy a Candy washing machine with hot and cold fill??

ANN SHAW
#64. August 26th, 2008, at 11:28 AM.

That’s what we’ve done. The hot pipe seems to be secure with its new cap. I don’t want to take it out, because eventually I will be going back to a hot and cold fill when I have run this new cold fill one into the ground.

Dave
#65. August 26th, 2008, at 9:36 PM.

Miele in German have replied to my enquiry about the hot and cold fill model by sending me the following press release and a request that I “be patient” whilst they “make further enquiries about availability in the UK”.

I am very interested in the technical information given and am persuing Miele further as a matter of urgency!

Press Release:
Miele’s AllWater reduces water and energy consumption
Environmentally friendly washing

With a view to climate change, the signs of which are becoming increasingly apparent, good husbandry of natural resources is a matter of prime importance. As long as 14 years ago, Miele’s launch of the AllWater washing machine represented a major initial step in the right direction. Since its introduction, this machine, designed to run on various types of water, has been constantly updated to incorporate changes to current model ranges. The current W 3841 WPS Allwater is not only characterised by its low water consumption but also by intelligent wash programmes.

The main difference on the outside are the two water inlet hoses at the rear of the unit. These hoses can be connected to hot and cold tap water or, optionally, cold water and an alternative water supply. But that is not where the differences stop: more important still is the modern appliance technology and electronic intelligence behind the scenes, together with two separate water inlet systems offering users numerous options.

On a hot-water fill, oil, gas or solar energy can be used to preheat the water supply to the machine – whatever is cheapest! If the water heating system is in the direct vicinity of the machine, electricity costs can be cut noticeably. In the ‘Cottons’ programme, electricity consumption can be cut by 40%. This equates to a reduction in primary energy consumption of around 21% and energy cost savings of 28%. A further reduction to 43 l in the 60°C standard ‘Cottons’ programme is possible by selecting the ‘Warm Rinse’ option as residual detergent is more reliably removed by warmer water.

Other machine control options allow the use of alternative water supplies such as rain or well water. For reasons of hygiene, however, tap water is always used for the last rinse cycle. The use of rain or well water results in considerable savings in expensive drinking water. If, for example, rain water is softer than water from the tap, reduced detergent consumption can be an added benefit.

But the environment is not the only beneficiary: the patented honeycomb drum also goes gentle on laundry, perfectly uniting gentle laundry care with protection of the environment. The special honeycomb structure protects garments by creating a thin film of water between the drum and the laundry, allowing the load to slide effortlessly and thereby reducing friction. During spinning, hole penetration and therefore laddering is greatly reduced, thanks to the reduced diameter of the drum perforations. And Miele even has an official endorsement to prove it – issued by Germany’s leading ‘wfk’ laundry-research institute.

Miele’s W 3841 WPS Allwater with its 6 kg load capacity boasts a wide range of programmes and additional functions. Special programmes include ‘Automatic’, ‘Cottons’, ‘Minimum iron’, ‘Synthetics’, ‘Shirts’, ‘Jeans’, ‘Outdoor’, ‘Express’, a programme for dark laundry and Miele’s tried-and-tested hand-wash programmes for woollens and silks. These programmes are all selected via the main rotary selector switch.

Like all Miele machines, the W 3841 WPS Allwater is tested to last a minimum of 20 years. Longevity and build quality, in itself, represents a much underestimated contribution towards an appliance’s environmental credentials. And to ensure that a long-lasting machine can participate in technological progress, Miele’s has equipped this model with the Update function, allowing new programmes and programme versions to be downloaded at a later date.

Dave
#66. August 26th, 2008, at 9:49 PM.

An extremely useful journal that I have found on the internet can be read at http://www.nei-dt.de/Fach-Info/Sparen/FB07-engl.pdf.

It seems to indicate, pretty clearly, that in Europe hot fill is a high priority and “the future”.

There is some interesting content about types of connctions and hot water supplies that will maximise benefits.

Andy B
#68. September 18th, 2008, at 3:50 PM.

No mention has been made of how the water is heated in the washing machine and how well they cope with hard water. We live in an area with v.hard water and electric kettles can be rendered useless in months. I suspect the same would happen with a washing machine?

Yes I know you can fit inline water filters but this is assuming you have the space & besides we already have a filter on the inlet to our combi.

I might sound like an old fart here but it just seems that making applicances that last for years & years doesn’t do the manufacturers bottom line any good.

Patrick
#70. September 19th, 2008, at 2:06 PM.

Most American Top loader washing machines use a hot and cold tap. I’ve got a Whirlpool American Top Loader which is sitting right next to a modern Combi boiler. And since the washload at more than 8Kg is nearly twice as much as European washing machines it uses more water per load, which means that most of the hot water is suplied by the boiler. It also means a lot less washing as you can load a lot more clothes.
Reliability is also a lot better than European washing machines – in fact many of these are used in commercial environments like camp sites etc. In my opinion these are the best choice if you’ve got the space and plenty of clothes…

ANN SHAW
#71. September 19th, 2008, at 2:46 PM.

Where might I find information about American top loader washing machines and where to get hold of one when I’ve decided?

My cheapo machine actually performs better than I expected on a cold fill, but when I do get a better one, I would like to examine all the possibilities.

Patty
#73. September 22nd, 2008, at 5:44 PM.

I recently purchased an LG SteamWasher Model : WM0742HGA. It has a hot and cold connection. However, I only have cold water and have used the Y connector. I have only used the cold settings as we have plans to run a hot water connection. The machine itself has a water heater built in but I have not tried it. I’m thinking that the built in water heater is only designed as a supplement, not as the sole source of heating the water. The manual does not mention using only cold water. Is it OK to use the built in heater with only cold water coming in? If so, I would rather not bother running the hot water line. Please help…

ANN SHAW
#75. September 23rd, 2008, at 11:14 AM.

When you use a steam washer, is the steam produced very hot (ie above boiling)? This would be a great sterilisation procedure for towels etc, but is it possible for the machines to produce steam at a lower temperature?

I only ask because I had a discussion with someone recently who seemed to think that lower temperature steam is possible in certain circumstances, while I had always thought that steam, in an ambient temperature, could only be produced around boililng point.

Dave
#76. September 23rd, 2008, at 10:29 PM.

Well, my poor Hoover A3260 has finally given up the ghost: the terrible rattling was the heater banging the tub because the heater bracket had rusted away….. but when I opened up the tub (removing the back plate in the hope of popping a new bearing in) I found that not only had the heater bracket disintegrated but that there were two holes rusted right through the tub along the weld at the top of the front. Anyway, technical details aside, this calamity caused me to buy an LG WM14440TDS washer with hot fill valve (Energy Saving Trust recommended).

I’m not very impressed (yet) – whilst it has a hot fill valve I have yet to find any evidence of it taking in any hot water on any programme, but, that aside, it’s soooooo slowww!!! Well over 2 and a quarter hours for a cottons 60 degree cycle. Most of the delay, however, is down to the “balacing” of the load before each spin; the time on the display just before the final spin, for example, is 15 minutes, but 20 minutes after reaching this point it still said 15 minutes remaining and was still “balancing” the load.

When it does finally spin it is, I have to say, very very quiet indeed, but at the top speed it doesn’t half make even the solid concrete floor it’s on throb and rumble. On the positive side I am very impressed by the build quality (I had the top and back off before I even installed it and inspected all te innards and components!) and ease of use and the virtually silent operation. I have a suspicion that the lack of hot fill might be linked to low water pressure on the hot feed by comparison to the cold mains, so at the weekend I shall be fitting a cold feed from the cold water cistern so that it’s the same pressure as the hot, and see if that changes things.

Temperature monitoring is possible – pressing the temperature button during the cycle causes the display to show the water temp in the sump; on a 40 degree cycle it seems to hold the temp at 45 degrees which is interesting. I shall monitor the 60 and 95 degree cycles next time I use them.
I’ll keep readers here informed as I get to kow this machine well, but for anyone wanting to use solar water (like me) I have to urge some degree of caution over LG just yet.

Meantime, anyone with a Hoover Electron 1100 that they want to keep going, I have a drum, back plate, motor, sump hose, soap dispenser hose, water valves, speed control module, wiring loom, pully, brand new (never fitted) belt and door seal, door glass, top plate, backplate (slightly rusty in one place), concrete weight, drain pump and cabinet (rather rusty in two places) free to good homes! The only bits that are not serviceable are the drum bearings (still in the backplate), the heater (working but slightly damaged so I’d not like anyone to use it), and the tub (gone to the council tip)!

Dave
#78. September 24th, 2008, at 6:36 PM.

Day 5 in the LG washer house…..
Thanks for your comments Andy.
I’ve got a bit of feedback for some of them and I’d be interested in both your and other readers’ thoughts, especially if there are any other LG hot and cold fill owners out there.
The Hoover A3260 was bought on March 20th 1983, so it was 25 years and 5 months old (and it had never gone wrong ever in that time, but the bearing problem has been apparent (and *supposedly* mended by a professional once) over the last 2 years).

The hot water pressure business: my hot water cylinder stands above the boiler and the washer is right next to the boiler, in my workshop. The hot feed to the washer is a 22mm copper pipe from the cylinder draw off which runs vertically down the wall behind the cylinder, through the shelf that the cylinder sits on and ends in a 22mm-15mm reducer less than 1″ away from the washer tap. The hose then runs from the tap, behind the boiler (floor standing Glow Worm) and into the washer. There’s less than 1.5 m of copper pipe from the cylinder draw off to the washer tap and a 1.5 m hose to the washer.

The cold water, however, is at a very high pressure round here (which has given rise to another problem with the LG – more later!) – around 7 bar by my estimation. So even with my very short and wide hot feed the cold is at a much higher pressure. For this reason I’m going to run a 22mm cold feed from the cold water cistern that supplies the hot water cylinder, and reduce that just before the tap, which I hope will mean that the pressures are about equal. Whether this makes a difference remains to be seen, but I’ll update on here either way.

The maximum temperature business is something I had read about on here and also checked with LG before purchase, and the lady on the ‘phone did say more or less the same. My cylinder ‘stat is set to 60 degrees, but the water can get far hotter at times from the Solar Panels. It hasn’t been that hot since I bought this washer at the weekend though. I’m sceptical, however, as I ran a 95 degree whites wash on Monday evening, to check out this 60 degree business, and (don’t do this at home folks!) I had the top off the washer whilst it ran and a proper electricians fully insulated volt meter across the hot water valve connections. Not once did I detect a voltage applied to that valve, so I suspect that either I have managed to buy a faulty appliance or that the hot valve has been “programmed out” (in which case I reckon LG are on dodgy ground with trading standards as their instructions recommend the use of the hot valve and state that in this way the A++energy efficiency that Energy Savings Trust have given them an award for can be achieved).

With regards to the cold water pressure and “another problem” that I mentioned up the page a bit; the LG seems to fill up in tea-spoon-full increments. I’m not sure what advantage this is supposed to give but with water pressure as high as it is here it makes every cold pipe in the house bang loudly many many times during the fill process. This didn’t happen with the Hoover, doubtless partly because the valve simply came on and stayed on until the machine was full to level, so only one on / off cycle, and possibly also due to the valves being old (not quite sure why an old solenoid if still working should be any different from a new one though, and the valves in the LG are the identical, German, brand to the ones in the Hoover, even after all these years).

The other problem with this way of filling is that the soap powder isn’t all washed out of the drawer by the time the machine is full, so on Monday’s wash I ended up pouring a 2 pint jug of hot tap water down the draw after the machine had stopped taking on water, just to get the soap in (which probably explains why in the first two cycles I ran the rinse water was very soapy and could be why I’ve read a well known consumer magazine report saying that this model is poor at rinsing? Maybe it rinses perfectly well, if the soap is in the wash rather than the rinse??

Anyway, I’m going to pop a load in now, so I’ll do some more detective work and keep you all informed. If (when) I can get the blasted thing to use the hot water (and get the soap all in!!) I actually think it’s a pretty good, but very slow, machine: build quality (as I said in my last post) is very high and noise is very low. The coloureds I’ve washed so far have come out very clean and the whites on Monday were good, though the first load on Saturday was not especially wonderful and very very damp even after a 1400 spin; far wetter than after 1100 in the Hoover. It was, however, very full on that wash and only about half full on Monday.

Dave
#80. September 25th, 2008, at 1:32 PM.

Thanks for more feedback and food for thought Andy.
I thought I’d make the change to the cold water supply arrangement rather than turn the tap down because with the tap half closed, the pressure when the valve opens is still going to be mains pressure and with how much the flexible hose expands when the machine is not drawing water, there will be a fair bit of “stored” pressure too. Given that the incremental fill system uses bursts of, by my reckoning, under a second per burst, I reckoned that if the pressure was the problem, insufficient water would flow to reduce the pressure in the pipe before the valve closes again. The LG instructions do suggest fitting a pressure reducing valve (complex thing with pressure vessel attached I am told) if the supply is greater than 10 bar, but that seems like a very expensive and bulky thing to do compared to running a length of 22mm pipe!

With regards to the detergent, it’s not the hot water (since I can’t get it to draw hot) that fails to wash the detergent in, it’s the tiny bursts of cold. I think the problem is that the fancy spray nozzles that are arranged in a neat line around the edge of the dispenser compartment just let out a few drips every time there is a burst of water, and this just dampens the detergent and trickles around the edge of the pile of soap flakes. When it gets to a rinse it fills “conventionally”, i.e. a long uninterrupted period of water flow. (Thought: maybe the cold pressure is so high that it’s stopping the machine’s fancy sensors from allowing a longer burst of filling water?)

Last night I did a whites cycle on the 60 degree setting. I cheated. I syphoned in hot water from a bucket via the detergent draw and a short piece of plastic tube. All the detergent was washed away straight away and I got a good lather going in the drum. However, even though I did this with the machine switched on (and it kept taking in tiny busrts of cold too) the cycle time was not reduced at all.

I’m starting to wonder if I’ve bought a “Friday afternoon” model because when you press the “Temp” button after the cycle has started it displays the water temp in the drum, and I did this as soon as I had emptied my bucket into the washer and got a temp of 56 degrees displayed (60 degree wash selected). I expected the heater to come on and bring this up to 60; well, it must have come on OK, but by the end of the wash cyle the display was telling me that the drum water temp was 72 degrees!!! I don’t reckon that’s very accurate thermostatic control myself! Thankfully I know that all my washing was stuff that had been through the Hoover on “Whites economy” – which washed at 70 degrees – many times, so I wasn’t worried and everything came out fine.

On spinning, I’m pleased to say that last night my (just over half) load of towels spun very well and came out very dry; however it was pretty noisy as it spun at top speed so it wasn’t all that well balanced. I suspect that on Saturday when I filled it full I probably over filled it. I remember the Hoover engineer telling mum when she got her A3060 (mine was my first when I left home at 18 and hers was her first ever washer after 26 years of married life using a tub and posher and wringer!) that to get the best from it you should be able to *just* get your hand in between the top of the load and the top of the drum when you loaded up; I’ve always followed that rule of thumb with the Hoover and did the same with the LG, but in hindsight I think maybe the LG would like a little more breathing space.
I can see this is going to be a very interesting voyage of discovery over the next few weeks!

Richard English
#81. September 27th, 2008, at 9:57 AM.

All very interesting. Now that the autumn’s here, my supply of unlimited free hot water will soon be failing (my panels need around two hours of bright sunlight to warm the cylinder from cold to piping hot) so I won’t be investing in a new machine just yet. Indeed, all the time my present Zanussi keeps going I’ll probably hang onto it, since any electricity savings will take a long time to pay for a new machine.

Dave
#82. September 27th, 2008, at 12:40 PM.

Little update for you on the LG hot water fill situation.
Andy’s remarks about the amount of hassle needed to fit a 22mm pipe for the cold suppply got me thinking: the washer is in the workshop. There is a “sluice” type sink out there with hot and cold taps over it which have hose unions and 22mm supply pipes.
So, I connected the washer cold hose to the *hot* sink tap, meaning that now both the hot and cold supplies to the machine are from the same header tank (and indeed the same cylinder of hot water temporarily, though via different draw off connections) and I tried a 60 degree wash again.
Interestingly the washer *did* try to draw a little “hot” (i.e. through the hot valve) this time. It drew in several short burts of “cold” then attempted some “hot”. It kept doing this, alternating two or three burts of cold with a single burst of hot. After a short while it drew enough “cold” to pull warm water through the sluice sink tap, even though there is a considerable pipe run on that one, so it’s clearly biased to draw far more cold than hot, even when it’s using the hot connection.
Probably more significantly though, using the lower water pressure the soap washed in much better and the machine seemed to draw water in slightly longer bursts than with the high pressure mains cold connected, so I’m going to go ahead and fit the reduced pressure cold connection in the hope that it makes a big difference.
I’m not dead impressed by teh thermostat though: my 60 degree wash started at about 54 degrees according to the display, quickly cooled to only 36 whe the circulating pump started to spray the water over the washing and then heated up to 73 degrees. For a 60 degree wash this seems rather a big “margin of error” to me.
Washing came out very clean though, and even though it was a double sheet, king size duvet cover, 2 pillow cases, 2 bath towels, a face cloth and 3 dishcloths, which contrived to form a huge football with evertyhing else insod ethe duvet cover, it still spun OK (if a little noisily) and came out quite dry.
Will keep you posted!

Dave
#84. October 11th, 2008, at 10:07 PM.

A bit more of an update on the LGWM14440TDS washer that I bought recently.

I’ve now got hot and cold water supplies from the same header tank and so at the same pressure.

No more banging pipes. That’s the first good point.

The washer still makes as good a s zero effort to allow any hot water in; the software is very obviously programmed (whther intentionally or in error) to allow about 95% cold water and maybe, if I am generous, up to 5% hot water in on a 95 or 69 degree wash, and non at all on cooler washes.

HOwever….. the cottons cycle has this stupid business of weighing the load and then allowing in what it thinks is the right amount of water for the load. Some cycles, such as delicates, duvet, woollens, hand wash and so on don’t use this mad-cap system and just fill up a straight forward fixed amount of water, and on the ones of these that allow a water temp of 60 or 95 to be selected, the hot fill is very successful.

Accordingly cottons cycles take around 2 and a half hours (the display says 1:51 at the start, but in reality you can add at least 30 minutes to that for the extensive load balancing before each spin) but duvet, for example, starts at about 1:45 but with hot fill takes about 1:10 (the display counts down from 1:45 until about 1:20, then suddenly jumps to 40 minutes and the rinses start) (it doesn’t load balance – it just gets on with the job).

Experimentation with the cottons programme has revealed that if I fill the machine with a hose pipe from the hot tap into the soap drawer the countdown starts at once (rather than sticking on 1:51 for at least 5 minutes whilst the machine takes in water a drip at a time, and fails to wash all the soap in because there is not enough water in any one burst) and the wash lasts about 20 minutes (rather than over 50 minutes) before the rinses kick in and the clock jumps from around 1:30 to 52. The load balancing still means that 52 mins for the 3 rinses and intermediate spins and the final spin is rather a conservative estimate, but it’s a vast improvement on letting it do it’s own thing.

One thing that does interest me though; this machine gets A++ for energy and A for everything else, it’s energy saving trust recommended, but it doesn’t half use a lot of water!!! A cottons wash with 6 bath towels in, left entirely to it’s own devices to weigh the load and fill as it thinks fit, dispatches more than 2 and a half 2 gallon buckets worth of water out of the drain after the main wash – that’s a whole bucket more than my old Hoover, yet the water level in the LG is not visible through the door and on the Hoover it came up to the bottom of the door glass. I’m not complaining; I prefer more water rather than less in the wash, I have plentiful hot water from solar and I don’t have a water meter, but I’m intrigued as to the rating achieved with this consumption.

So there’s the negatives, here’s some positives:

The machine washes VERY well once you’ve persuaded the soap to wash in to the drum.

The noise level is so low that it’s as good as silent.

The rinses, even on “normal” seem to be pretty effective (which surprised me given how little water appears to be in the drum) and on “medic rinse” it’s really good.

The spin is almost silent on the cycles that prat about balancing (so if you have endless time but want a quiet spin, this machine is highly recommended) and even when it’s very out of balance on cycles that don’t spend ages balancing it’s no noisier than the old Hoover Electron 1100. (I would note, though, that for a 1400 spin that takes 9 minutes the washing isn’t noticeably drier than the 1100 spin that took 6 minutes on the Hoover.)

The water temperature gets considerably higher than the setting chosen (which is really a fault I guess, but I’m quite happy that a 60 degree whites wash is actually about 66 degrees – much nearer the 70 degrees I’ve had for 25 years on the old machine!)

The build quality is really super; much better than I expected form anyone except Miele.

I’d certainly recommend this machine to anyone who *isn’t* mad keen to use the hot feed (i.e. doesn’t have cheap or free hot water) but for anyone wanting to use “green” hot water I suggest you continue to lobby Miele to import the AllWasser model.

If anyone knows about changing the software (firmware) of an LG washer, do tell – I’d love to get this set up so that it really does use the hot supply properly, but in the meantime I’ll stick with my hose from the hot tap!

dinosaur
#85. October 14th, 2008, at 8:05 PM.

Just started to look for a new washing machine, dismayed at not being able to get a hot/cold fill. Having read all the advice, comments, pros and cons etc., it looks as though I shall have to compromise. I remember when I bought my first automatic when my Hotpoint twin tub eventually died, and was told not to economise by buying a cold fill only as it would be less efficient than a hot/cold fill………..!!!!! However I am glad I still have my Baby Burco boiler I used for nappies over 40 years ago. It will give me an excellent boil wash, admittedly with a bit of extra work, but I have the time. I can put in already hot water from my combi boiler and it will REALLY BOIL. Bliss.

Dave
#88. October 16th, 2008, at 9:56 PM.

Hi Andy / all,

Good to get your professional feedback (above).

The incemental filling happens on Cottons, Synthetics, Baby Care and one other cycle – I forget which – according to the instruction books. These are all cycles on which the weighing of the load happens at the start of the programme and are also the ones that you can choose the steam wash option on. I’ve not used the steam option at all yet and I’ve not used baby care (posh name for a 95 degree boil wash with 15 minutes holding temp at 95 degrees and 5 rinses, last one in warm water). I started synthetics once but when the time display started at 3h15m I aborted and used “duvet” instead. What you say about the absorbency of cotton is of course a very good point (even the Hoover used to take in 3 or 4 extra bursts of water after it started a whites economy, but on that you heard the pressure switch clunk and the timer stopped whilst water was drawn, so it was clearly making up for absorbed water and nothing fancy).

I didn’t realise that the ratings took no account of water consumption; I assumed that with everyone banging on about saving water (whilst Yorkshire Water merrily leave burst mains and leaking fire hydrants for 6 weeks plus round here – apparently they are “not high priority”) the ratings would also look at this.

Does anyone know exactly what the ratings mean in real terms? Does the energy rating, for example, actually relate to specific amounts of electricity consumed, or it is purely comparantive? Can an appliance get an A wash rating just because it is 10% better than one with a B, or is there a defined standard to be reached? Frankly I take not the slightest bit of notice of these ratings; I read the actual rating plate of the appliance (and think of it in terms of how many 3 bar fires for how long it is!!!!!) and look for the estimated number of kW used per cycle then make my own judgement. For Wash rating and spin rating I just go for A on the grounds that I assume it’s the best there is.

Is there a web site or reference document that actually details the specifics of these ratings at all?

Lastly, on the water issue again, the amount it spits out after the wash part of the cycle was what really astounded me: 5 gallons plus (before it’s spun out the water in the fabric) seemed like a hell of a lot even for a load of towels and it’s far more than the rinses appear to use (around 4 gallons each as far as I can see). That makes a whites wash something like 17 gallons with te default 3 rinses, or 25 gallons with the “rinse ++” option that adds an extra rinse and a dilution rinse (i.e. what the Hoover used to do). Still, as I said before, I have no complaints over water use and if anything would happily see it use more in some instances.

One other good point: the badly translated instruction book (it’s a real comedy actually!!) fails to mention that the motor carries a 10 year parts and labour warranty – but a small and insignificant sticker on the back of the machine points this out. How long the rest of the machine will last is anyone’s guess, but a ten year motor warranty doesn’t seem too bad to me. Any thoughts anyone?

Richard English
#89. October 18th, 2008, at 11:44 AM.

One thing that has surprised me when reading the comments is the inference that is is somehow difficult or complex for manufacturers to fit some kind of metering arrangement to their machines to allow hot, cold or mixed water as required. But no complex engineering is needed and a simple thermostatic demand valve would to the trick.

As I have solar water heating the temperature of my hot supply varies hugely and therefore I have a Mira thermostatic shower. The control is simply a helical element which takes in as much hot or cold water as is needed to keep the output temperature constant. The choice of temperature is determined by a control wheel that simply changes the effective length of the helix and this adjustment allows for a constant output temperature of between cold and scalding.

It would be a simply thing to have such a valve in a washing machine, acccepting hot and cold water which would be mixed to the temperature required. Different temperatures needed at different times could be selected by a simple servo motor whose position was set by the programme controller (as it sets all the other parameters as and when it needs them).

Of course, this is quite old technology and I am sure that modern computer-controlled machines could do better than a servo-motor – but the job could be done, quickly and easily. No need for special mixing chambers, just a valve and a control unit.

Dave
#92. October 20th, 2008, at 9:50 PM.

I’ve come up with a low(ish)-tech solution to get a reasonably satisfactory solution to the hot water fill.
As anyone who has followed my experiments since the sad demise of my Electron 1100 will know, I now have 22mm feed pipes from the cold water header tank and also the hot water cylinder, to the inlet valves on my nice new LG washer.
The washer is clearly programmed to allow only the tiniest amount of hot water in via the hot valve.
I’m aware that Miele make a washer (not available in the UK as far as I can see) that uses hot water fill and also rinses in warm water as that is supposed to give better rinsing results. My LG also has a “Medic rinse” option which warms up the water to 35 degrees on the last rinse, again supposedly to rinse more effectively.
I’ve also read that many washing machine manufacturers work on the basis that “cold” water is about 23 degrees C (which I believe it is in many European countries).
So…….
I’ve got a TMV3 valve (those under-sink mixing valves that are used in hospitals and schools and so on to limit the hot water temperature by mixing in cold to a pre-set temperature -usually about 43 degrees) and I’m going to fit this next weekend so that the cold feed to the washer actually gets water at about 37/38 degrees – as I don’t wash anything at less than 40 degrees I figure that this means that no matter what the washer tries to do it will get water that is at least warm, and if it really does take in hot water it will get water at full cyclinder temp (which on a sunny day is about 75 degrees from solar alone) in the hot feed mixed with the water at 30-odd degrees from the “cold” feed.
As this new washer (supposedly) uses less water than the old ones, and as a warm rinse should be efficient enough to mean I no longer need to use the Rinse++ option (thus removing two of the 5 rinses and only doing 3) I reckon that the amount of hot water drawn for rinsing will be minimal and not worry me at all in terms of how much I have left for other things, but the amount of time and electricity saved by feeding warm or hot water into the washer should be very noticeable.

All that technicality aside, another plus point in favour of the new LG is that I washed 2 pairs of curtains at the weekend, which to be honest had not been washed for over a year, and on the “Duvet” programme they washed very well and spun pretty dry without a pre-wash or intensive option. (Not, I hasten to add, that I ever had any complaint about the Hoover washing the curtains in the past, but it could only do one pair at once.)

Keep you posted!

Dave
#93. October 20th, 2008, at 10:09 PM.

Oh, Andy, forgot to say. THe old Hoover washer was a 4.5KG drum and this LG is a 7Kg drum – however as you’ll appreciated when it’s a one person household (the cats don’t create much washing as they wash their own fur!) it’s not really practical to wash more per load than I ever did, except for towels which, having at least 1 shower and often 2 per day, seem to breed in the laundry basket! I find that in the old Hoover washer I used to average two (pretty nearly full) loads of “whites” (i.e. colour-fast cottons – mainly towels) and about a half load of “non-fast coloureds” per week.
Now I’m doing 1 full load of “whites” every 4 days or so but at the weekend I still have what was only a half load in the Hoover for the “non fast coloureds” sploshing about in this huge drum.
The washing time becomes more of a problem here though: I would happily leave the Hoover on when I went to bed, even sometimes when I went out, because I knew that when the timer reached the end of the programme as it finally clicked over to “stop” the electricity was mechanically disconnected in the same way as a light switch turning off; I won’t leave the LG on at night or when go out because it’s all electronic control and it just goes into standby mode at the end of the cycle – that’s wasting power and, more importantly, it’s a much greater fire-hazard. This means that when I have a full load of “whites” I won’t do it on a weekday evening if I am home late or am going out in the evening, so at weekends there are sometimes going to be less than full loads just so they get done when I can be around to supervise the machine. (A bit luddite I know, but I’d rather have a house still standing and an uneconomic load than a full washer and a chrred ruin!)

Dave too
#94. October 21st, 2008, at 11:04 PM.

I think I’m another ‘Dave’ – at least I used to be but now have two Rough Collie dogs and a wife to take up most of my time.
I envy ‘Dave’ and the amount of effort going into getting the LG to do what he wants, AND to write the blog!!

I’m interested in the LG for all the reasons previously discussed; I have a German Vaillant ’super’ combi boiler which delivers hot water at mains pressure (low here in S.Yorks – leaks??) instantly and have a short run to the washer – a 20year old Philips top loader which died today.

My son had a short-lived ‘Candy’ Hoover and now has a Miele Novotronic but it is cold fill.

Wondering whether to get a Miele or the LG.

Fascinating site this.

Dave
#95. October 22nd, 2008, at 6:06 PM.

Hi “Dave too”,

Follow advice from Andy (Washerhelp) and anyone else on here with either a hot fill washer and / or technical professional experience, but in my own humble opinion, you’ll never get better build quality or longer life than a Miele these days so it may be worth you hassling Miele a lot to import the AllWasser model that has hot fill. However if, like me, you are ina position where you need a new washer urgently because your’s is dead, then I would recommend the LG as, despite the hassle I’m having making it take in hot water, it does at least have some attempt at using hot and it is built incredibly well and carries a 10 year motor warranty.
That said, mum bought a Miele when her Hoover Electron 1100 died and the Miele is clearly better built regardless and does wash much much faster than the LG…but it’s cold fill.
Good luck and do keep us informed of your choice and how you get on with it.

berlin
#96. October 22nd, 2008, at 7:42 PM.

I have a top loader (Siemens) here in Germany, and want to make the use of the cheap gas-heated hot water. What about putting hot water straight into the machine from the shower? Is the machine clever enough to realise it is already full of hot water, or will it just heat up the hot water even more?

Richard English
#97. October 23rd, 2008, at 12:48 PM.

I accept what you say about the ideal situation of having a separate mixing chamber and it may well be that manufacturers might eventually go down this road. But a thermostatic admission valve would be a cheap enough thing to fit and would certainly be better than no provision for hot water admission at all.

As I see it, the programming would be such that, for any cycle that needed hot water the valve would admit water from the hot supply (only) until such time as it ran hot enough to operate the thermostat, when it would draw hot and cold as needed to deliver water at the programmed temperature. Then it would admit as much water as needed to fill the machine. If final fill were not hot enough, then the machine’s heater would warm it up. Careful programming could ensure that water was always drawn from the hot supply, even for a cold pre-wash, thus ensuring that hot water was available as soon as needed for subsequent cycles.

To minimise the amount of heating requires, it would be sensible for the programming to be such that the themostatic valve were set just slightly higher than needed thus allowing for the inevitable cooling of the water as it heated up the drum and the washing.

John
#99. October 31st, 2008, at 3:59 PM.

I have lived in Asia for over 40 years and almost nobody uses hot water washing machines. Back 50 years or so we were all slapping our clothes
on rocks in the local river and I imagine the clothes were just as clean as
ever. Why all this need to heat up (and throw away) vast amounts of
expensively heated water? Wash in your clothes in cold water and see
what you think – there really is no difference.

Also – do not forget to use environmentally friendly wash balls instead of
all that soap.

Alfred O’Coyle
#100. November 4th, 2008, at 11:59 AM.

I’m on the verge of replacing my 17 year old Indesit washing machine with a new one of the same make.

The old one is currently plumbed in with two valves for hot and cold water, supplied by the two connectors beneath the sink. I presume, in this instance, that has the new machine will only have a cold water valve, I will have to plug off the hot water connector beneath the sink?

Can anyone advise, please?

Many thanks, in anticipation, for your help.

Alfred

Mike
#102. November 8th, 2008, at 3:28 AM.

Sounds like typical electrical goods manufacturers mumbo jumbo to me. The fact is that they all don’t make them with a hot fill because for some reason they have all decided not to and that is why the public don’t have much of a range to choose from. All that would be needed is for a heat sensor to detect when the hot water feed runs hot enough (i.e. all the hot water that has cooled in the pipe is allowed to wash through the machine).

When it detects that the hot feed is hot enough for the cycle temperature selected then it should not be beyond the realms of posibility that in this day and age of highly technological and engineering breakthroughs that the electronic plug is put into the preverbial plug hole and the machine can warn you that now is the time to load your machine. That the machine is primed and ready. The end result of this obviously possible addition to washing machines would be that less Electrical Kilowatts would be used to heat the washing water, whatever the temperature of the cycle since the correct water cycle temperature could simply be achieved by the electronically turning on and off the hot and cold feeds as appropriate, until the water in the bottom of the machine is monitored to be at the right temperature (an electrical heater could still be used as a backup heat top up but it would only be needed to add heat to make up for the colder temperature of the clothes). Thus encouraging the use of the hottest water from the hottest sustainably powered water tank.

If the water from the hot tank has been heated for free by the sun or a wood/biomass burner for example then the savings on not having to pay for electricity to heat up your washing machine water as much would be quite great over even a short period of time. Whatever they were they would be savings, both financially for the individual and physically for reducing the amount of CO2 that is subsequently released into our earths atmosphere. It seems that there is not the will to encourage the savings on electricity that could be made not just with washing machines but with most electrical items. Although, without doubt washing machines (and other electrical goods) have been made more efficient they are only more efficient in regards to the amount of electricity that they use to heat water compared to the old machines which were even more hungry for fossil fuel powered electricity.

As markets grow worldwide, white goods companies can afford to reduce the amount of electricity that each appliance is using because overall the number of machines in service worldwide is increasing much more dramatically and overall more and more electricity is being used despite the efficiency increases. So they get brownie points for pretending to do their bit for the environment and also still manage to keep fossil fuel companies that power power stations very much in business and the public very much dependent.
If you think this is just a bit too synical then why are all TVs still made with a standby button?
Mike.

Richard English
#103. November 8th, 2008, at 1:27 PM.

This is similar to my own suggestion #97 since this is similar to what a thermostatic valve would do, with the enhancement that you suggest an electronic valve, rather than my purely mechanical idea.

You idea of letting cold water “wash through” the machine until the supply is hot enough would be a good one – although there would need to be some kind of clever override to make sure that the water didn’t run for days if there happened to be no hot supply. My own suggestion would do that automatically, if less accurately, by simply using the pressure switch already extant in all machines.

Sarah
#104. November 15th, 2008, at 7:42 PM.

Just discovered this site – such a lot of good advice! Thanks all. Can any one explain what ‘temperature sensed fill’ means? At first, and naively, I guessed this meant the machine took both hot and cold water, but don’t think it does….. I am in the same situation as many here – old indesit machine has died and i find i can’t now get hot and cold fill to use my solar hot water… Will look at LG after reading here.

Albert
#106. November 17th, 2008, at 4:37 PM.

Hi washerhelp thanks for the really informative site, Dave’s postings are a joy though i note even he still can’t get the LG to draw Hot water.
You may recall i posted re LG H&C fill in July. Despite considerable correspondance LG are still unable to advise how much Hot water their machine should draw for different loads. The second engineer that called told me that he wouild get the info from their technical people and then had to say he couldn’t.

I am now at an impass with LG and will need to take this misselling to Trading Standards. Their last reply follows here … ‘We believe the machine works to specification, however if the customer feels that it does not, please can he provide documented evidence showing this, this must also be accompanied with a qualified independent engineers report. At this stage we can not comment further and our technical engineer can not assist this customer further as we have not established any manufacturers fault relating to this product’.

Know doubt my getting an independant engineer would invalidate the guarantee if he were to examine the machines workings … perhaps that’s what they want!
My advice hasn’t changed … if you are looking for an H&C fill machine don’t waste your money on an LG, it’s really just a cold fill machine. I also note that all the current LG machines are cold fill so a H&C fill is old stock.
If i get anything more i’ll keep you informed.

Sarah
#108. November 17th, 2008, at 6:26 PM.

Thanks for explaining ‘temperature sensed fill’, that is what i thought, but i am still confused… If you look at features of models on COMET site many (most!) claim temperature sensed fill but then lower down the list say they are cold fill only!!!

have a look at:http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/product/410578/BOSCH-WAE24363GB/tab/specification#spec

Richard English
#110. November 18th, 2008, at 1:15 PM.

I’d have thought that this was an offence under the Trades Description Act. I’d be inclined to write to COMET and tell them so and ask for an explanation!

Sarah
#113. November 18th, 2008, at 6:19 PM.

Thanks for searching – that’s what i did, and was temprorarily encouraged by the fact that several machines seemed to be doing this, … but then dissappointed as it can’t be true, or is surely a waste if the machines are cold fill only. I guess the person ticking the boxes on the specs doesn’t know what they are doing. I don’t have the time to take this further, but would be very interested to hear what COMET or other retailers say about it when questioned.

Dave
#114. November 18th, 2008, at 11:46 PM.

A few interesting posts lately.
I’m especially interested in Albert’s post (#106) and Washerhelp’s response (#107) (and thanks to Albert for saying that my posts are a joy!).

I don’t know which model Albert has bought but my LG washing machine (WD(M)14440TDS) is advertsied with the phrase “by connecting a hot water supply to the hot water inlet electricty is saved” and in the instruction manual, which also covers models WD(M)12440TDS, 12445TDS, 14445TDS, 16440TDS & 16445TDS, on page 7 it is stated (and I quote verbatim) “When your washer has two valves. The inlet hose which has red connector is for the hot water tap. If the washer has two valves, the energy is saved by using hot valve.”

Personally I would say that this is a matter for trades descriptions on the basis that I have now tried every single programme that the machine offers (most of which I shall never have any need to use again and a number of which I have run empty or with dusters, etc., in just to see what they do!) and the only ones which use any hot water are cottons set to 60 or 95 degrees. In both cases there are 5 initial short bursts of cold water (less than 1 second each), followed by a similar sub-1 sec burst of hot water. There is then a longer burst of cold (around 2 to 3 seconds) followed by about 5 seconds of hot. At this point the drum starts to rotate after which the cold comes on again and runs continuously until the pressure switch activates and the cycle is underway.

The cold comes on again many times over the first 5 minutes of the programme until the machine is happy with the amount of water in the sump, even after the laundry has absorbed all that it can. (By which time the amount of water drawn is more than my old Hoover drew on Woolens – a ‘half-way-up-the-door fill – even when I have just a single polycotton duvet cover in the machine.)
I don’t see how anyone can say that drawing hot water for at the very most a total of less than ten seconds can help to save energy (even with my plumbing arrangements which regular readers will recall are extremely favourable for hot water supply.)

The water pressure to my hot and cold feeds is now identical as both are drawn from teh same header tank via 22mm pipes, so this is nothing to do with low hot water pressure or imbalanced pressures.
However, what I have done with some significant success is connect a TMV3 valve (set to 25 degrees C) between the hot and cold water feeds and connected the washer cold to this. The washer hot is still directly connected to the hot water draw off from the cylinder (around 75 degrees C). This means that the washer fills with water at about 25 degrees for the main wash and the rinses, but it does save the electricity from heating the water (and shortens the wash time!).

I’d like to know whether I can adjust the pressure switch to allow more water in, especially for rinses (I know this would invalidate the warranty) because the rinsing isn’t as good as it might be. However the main reason I’d like to make this change is because socks, handkerchiefs and even flannels get trapped in the door seal and stick there until the cycle is over and I open the door. This is easily remedied by adding anough water to the rinse (manually via the soap drawer) to bring the level up to the door seal which very quickly gets the offending article back into the drum.
Otherwise I’m quite happy with this machine (it eats soap though!!).
(Anyone got any ideas about re-programming the software for the hot water valve????)

Astrand
#115. November 19th, 2008, at 9:33 AM.

Anyone with experience of Samsung hotfill machines? The Swedish web site lists 13 different machines. The manuals talks about hot fill options for 11 of these machines. The installation instruction typically have a phrase like: “For selected models with an additional hot water intake:”. Initially, the Swedish Samsung support claimed that the machines
WF8704ASW and WF8804APF should have hot water option, but this turned out to be wrong, and Samsung later stated that no such machines are available in Sweden. So, are any Samsung hot fill machines available in, say, UK?

Miele has confirmed that the W 1747 WPS Eco Line model will start selling in Sweden next year. Looks a bit too expensive for me, though.

Richard English
#116. November 19th, 2008, at 11:27 AM.

I suppose their getout would be that machines will have a “temperature-sensed fill” in the sense that the machines will have a thermostat that will turn on the heater if the fill is too cold and turn it off again when the water is hot enough. But that is certainly not a unique feature; indeed I would say it’s universal.

Dave
#118. November 20th, 2008, at 8:38 PM.

Hullo again everyone,

This one is destoned to be the hottest (pardon the pun) topic of 2008 at the rate we are all going!

Washerhelp’s points above are great (as always) – and prompt me to add a couple in reply.

My solar hot water is indeed “free” in my eyes, but Andy (Washerhelp) is right, there is of course the initial installation cost. However, it really does pay to shop around. I won’t post huge detail because it’s not the right topic for this board, but if anyone wishes to know more about my experience please feel free to mail me (Andy, is it OK for me to post my e-mail address later for anyone who wishes to use it?). Suffice to say that a year or more of research on my part resulted in me getting a 180 litre cylinder, pre-lagged to 2″ thickness, and the rest of the solar stuff for well under £2.5k (as a package deal) and I had it fitted by my local plumber for significantly less than £500, making the grand total cost significantly under £3k.. The factory lagged cyclinder as an upgrade to my previous one which held less than a quarter of the volume of water and did not retain the heat anywhere near as well has already saved me, by very rough estimation, about £200 in gas at today’s prices in the year since it went in, and that’s without the actual solar heat input – in other words just in the winter months when the solar input is at it’s lowest. In summer I get 180 litres of water that is too hot for safety really without the boiler coming on at all. Compared to my gas bills previously (around £540 per year and I am a low user!) I am seeing about a 50% reduction in actual payments but allowing for the huge price hikes I must be saving a considerable percentage more. My very rough calculations at the time of installation (October 07) were that at the prices then the solar system should have paid for itself in under 5 years.
I’ll say no more on that now as it really isn’t the right board to be posting on.

Turning to dishwashers, my old Bosch that I had in the late 80’s (and which was pretty rubbish and I ditched it and went back to hand washing) would accept hot water even though cold was “recommended”. It dried with residual heat, i.e. it heated the final rinse water to about 70 degrees then drained and sat for 30 minutes or so whilst the dishes drained and dried from the heat in the pots.
In 2002 I bought a Hoover triple A rated Dishwasher (HD97) which had fan assisted drying, but this involved no heat at all in the drying phase; it again heated the last rinse water to 70 plus degrees then simply blew room temperature air through wide flat ducts wrapped around the cabinet (presumably to pre-warm the air from the residual heat inside?) and then into the wash cabinet though a vent near the bottom and out through a vent under the door catch. It dried very well indeed and didn’t use that much electriicity. It was also a hot fill model with hot fill “recommended” and cold fill acceptable if no hot available. However it was a very unreliable machine and although it had a 5 years parts only warranty the call out fees to get Gias to repair it (any one else doing repairs invalidated the warranty on the parts I was told) came to over £300 in the first 4 years I had it so when it packed up again before it’s 5th birthday I got rid of it and bought a Miele which also recommends hot fill and which also has fan assisted drying. Again, the machine heats the rinse water (in fact it heats on ALL rinses but heats the last one to a high temperature) and then circulates air using a fan. It also has some sort of condensing system because during drying it runs the drain pump much of the time and there is a steady trickle of water pumped away for much of the 32 minutes drying phase. It’s very energy efficient (it’s AAA rated) and uses only around 0.75 kWh of electricity for a 75 degree wash which lasts about 1 hour and 15 minutes using hot fill. Miele advised via their web support service that all of their dishwashers should be connected to hot water where possible and they even state that doing so will save energy costs over using cold even if your water is heated by gas or oil.

Going back to the washing machine debate, the TMV3 valve does, as Andy correctly states, mean that I am rinsing in warm water, but as the LG washer warms up the final rinse water anyway (claiming that this gives “a higher purity of rinse”) I am only really adding warm water to 2 rinses that would not cost money to warm up anyway. Although the amount of water used for rinsing is quite high, at leastin the summer months when my hot water is heated for free by solar, I don’t regard this as a cost, and even in winter, there is so much water in the cylinder, which I could never possibly use in one day, that I don’t think it makes too much difference.
Miele also make a machine (infuriatingly only avalable in Germany at present) which will draw hot water and they state that blended hot and cold (i.e. warm) water is used for rinsing on that machine to achieve better rinse results. Having high regard for Miele I feel that if they make this claim then I can believe LG when they state the same reasoning.

He he – this was suppose dto be a short response ….and just look at it!!!!!!

Richard English
#120. November 21st, 2008, at 5:30 PM.

The fixed cost apportionment has to be considered with solar heating and that is difficult to establish precisely since it depends on how long the installation lasts.

But regardless of how much that is, the variable costs of the system (the hot water used) are very low, being simply the cost of the electricity used to run the pumps. In that sense the water is free, regardless of how much is used. I try to consider the installation costs (which I am paying over 3 years on an interest-free loan) in much the same way as I consider the standing charges for my other utilities.

Mike
#121. November 25th, 2008, at 11:07 PM.

Lets not get too fixated on the solar water heating option as the only source of low cost hot water as it can be an expensive one as has already been discussed. Hot water from burning wood very efficiently can be a heck of a lot cheaper financially.

Although, cost should not be considered in simply financial terms, especially in the present economically unstable conditions that we find ourselves in at the moment (and more than likely will for some considerable time to come). It has been shown recently that money could suddenly become relatively worthless (i.e in the event of banking collapses that happen worldwide). We could all feasibly find that our money savings held simply as figures on computers around the world might suddenly mean nothing. The present slowing down of the collapse has only been as a result of the restoration of confidence in the money markets by even more artificial figures being borrowed from even bigger banks computers and this has temporarily propped up confidence. That is all! The whole thing will soon fall apart as it is based on misplaced confidence. Confidence that economic growth will continue forever and of course this is a nonsense as we live in a finite world with finite resources. This means that the basic premise on which confidence in the banking system is based is an unsustainable illusion.

Added to that the cost of fossil fuel energy doesn’t take into account the real cost of cleaning up the legacy of the mess it leaves for future generations to have to clean up (it they can!). In this sense there is a good arguement to be made that people who have enough money at the moment to invest their money in sustainably powered heating systems almost have a moral duty to do so. Also they had better do it sooner rather than later as this buying power could feasibly get wiped off a computer in the not too distant future. So from a future security point of view investing in renewables makes more sense than ever now. Not just for moral and environmental reasons but from a security point of view as well.

With this in mind, I can very confidently say that the future of washing machine sales must be in using as much sustainably heated water as possible. Have you seen how much the sale of wood burners in the Western world has shot up recently and continues to climb despite the drop in oil prices? People know that governments, banks and fossil fuel companies can’t be trusted with their future security at all any more. All the cards in the world are now on the table and everyone knows what the hands are and what the players’ motives are and they are selfishly purely profit motivated. The manufacture that starts to make truely hot/cold fill washing machines will inevitably steal the show if they market their product with these points in mind.

In fact you could say that they’ll CLEAN UP (to follow the recent zest for puns!). Just look at the massive success of the most watched and repeated Grand Designs programme on the TV. It was about a guy Ben Law builiding his own house largely out of the materials to be found around him. This obviously appealed to many people’s imaginations not just out of idle curiosity but because what it demonstrated was that people can potentially take control of their life’s security and source their home and energy needs from their own locality in a sustainable way. The challenge is how to marry this more naturally based life with the benefits that modern technology bring like washing machines.
So, in my opinion, the hot and cold filled washing machine is the inevitable future. Does anyone out there have any real influence on particular manufacturers out there?
Mike.

Mike
#122. November 26th, 2008, at 12:17 AM.

Hi Dave,
Did you ever get a reply from Miele in Germany who were going to look into the possible availability of their W3841 WPS Allwater washing machine in the UK?

Does anyone know if one can simply order one from Germany and simply plug it in over here in the UK? Is it 220V over there?
Mike.

Sarah
#123. November 26th, 2008, at 12:32 PM.

For information i contacted Miele about the machines they do in Germany:
My Question: Please can you tell me if I can get a Miele washing machine that uses both hot and cold water to fill in the UK? I have free solar hot water and so do not want to waste energy heating cold water to wash.
I believe you do this sort of machine in Germany now….W 1747 WPS Eco Line ?
Can you advise please?

Miele UK answer:
Good morning,
Thank you for your email regarding Miele washing machines.
Currently we don’t have any models that use both hot and cold fills. We only supply cold fill machines here in the U.K. I have spoken with my colleague in purchasing and we have no plans in the near future to introduce a hot fill machine here in the U.K.

Kind regards

Emma Bevan
Sales Advice
Miele Company Ltd

Richard English
#124. November 26th, 2008, at 1:46 PM.

That sounds like a typical bit of manufacturer’s PR rubbish to me. People are employed to write these kinds of bland comments so as to get rid of troublesome customers, to avoid their having to do any work.

If you read the response it doesn’t even make sense:

“Currently we don’t have any models that use both hot and cold fills. We only supply cold fill machines here in the U.K. I have spoken with my colleague in purchasing and we have no plans in the near future to introduce a hot fill machine here in the U.K.”

The first sentence contradicts the second since theh firstly say that don’t make hota and cold fill machines (at all) and then they say that they “don’t supply them to the UK” – which implies that they do make them but don’t import them.

But of course, as we are now in the EU, they can’t refuse to supply any EU customer with any machine – although it would be up to the customer to arrange import and transport. I would imagine that there would be no trouble running a 220v machine on 240v – but if that were a worry, transformers are cheap enough to buy.

If you’re sure that the W 1747 WPS Eco Line is hot and cold fil, it should be any easy matter to order one from an online supplier and request delivery to your home address. Or even order one from a dealer in France or Belgium and simply drive over and collect it.

Dave
#126. November 26th, 2008, at 7:11 PM.

Hi all,

No, I never got a further reply form Miele (Germany) and must admit that periodically the thought that they have not replied briefly appears in the porthole of the washing machine of my mind, rather like the proverbial red sock in the whites wash.

I’m interested in Sarah’s research and Miele’s response and I am also in total agreement that this is PR bulls*it (let’s hope their washing cycles have a special “Bulls*it removal programme”!). Grammatically is doesn’t make sense, also as pointed out by Richard, but I think Andy’s right: what she meant was they don’t have any in the UK: the UK’s Education system (trust me, I’m a lecturer!) is, like our range of washing machines, a poor relation of our German counter-part’s and no doubt her sloppy use of English, typical of so many people in the UK these days, was well intentioned.

I’ve never counted how many individual contributors there are on this board, but if every single contributor individually contacted Miele UK (and indeed Miele Germany if they so wish) to demand an explanation as to why they don’t import one of the TWO models that are now available in Europe that have hot and cold fill, it is just conceivable that Miele may start to recognise the demand.

Meanwhile, I gather, from extensive Internet reserach, that Miele are expanding (slowly??) the number of mainland European countries that they supply Hot and Cold fill models to, so maybe there is some hope yet.

Anyone wishing to contact Miele and pull one rug from under their feet by showing them their own sales pitch for how much better the hot fill system is can easily get the sales leaflets, in English, from Miele and Electrical supplier web sites in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, ………. Would be interesting to see what Emma Bevan’s colleagues had to say when confornted with their own company’s materials!

Anyone wishing to know more about my Soloar system (see several posts up the board) or indeed about the places I’ve foudn Miele H&C fill info, is welcome to mail me using dave.darwent@btinternet.com (thanks Andy for allowing me to add my address).

Keep the hunt / lobby going folks!

Richard English
#127. November 27th, 2008, at 9:55 AM.

More inaccurate PR spin, I reckon. Their statement “…most of the households throughout Europe usually only have a cold water tap” – but in the UK we’ve virtually all got a hot tap next to the cold for our washing machines… actually directly contradicts their reasoning.

If households throughout Europe have only cold taps, then the last thing they need is a dual fill machine. And vice versa in the UK.

It might be worthwhile pointing out to them the complete illogicality of their claim.

Mike
#128. November 27th, 2008, at 5:11 PM.

Hi guys,

It sounds as though the wheels of ‘belief in people power’ are starting to turn out there.

I agree with the comments made so far. The reply by Emma Bevan from Miele UK that they don’t have any plans to supply hot and cold fill machines in the UK in the near future are deplorable considering the potential benefits they offer to both the customer’s pocket and security as well as the environment. It does make me wonder what the real reasons are for this stance whether it really is just laziness or if there is a general secret campaign in this country to resist true ideas of sustainability.

If you think about it, the reasons can usually be found if you follow the money trail and this won’t be the money trail of companies like Miele because presumably they would make money by supplying an untapped market in the UK with goods that they are already making abroad. I think the money trail to follow might possibly be the one/s that help to inform/influence government policy:

In this country manufacturing has shrunk so much that we don’t actually create nearly as many real and tangible items as before. Also we import about 70% of the food that we eat. Our country’s books are only balanced each year (or used to be balanced) by dealings in so called ‘invisibles’ (e.g. stocks, shares, dealings in world currencies and interest on bank loans) which is why the current worldwide financial crisis is hitting the UK harder than other countries that are more self-sufficient. This means that currently we are fast losing some of the main things that we trade with, with the outside world to supply us with things that we don’t produce. This reduction in trade also means that there is also a reduction in taxes to the Treasury compounded even more by the reduction in house purchases and the massive amount of money that it used to generate for the government by the charging of stamp duty. What stamp duty they do manage to collect is further reduced by the slump in house prices that serves to further reduce stamp duty payments (as they are collected as a percentage of house prices).

If you look also at the tax that is collected on fossil fuel usage you can see that there is no real incentive from the government to reduce this energy consumption, especially in these trying times. In fact, call me cynical, but I don’t think that there ever have been any worthwhile moves towards encouraging the use of renewable power, especially home generated methods. This is because it reduces the amount of tax the government can collect apart from the one-off payment of VAT charged on the initial cost of the technology (mostly manufactured in other countries) which again encourages the government to keep the prices of these technologies high.

I believe that any moves made by the powers that be towards encouraging the reduction in use of fossil fuels by hiking the prices of them has largely been a cynical one that means they collect more taxes (as a percentage of price charged) whilst at the same time scoring Green ‘Brownie’ points (no reference to Gordon Brown by the way) for appearing to discourage their use. The reality is that it is really hard for the individual household to even contemplate, let alone afford, to enter the home energy generation world. That is unless you are highly motivated, educated and well off as well as being able to see through ‘The Matrix’ (and how many people fit this description as a percentage of the overall population?). Most green ideas and products are cleverly being niched by marketing spin creating the illusion of a debate over their necessity and their relevance to the average person and if that hasn’t put you off then they have been made unaffordable to most people. This is no accident but is part of the design of the system we live in.

In Germany, however, the Green movements have been extremely effective in pressurising their government for change and in educating their public to change their behaviour. This has been the norm. for many years now. As a result their public have long been demanding sustainable solutions and it’s probably this difference in demand that has encouraged companies like Miele to make washing machines that are more environmentally and ‘running cost’ friendly. So in conclusion I agree with Dave that if all people on this discussion forum can email/write to Miele UK and/or Miele Germany then we might be able to encourage them to supply the UK market sooner rather than later because, after all, they are in the business of making money. Below is a copy of an email I sent the other day to Emma Bevan regarding this. I have yet to receive a reply:

“Dear Emma,
I am trying to get hold of a hot and cold fill washing machine here in the UK. I understand that your company has them for sale in Germany (i.e.: the “W1747 WPS Ecoline” and the “W3841 WPS Allwater”). I also understand that your company has no plans to supply any hot and cold fill machines to the uk.
I am not sure if you are aware of the massive swing away from fossil fuel dependance in the UK towards the use of renewables (e.g. heating hot water with the sun and efficient wood burning stoves). The momentum of this public swing movement has been fanned by the recent and current financial crisis and the insecurity around fossil fuel costs (and therefore electricity costs). So whereas before these choices were being made purely for lifestyle and environmental reasons they are now being used to ensure future security, thereby serving to insulate people from the unstable events in the world. This is why the movement is expanding exponentially at the moment. Bearing this in mind I was wondering if your company might reconsider it’s future plans and consider starting to supply this fast expanding UK market. I understand that there is the potential to reprogramme the software with the W3841 WPS Allwater so translation into English might not be such a big hurdle for machines that are already being made in Germany.
Failing this, can you let me know whether I can order one of your machines from Germany and it would be electrically compatible for use in the UK.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours Faithfully,
Mike.”

Looking forward to seeing whether we can actually use this discussion forum to actually change something.

Mike.

Hans Christian
#129. November 27th, 2008, at 10:31 PM.

Ref: Miele Allwater

In Denmark the Miele allwater W3841 is no longer imported and have not been for almost 10 years – however one dealer still sell them simply because he pre-order enough so that it is worth while for Miele.
Off course you can buy the all-water model in Gernany and have it shipped and still be covered by the EU 2 year gurantee – for many years you could not but the combined washer and dryer from Miele in Denmark so I bought one in UK and had it shipped. You can find the best price in germany on http://www.idealo.de – as we speak the best price today is € 1,349.00
Hope this was of help.

Astrand
#130. November 28th, 2008, at 8:14 AM.

“I don’t believe they are that much more economical, especially at 40 degrees. I think the hot machine they do have in Germany only claims to be more economical on hot washes”

I’m quite convinced that these machines are more economical. The different existing mixing devices such as Alfamix and http://www.eidenhammer.at/vorschaltgeraaat.htm claims a huge energy save and there must be something to this. A computer controlled washing machine should be able to utilize hot water even better than an external device. Faster washes is another advantage.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone using the
W 1747 WPS Eco Line. It’s a little bit sad that the machine is so expensive and, in my opinion, ugly… It’s slighly cheaper than
Softtronic W 3841 WPS Allwater though.

Sarah
#131. November 28th, 2008, at 11:06 AM.

Further contact with Miele from me:
“Thanks for your last email.
Can you please confirm that the Miele W 1747 WPS Eco Line is a hot and cold fill machine, and where in Europe I would be able to get one? Thank you.”

Miele UK response:
“You will be able to purchase this from Miele Germany. You will need to make sure with them that it is a hot and cold fill and what electrical supply is needed for the UK. Machines coming from Europe usually need to be single phase.”

Hmmm!!

Richard English
#132. November 28th, 2008, at 11:32 AM.

One of the things that we British are better at than any other nation in the whole wide world, is in our ability to denigrate our achievements. The mantras about our declining maufacturing base, our antediluvian public transport, our failing health service and our dreadful education systems have been repeated so often that most take them as gospel.

And mostly the comments are quite wrong – although it’s possible to find selective statistics that will prove any point of view if you seek them – that’s what journalists do all the time.

But to take just one statistic, on the basis of manufacturing value added, the UK is number 6 in the world, behind the USA, Japan, China, Germany and (just behind) Italy. That’s not too bad for a small offshore island on the fringe of a continent. (source World Development Indicators database, 2005)

I have been lucky enough to travel a great deal in my longish life, and I have yet to find a country where everything is, overall, so well-organised, well-run and thoroughly decent. I would want to live nowhere else and certainly not in the USA (which country I know very well).

A bit more chauvinism on the part of the British would be a very welome thing.

Richard English
#134. November 28th, 2008, at 1:21 PM.

If you have a machine that has dual fill you can, if you want only to use low-temperature washes, simply blank off the hot inlet. But if you have cold fill only, you do not have any option except to use electricity to heat the water..

Incidentally, are there now any UK manufacturers of washing machines and/or dishwashers?

Astrand
#136. November 28th, 2008, at 2:15 PM.

http://www.miele-presse.de/de/en/press/home_5400.htm indicates up to 47% savings. The Vorschaltgerät i linked to earlier says “Ab jetzt sparen sie bis zu 85% Strom pro Waschgang”.

Of course, this all assumes that you have cheap hot water available. If you don’t, it might very well be cheaper with a cold fill only machine. So both might be right; it depends on your situation.

For me, I don’t really care if the investment will pay off or not, as long as the machine is good and doesn’t cost *way* too much. Minimizing the energy usage, driving up the demands for energy efficient appliances etc also has value. That said, £1200 is too much for me as well.

Richard English
#138. November 28th, 2008, at 4:53 PM.

Why should a washing machine cost £700 extra? It’s certainly little to do with the extra manufacturing costs, that’s for sure.

Meile postition their brand as a premium product and it is a false comparison to compare their prices with machines from other manufacturers and even to compare a Miele with another Miele is not a good comparison unless the two machines are identical apart from the fill. I rather doubt that this is the case with the two machines exemplified here.

Mike
#139. November 29th, 2008, at 8:43 AM.

This goes back to my point of anything that is better for the environment and energy efficiency being priced way too high which prevents people who aren’t loaded from being involved in this green conscious market. Whether this is a cynically purposeful design on behalf of policy makers or simply manufacturers charging ‘as high a price as the market will take’ is debatable. Although I suspect that both probably apply. Whatever the reasons, the result is the same in that it discourages most people from being able to afford to reduce their environmental impact on the planet. I agree that the Miele machines being discussed are way too expensive and can’t possibly be that way due to much higher manufacturing costs. It will simply be that the sort of people who feel the need to ‘green up’ their lives are identified as having more disposable income and therefore are able to pay more.

I think that in the light of current fast deteriorating environmental and financial conditions and the exponential growth in awareness of the necessity to reduce our negative impacts on the planet there must be a huge gap on the market to produce lower priced machines that is just waiting to be filled.

My situation is that I am planning to live off the grid. This means that reducing electricity usage has many more cost implications than simply the price per unit of electricity generated using fossil fuels. The less electricity I use, the less batteries and methods of charging them I have to pay for (and, therefore, the less imbodied energy used to produce what I need) and , of course, the cost of these is generally high.

In an ideal world I would love it if there was a UK based manufacturing company making environmentally friendly washing machines (I also think that it would be great if people in other countries also had manufacturers of these products in their own countries). It is however very noticeable that the number of people employed in manufacturing and the number of manufacturing companies that are based in the UK has massively reduced over the years. This is largely due to the companies moving abroad to countries where the wages are much much less than they are in the UK and the employment standards regulations are much reduced in number and effectiveness (if they have any at all). This massively reduced labour cost in the manufacturing process has the effect of massively increasing the value added to the finished products as the profits are increased due to the reduced overheads, at the expense of peoples welfare. It also means that the benefits of the whole process are concentrated in fewer and fewer peoples hands. It is a mistake to see profit as value. Therefore, the manufacturing value added league table is misleading as a measure of the value/benefit that the manufacturing industry brings to the UK population. As you say statistics can be misleading.

I am still waiting for a reply from Miele UK. Has anyone else had any better luck out there?

Mike.

Astrand
#141. November 29th, 2008, at 5:53 PM.

Actually, Miele produces two different machines with hot water intake: The Allwater one (W 3841) and the EcoLine (W 1747). It’s understandable that the Allwater model is expensive, since it’s so special, being able to use rainwater etc.

The price for the W 1747 model seems to be in line with most other Miele models; somewhere in the middle. According to http://www.idealo.de, the price for the W 1747 model is 1139 EUR. Other Miele models costs between 749 and 2259 EUR. The cheapest Softtronic model in the W 1000 series (W 1714) costs 899 EUR. So although the machine is still expensive, the difference is not that large: 240 EUR between the cheapest “similar” machine and the hot fill one.

Louise
#142. November 29th, 2008, at 10:23 PM.

Hello, can you help me with a problem that I have with my machine,
I have been looking for a hot fill machine because my powder/ conditioner draw becomes blocked with a black rubbery substance, this stops my tablets from being disolved fully, I thought it was because the cold water was not disolving the tablets? I have to take out the draw and the cover inside the draw and remove the rubbery substance with a toothbrush.
This has only been happening with my last two machines, both cold fill, have you heard of any problems like this before? reading some of the above items I may be looking for the wrong solution ?

Richard English
#143. November 30th, 2008, at 2:48 PM.

As I collect all my rainwater and have been considering using it to supply my cold water cylinder, the Allwater sounds a good bet. With rainwater free (I have to pay for my mains water and its disposal) and the heating of it free, it would probably not take me too long to recover the additional costs.

Such a shame that Miele seem so shortsighted as to believe that only those from Continental Europe are sufficiently forward thinking as to see the possibilities – even if they are sufficiently old-fashioned as to not see the benefits of a hot tap in their kitchens.

I wonder whether Ms Bevan would care to comment?

Mike
#145. December 10th, 2008, at 11:06 AM.

Does anyone out there know anything about the hotpoint wma44 washing machine? I am told that it is a hot and cold fill machine but can’t find any reviews online saying whether it uses the hot fill on the lower temperature washes or not. The machine I am looking at is a reconditioned one but I have no idea how old a model it is or anything.

I still haven’t had a reply from Miele UK about whether they would consider importing their hot fill washing machines to the UK. Has anyone else written to them or had a reply?

Astrand
#147. December 14th, 2008, at 11:28 PM.

I’ve found the Rex Electrolux Sunny now: http://www.rex.it/sunny/. Only in italian. The price seems to be roughly €500. I guess this proves that you can manufacture a hot fill machine for a decent price.

Dave
#148. December 15th, 2008, at 6:53 PM.

I’m interested in the posts around 137 onwards above, mentioning the cost of electricity and the potential savings with hot water fill.

My new LG with the A++ energy efficiency rating uses around 2.6 kWh of electricity to do a cottons 60 degree wash, even now I have it filling with 30 degree water from a customised domestic plumbing arrangement.

It uses pretty much bang on 1kWh for a 40 degrees cottons wash.

(incidentally, to me this suggests that the LG’s heater isn’t very efficient if it can raise incoming water at 30 degrees to 40 degrees for just a unit of power but needs almost 3 times as much power to raise the temperature by another 20 degrees……)

I’m in a 2 person household and generally do 1 of each of the above cycles per week. To me that sounds like around 50 x 2.6 kWh plus 50 x 1 kWh = 180 kWh per year. I may not be on the best Electricity Price deal ever, but my supplier currently charges 14.2p per unit (and slightly more for the first 800 per year) – so that’s a shade over £25 a year to run.

Now, Miele washers are, I believe, the “Rolls Royce” of washers and also pioneers of economy and ecology, so, how come (as far as I can see) Miele machines use more than an LG (based on post 135 by Washerhelp, above) but still get A++ energy ratings?

This is not, of course, so much a comment on the fill method (and indeed, if I was using cold tap water the cost of the washes would of course be higher and may bring the consumption more into line with that of a Miele), however LG claim that using the hot fill saves money and Miele claim that Hot Fill is no advantage (in the UK!!!).

So, my question is, how come A++ (for energy) can be awarded to machines that clearly use different amounts of power and are not equal in the efficiency stakes?

As Andy and I debated several months back, this casts a whole load of doubt over how much value there is in the A to G energy rating scheme. The more I look at it the more I distrust this scheme.

I’ll stick to a more basic way to measure efficiency: which machine has the longest life and uses the most efficient source of water possible?

DAve
#150. December 17th, 2008, at 8:38 PM.

Thanks Andy.
You’re probably right about the 1kw Vs 2Kw argument and so on; and I’m not on the cheapest tariff, I know that. I am on Ecotricity’s “New Energy” tariff where they guarantee that 100% of their profits from my tariff are invested into building wind and wave generators, but it’s more expensive than their other tariffs which simply promise to match the price ofthe “leading supplier in your area”. (It’s about 0.6p per unit more than npower’s standard rate and they are the leading supplier in Sheffield.)
One thing I do wonder about on the heater business though is the position of the heater within the tub. My new LG’s heater is in a sort of valley or well moulded into the very bottom of the tub, so it’s heating vitually every drop of water (rather like in old Hoover single tub washers), but in the Hoover Electron 1100 I had the heater was part way up the side of the tub, barely below the water level. Since heat rises this surely means that, like an immersion heater in your hot water cylinder, the old Hoover heated only the water that the laundry actually sat in and not that in the sump but the new LG heats all in the sump as well as that in which the laundry sploshes about. I don’t have the slightest idea about the position of heaters in any other brands but maybe Miele’s is not at the very bottom? Perhaps machines with heaters part way up the drum always use less regardless of the temperature? I’ve no idea: just thinking in type!
You’re certainly right about the elements being the same though; rather like the solenoid valves, the heater in the LG is identical (including the German branding on it) to the one in the 25 year old Hoover (I even saved the one out of the Hoover as an emergency spare!!!) so it must be a bog standard washer heater. (2.75kW @ 230volts).
I suspect the real key to the economy business is, as Andy states clearly, that you need to have your washer running completely full to make it economical at all; and with a 7kg drum I will never ever have mine properly full unless I either keep my coloureds in the wash basket for about a month before I wash them or wash my towels about once every 10 days. Even the double bedding is only about 2/3 of a load in this washer.
Now, I really don’t want to set us all off at yet another tangent, but to me this suggests that all manufacturers a and all test institutions are really only interested in family sized machines, not small households.
Not sure if I’ll post again this side of Christmas so I’ll wish all on this board a Merry Christmas in this post!

Astrand
#152. December 19th, 2008, at 11:38 AM.

The instruction for the Rex Electrolux Sunny is available at http://www.electrolux-ui.com:8080/2008/132/966481IT.PDF. It actually includes a table over energy consumptions in different scenarios, in page 23:

Using cold water:

Cotoni 90°C 2.1
Cotoni 60°C 1.4
Cotoni 40°C 0.77
Sintetici 60°C 1.05
Sintetici 40°C 0.6
Delicati 40°C 0.6
Lana 40°C 0.4
A+ 60°C ( ) (Economia) 1.19

Using cold and hot water:

Cotoni 90°C 1.4
Cotoni 90°C + BREVE 1.1
Cotoni 60°C 0.7
Cotoni 60°C + BREVE 0.55
Cotoni 40°C 0.5
Cotoni 40°C + BREVE 0.4
Sintetici 60°C 0.7
Sintetici 60°C + BREVE 0.6
Sintetici 40°C 0.45
Sintetici 40°C + BREVE 0.35

We can see that, for example, the energy consumption for a 60 degrees wash of cotton goes from 1.4 kWh to 0.7 kWh when enabling the hot fill, or even down to 0.55 kWh when in quick mode. Quite impressive; in line with the claimed 50% savings.

The only problem now is how to get one. I’ve failed to find an italian dealer that can ship to Sweden.

Astrand
#154. December 22nd, 2008, at 9:42 PM.

“Remember that 50% of not a lot is not impressive. ”

Of course it is. The difference between, say, A+ and A are minor, yet many consider this very important. Imagine if someone presented a car that consumed 50% less gasoline than comparable earlier models. That would be a revolution.

“but what if the hot and cold fill washer is rubbish?”

There’s no evidence that these machines should be of less quality. We are not talking about no-name brands, but Miele and Electrolux.

“Also, what if every time the washing machine draws in hot water, all it draws in is cold water because all the water from last time that is left in the pipework and the fill hoses right up to the hot water tank is stone cold?”

There’s only a few meters of insulated pipes between my washer and the heat pump.

“The result of this is that you have just drawn several litres of hot water into the pipework between the hot water tank and the washer of which the majority will just sit there and quickly cool down and be totally wasted.”

Not at all; it will heat my house, just as good as radiator would do.

“When figures are quoted comparing the energy used by a hot and cold fill over a cold fill they do not take into account any wasted hot water that gets drawn into the pipework. I’m sure if they did the savings would be wiped out.”

As discussed earlier, it all depends on where the heat is coming from. In my case the hear is close to “free”.

“I don’t believe the majority of people in the UK would be better off with a hot and cold fill washing machine and that any savings will be so small it’s pointless pursuing one.”

It’s like everyone needs to have the same type of washer; this is not an election. Many people, like myself, could really save energy with a H&C machine.

“This is because current washing machine designs do not utilise hot water effectively…”

Personally, I believe this statement is incorrect at least for the Rex machine; it clearly saves energy even for 40 degree washes.

It’s not about saving money, it’s about reducing energy. Building H&C machines is very simple, there’s really no argument why they aren’t more available. In the “bad” cases you mention with long pipes that, electric heaters etc, you can simply install the machine as cold fill only, using a Y connector.

Richard English
#156. December 31st, 2008, at 1:58 PM.

I thought I’d already made this comment – but as I can’t spot it I’ll make it again.

It is true that the old technology of simply drawing hot and cold water simultaneously in the hope that the result will be about right will not work when modern machines use so little water. I don’t know the typical water consumption figures although I am sure they’ve been cited.

But if machines now use so little water, then one of the objections for having a pre-mix chamber, into which water could be drawn selectively so as to get the right temperature prior to its being pumped into the washing drum must no longer be valid. Although there isn’t a great deal of spare space in a washing machine there is some – and probably enough for a mixing chamber that needs only to hold a few pints.

Richard English
#158. December 31st, 2008, at 5:35 PM.

It would probably only be of major benefit to those of us who get our hot water free – although most would probably save a certain amount providing their hot water isn’t derived from full-price electricity.

Richard English
#160. December 31st, 2008, at 6:33 PM.

Point taken – if such a machine were only useable by those who had cheap hot water. But such a machine would not be useable only by those who wanted to use dual fill – it would be equally useable by those with cold fill only without any modification apart from blanking of one of the intakes.

So the one re-design would suit all classes of customer – a wonderful sales opportunity I’d have thought.

dave
#161. December 31st, 2008, at 7:15 PM.

Wow! This one really is running hot … if only we could harness the heat of the debate and use it to warm our homes / water / washers!!

What I don’t understand and simply cannot get my head around at all is why, according to several web sites including that of Alfa-Mix, it is now a building regulation requirement that new build homes in some parts of mainland Europe (including, to my certain knowledge, Germany) have provision for supplying hot water to Washing Machines and Dishwashers made when the house is built, unless all of our debating and all manufacturers’ publicity which concludes that cold fill is best is, in a word, wrong ?!?!?!?!
How come Miele (amongst others) recommend that hot fill only is used for dishwashers where-ever possible, yet dishwashers also claim to use less water now than ever before and they were traditionally cold fill when Washing Machines had both?
How come Alfa-Mix and other devices like it are sold in such high numbers on the continent?
How come Miele themselves indicate that using their hot and cold fill machines (available in Europe) will save significant sums of money (they do quote numbers of kWh rather than percentages and they are not insignificant numbers)?

Something just doesn’t add up. Can it really be that in the UK our water heating and distribution arrangements are so diabolical that everyone except us can get hot water into their machines if they wish? Or are we lagging behind countries that have been through the “coolest wash with least water is best” phase and come out the other side realising that actually it wasn’t so?

I don’t have the answers to any of these questions – if I did I would be writing to my MP and MEP and demanding questions in The House and in Brussels – but I really cannot fathom this massive discrepancy.

Incidentally, on the wash temp issue, a quick survey of the care labels in this week’s laundry has been very revealing to me – I have always washed white items plus towels, bed linen and table linen on 60 degrees (in my new LG: it was “whites economy” which was 75 degrees in my old Hoover) and all coloured items on 40 degrees (“non fast coloureds” at 45 degrees in the old Hoover) without really bothering with the labels.

I now see that out of a dozen pairs of H&M undies (recently bought and all brightly coloured very fashionable patterns) 11 are clearly marked “machine wash hot 60 degrees” (one pair says “machine wash warm” but doesn’t have a temperature). Also several Diesel brand fashion shirts and tee-shirts – again all darkish colours or bright patterns with deep reds and blues in them) have the little wash tub and a “60″ in it. All of my towels (some of which are very dark green) state clearly “machine wash hot 60 degrees” and, somewhat to my surprise, the Next brand bedding, which is all deep red or a bright apricot, also has the wash tub with “60″ in it (and I thought that although I always wash it hot for hygene reasons it would probably say that due to the colours cool was recommended).

Even my socks and my partners’ socks, all either H&M or Next and all either plan black or black with some sort of design woven in, reccommend a 50 (next) or 60 (H&M) degree wash temperature.

If so much of today’s clothing and household linen is supposed to be washed at these temperatures (incidentally the only item in the whole wash that recommends 30 degrees is one pair of black Calvin Klein undies and these have been though a “non fast coloureds” wash hundreds of times and are fine) then I really cannot see the “fad” for 30 degree and cold washing lasting that long – especially as the credit crunch really bites and poeple won’t be able to discard and replace clothes and so on so readily if they fail to wash clean.

Of course I appreciate the environmental benefit of cooler washing, but that just brings us back full circle to the ridiculous waste of energy running 60 degree or hotter (my LG does 95 degree) “maintenance washes” to clean the machine after continual use of cool wash cycles and, in turn, this comes back to needing hot fill, even if only for maintenance and very hot washes. (And that’s before we consider that LG and Miele, to my knowledge, already have machines that heat the last rinse water a little to help get rid of the soap that is left by cr*p rinsing due to low water levels ….so the trend for using so little water may be short-lived too????)

It’s all much too complicated and frankly I believe that manufacturers, probably in cahoots with governments the world over, have deliberatly made things over complicated in order to mask the realities that we probably discover for ourselves only after extensive use of these machines.

Finally, for those of us who are really determined to be environmentally sound even if it costs us a little more at times, I would like, with the greatest of respect, to comment on the cost of electricity as quoted by Andy. I have spent a little time looking at the Uswitch web site and I am unable to find a single tariff from any of the suppliers which makes any reference to or pretence of being “green” and which is priced as low as the unit costs that Andy has mentioned. Sure, you can get electricity (especially on dual fuel deals) as cheap as 10p per unit, but not if you wish to be environmentally friendly about it (as far as I can see). (Not to mention people on Token Meters which are notoriously in the news for massively inflated tariffs.) Given that many of us want hot fill appliances to use environmentally produced hot water, it’s a bit silly if we end up paying energy companies for electricity that is produced in an environmentally hostile way, so I imagine that like me there will be other readers who buy electricity from companies who clearly show how they use the profits to invest in green energy. This in turn makes the use of our “free” – or at least low cost – hot water all the more important how ever little electricity is saved. Andy’s figures suggest a washer might only use around £26 of electricity per year; one family I know (who has a cold fill Miele machine) uses about 18 units per week to power their washer (which is on about 5 times a day as they are a big family) – even on a low tariff that’s uncomfortably near to £100 a year. They’re not especially environmentally conscious, but if they bought electricity from a “green tariff” supplier the 50% saving on that Rex machine would start to look very attractive indeed!!

As Andy has rightly said time and time again, there is far more to this matter than just whether a machine has a hot valve or not; for starters there is the desire for good wash results, clothes and household linen makers’ recommendadtions, quality of rinse, quality of build of the machine, Manufacturer’s (free) guarantee period, shipping costs of importing the machine from the country of origin, and what tariff your electricity is on ………and I’m sure the list goes on a lot further.

Have a safe New Year all – and best wishes for a peaceful 2009.

Astrand
#162. December 31st, 2008, at 10:52 PM.

“Saying it will heat the house is wishful thinking indeed”

Not at all. It’s a well known fact that energy, like heat, cannot “disappear”. This has been discussed in the context of legacy light bulbs vs low energy light-bulbs. It has been argued that it really doesn’t matter if legacy light bulbs use more electricity, since this will heat the house anyway. This is true in principle, but lights are often located in bad locations, such as in the ceiling. And of course, 100% of the heat will come from the electricity. That’s why low energy bulbs are much better.

But for heat pipes, at least in a typical Swedish house, these arguments does not apply. The pipes are typically located in the same locations as the radiators, and with a heat pump system, the heat is generated exactly the same for the radiator water and the “fill” water (don’t know the term in english).

So I don’t see how heat from a cooling pipe could be wasted in any way; not for room visible indoor pipes. If you think that the heat is “lost”, please tell me where it goes.

Richard English
#163. January 2nd, 2009, at 4:53 PM.

Whereas it is certainly true that the heat from pipes will heat its surroundings, there are two things to bear in mind.

Firstly, what are the surroundings? In my bungalow the hot water pipes are all in the attic and thus only the drop from the attic to the washer will provide any useful heat (I do not use the attic and heat provided there is watsed).

Secondly, and in context of this thread which relates to solar hearing, when the solar panels are working at their best it is sunny and warm and there is no requirement for house heating. Thus the hot water in the pipes is not then of any use ans is wasted.

I think we must accept that hot water that lies long in the pipes is, effectively, water that is of no use.

Astrand
#166. January 3rd, 2009, at 9:18 PM.

“I take your point about the exposed pipes contributing to heating the house but I was thinking of all the pipes under floorboards and in the walls when I said that.”

Well, walls etc also needs to be heated. They must be at least as warm as the room, or they would cool down the room.

“Also, what if you don’t want to heat the house because it’s plenty hot enough?”

Indoor heating is almost always controlled by some kind of feedback loop, either directly via room thermostats, or indirectly. For example, my heat pump measues the outgoing temperature. If the house is already hot enough, the radiators won’t cool down very much, meaning that the return water is quite hot, meaning that the pump doesn’t need to add any heat.

“When washing in summer the water in exposed pipework that cools down is wasted because the heat it gave out was not wanted.

This is not a common case where I live. Last year, we only had 2 months or so with an average temperature above 20 degrees.

It’s also good to use the hot water sometimes; if the same water stays too long in the pipes and the heater, bacteria might grow.

We are getting into details now, but let’s not lose the big picture: Heating water with 100% electricity is certainly bad when you can do it using 20% electricity.

Launderer
#167. January 6th, 2009, at 3:28 PM.

We have a 12yr old basic Bosch washer with has H & C fill. It gets used mostly on 40degree easycare cycle & does fill from the hot supply & only uses bursts of cold when temp rises above the preset in the drum water. I didnt realise it was such an advanced design but now I have come to replace it, it seems that washer design has gone backwards. I know that using hot water from my lagged tank is far cheaper than heating water from cold using electricity !
Well done manufacturers, & as for the energy labling its a joke, they’re all “A” rated.

dave
#168. January 6th, 2009, at 8:10 PM.

I think “Launderer’s” Basch might be the same as my boss’s; he has a Bosch that was new shortly before his first child was born (she is now approaching 8 years old) and he was horrified when I started looking at a new washer last year to hear how much trouble I had finding a machine that used hot and cold and also one that has enough water in the drum to launder properly.
He and his wife have vowed to keep theirs going as long as they can now they know about this, not least because they have used cloth nappies (now there is an environmentally friendly idea!) for both daughters and, as his wife said, she would feel that they were never clean at all if they hardly got wet, let alone soaked, in the washer.
In hindsight maybe I should have bought a second hand Bosch!!!!!

I completely agree with the energy rating system being a joke; apart from anything else the fact that it is so hard (as far as I have found so far impossible) to get hold of definitions of the standards being used to rate appliances gives rise to a deep mistrust of the system. Any system that is kept so “secret” makes the genuine punter wonder what is being hidden.

I’m not normally a big fan of things American (apologies to all Americans who read this) but I have to say that if my understanding is correct, the Americans still seem to understand washing and water!!! Shame it’s not so easy to get an American top loader into a small British home ……………..

dave
#170. January 8th, 2009, at 7:41 PM.

Yeah; it’s the same principle but not he same object being washed!! Bashing your laundry about in a drum with hardly any water makes bobbles (I think the posh people call it “pilling”) and fibres fray all over the fabrics and increases the wear and tear on the fabrics like the peoples in third world countries get by bashing the laundry on rocks; washing them in more water reduces or eliminates this damage (doubtless why “delicates” and “woollens” cycles even in the latest washers pour in 3 or 4 times as much water as cottons and so on). The human body doesn’t get this kind of pummelling in a shower and would react differently from fabric if it did.
I have found a personal solution to this, but it takes the “automatic” out of the washing machine: I start every wash on Woollens, which fills my LG almost half way up the door, then as soon as the water stops running in I switch back to what I wanted, usually cottons, for the benefit of gettingthe heat level I like and the fast spin.
Miele have an automatic solution – they call it “water plus” – my mum’s Miele, now that we have followed the instruction book to set the water levels manually, washes in just as much water as the old Hoover ever did, and if you read the Miele book they even recommend this as a way of making your clothes have a longer life, so it isn’t just an old wives’ tale. (Or if it is then Miele pander to it because it is such a popular old wives’ tale!)
I think we have grown used to this abhorrent throw away society in which clothes cost a fiver from Ascobury’s and get ditched after two wearings – then it doesn’t matter if the washer ruins them. Maybe the credit crunch will start to make people think more about long life again. For my part, and doubtless many other readers of this board, I won’t buy cheap rubbish clothes made in sweat shops and I want what I do spend my money on to last a good while. Of course, it isn’t just clothers either; when you spend £500 plus on custom made curtains for a large window and you pay for fabric that is machine washable so that you are not forever going to the dry cleaners, you don’t want your washer to ruin them.

Mark
#172. January 16th, 2009, at 3:29 PM.

Washing machines use very little water nowadays.
Very few people have the hot water source next to the washing machine.
It is therefore energy innefficient to pour hot water into a machine.
It is also better for your wash results to start from cold and bring the temperature up as required. Any protein stains; (food, blood) are ‘cooked in’ by hot water.
Cold washing is the enemy of your washing machine, resulting in a build up of undiluted detergents and greases which are organic, this results in the algae bloom that you see on the door seal and worse, it stinks.
So a regular hot wash is of benefit.

Dave
#173. January 18th, 2009, at 5:09 PM.

The Miele Honeycomb Drum certainly seems to work well in my mum’s washer.
There are clearly some other links too, which Andy will certainly know far more about than me. For a start, now that mum’s Miele regularly gets used with the “water plus” option – which fills up to the bottom of the door glass on wash and about a third up the door glass on rinse, she has noticed a huge reduction in wash time and also a significant change in what Miele call “wash rhythm” and the rest of us probably just know as how much agitation there is: the drum sits still for much longer in between bouts of turning when “water plus” is activated. I would venture to suggest that this means that when there is more water there is less need for vigorous agitation but greater need for “soak” time but when there is less water more agitation is needed to clean the laundry and so the Honeycomb drum comes into it’s own and protects the fabrics. Does this sound right to you Andy?

On Mark’s points above, which echo much of what Andy has said many times, he fails to mention two things which I think are significant.
Firstly customers are forever being told that we have more choice than ever, but in fact we have Hobson’s choice and we should not. Now more than ever, with alternative fuels, solar heating, allergies to Biological powders at an all time high, pollution awareness and all the rest of the endless list we should have a genuine free choice of what sort of water we put into our washing machines, not least so that we can put in that which best complements our choice of detergent as well as that which we each heat (or don’t) in our different ways.

Secondly he mentions the detrimental effect on our washing machines of cool washing but fails to make any remark about how this is pandering to the throw away society that we have come to live in but may well shortly have to abruptly leave behind as we not only realise the enormity of the damage to the environment but also, with the global economy as it is, most people will shortly be unable to afford any more. It is therefore necessary to operate our machines in a way which increases their working life rather than decreases it.

Mark
#174. January 26th, 2009, at 2:58 AM.

The fact is that if a manufacturer gave you an absolute free choice; high/low levels and/or /hot/cold water they would not get their much coveted energy efficiency ratings.

At a time when we are being encouraged to use as little and at least impact it is entirely correct that manufacturers enforce best practice provided it brings about the best washes at the least environmental impact and with due concern for any individuals particular requirements on reasonable issues such as skin complaints.

Richard English
#176. January 26th, 2009, at 1:13 PM.

Although it is presently only a minority who have access to solar-heated water, it is a minority that is increasing and will continue to increase. Once people have installed solar panels they are not going to remove them and, with the recently introduced grants (albeit modest ones) I would envisage this rate of increase becoming greater, not less.

Dave
#177. January 26th, 2009, at 9:21 PM.

I’m afraid I don’t agree with Mark (post 174 above). He says, and on this I entirely agree, “provided it brings about the best washes at the least environmental impact and with due concern for any individuals particular requirements on reasonable issues such as skin complaints.” but the fact is that all of the washing machines which I have seriously looked at and taken the trouble to research do not, in most cases by their maker’s own admission, do this.

I cite as an example my own new LG Washing Machine which has the (current) top A++ Energy rating and also A wash and A spin performance. However, in the instruction manual it quite plainly states that for people with sensitive skin or allergies the use of non-bio powder should be considered and goes on to instruct users to wash with the “rinse++” and / or “MedicRinse” options selected.
Rinse++ introduces a 4th rinse, raises the water level of all 4 rinses to about 150% the water of a “normal” rinse and adds 5 minutes extra to each of the 4 rinse cycles. MedicRinse lengthens the last rinse cycle by 20 minutes and heats up the last rinse water to 30 degrees to help to release detergent.

I cannot see how anyone, including Mark, would say that this is having due concern for either the energy efficiency or the user. The machine also features a “babycare” programme which is basically a boil wash with both “Rinse++” and “MedicRinse” automatically selected and takes almost 4 hours. The instruction manual advises the use of this for Baby clothes precisely because of the risk of damage to infants’ skin through ineffectual rinsing otherwise. It would, I am quite certain, be better for the environment and the users’ electricity bill if this machine accepted hot water, had a higher level rinse as “standard” and therefore was able to rinse out the detergent faster and without heating the last rinse water.

A second example is Miele who are currently selling a machine in Germany (and probably elsewhere but not yet the UK) which does accept hot water, and also rainwater if you have a supply handy, and which, as I believe all Miele washers do, allows the user to select a “water plus” option which, depending on the consumer’s configuration, adds water at the end of the wash before the first rinse, to dilute the detergent solution and assist in draining more of it away before rinsing commences and also increases the water level of each rinse to a more “old fashioned” level in the drum.

This machine also boasts a warm last rinse if selected and again cites shifting the detergent as the reason, however a German friend of mine indicates that he instruction suggest using the warm last rinse option with lower levels of rinse water if hot fill is used, but using a higher level of rinse water and no warm rinse if you only use cold water. So far so good – this machine seems to tick all of Mark’s boxes; but why the devil is it only available in mainland Europe and not over here in the UK? The only possibly explanation that I can come up with for that is that in Germany in particular there are now much tighter rules about energy use and houses must by law (I believe from my friend) be built with a hot water supply for the washing machine – and if the law says have hot water for the machine to use clearly manufacturers will make machines that use it.

Richard English
#178. January 27th, 2009, at 10:53 AM.

And I believe that Germany offers greater incentives to householders to install solar heating.

Mind you, I am surprised that Miele, an organisation that appears to pride itself on the quality of its goods, does not offer this hot fill machine in the UK. Another organisation whose products are revered for their quality is Rolls-Royce – and they will incorporate any modification any customer, anywhere in the world, wants in his Motor Car. (or they used to before BMW bought the Company – now I’m not sure, although, having visited the factory and talked to the people there, I get the feeling that Sir Henry Royce’s beliefs and standards are still in place at Goodwood).

Richard English
#180. January 27th, 2009, at 1:43 PM.

I can’t comment with accuracy as I don’t know how much Miele charge for their best machines. I do know, however, that even today Rolls-Royces far from being the most expensive cars you can buy, by quite a margin. Because their reputation is so high, people automatically think their prices must be stratospheric – but some might be surprised.

The list price of a new Phantom is £257,316 – say ten times the price of a normal large four-door saloon. That’s a good bit cheaper than a Maybach 62 at £345,740 and a positive steal when compared with a Bugatti Veyron, just a modest £830,000.

How does a Miele compare with other machines in multiples of their prices?

marcusbrutus
#182. February 15th, 2009, at 2:52 PM.

I’m currently looking at buying a washing machine, and started reading this page with interest … up to the point where it became obvious that a hot&cold washing machine still heats the water (yes, I had wondered how a 90 degree wash was possible without internal heating;)).

So, if a cold-only washing machine heats water (all the time), and a hot-cold washing machine heats the water (as determined by some “rules” .. ie: sensors, time, etc) … can we assume that both types of machines heat the water with equal efficiency?
[ Keeping in mind that the hot-cold machine has some kind of a head start, regardless (to a point) of the distance from the hot-water cyclinder]

If that’s the case, then surely the hot-cold model has an advantage (in time/efficiency) due to the hot-water inlet. In my case, I live in a 1st world country where the laundry is one of the closest rooms to the hot-water cylinder (joke!), and also the hot-water tariff is cheaper than normal power.

If not, then wouldn’t it be just as feasible simply to disconnect the hot water from a hot-cold machine (where possible) and let it act as a cold-only machine? (According to the manual, the machine I’m looking at has a blanking plug included in the kit for this purpose).

To my mind, this means a hot&cold machine is capable of being either, and with less time heating water (on a more expensive tarrif) I’d expect this to be an advantage in most cases.
ie: more flexible, possibly cheaper, probably quicker.

Forgive me for skipping 3/4 of the posts, but it’s late and I don’t like washing machines *that* much!.

ps: Fisher & Paykel (.au) also make hot&cold washing machines [oops there goes my 1st-world joke ], and the model I’m looking at is the WH70F60W2.

Dave
#183. February 15th, 2009, at 5:51 PM.

Nice to see that Fischer & Paykel are keeping up the “good sense” side of things.
Read the F&P web site info on the WH70F60W2 and also the full instruction book for the same machine: seems **very** similar to the LG that I have in both external appearance and also features. Hope it does actually use proper hot water though! I’d be very interested to hear how you get on with it.

Richard English
#185. February 16th, 2009, at 10:58 AM.

Ah yes – but who’s going to take the initiative and produce such a machine – the more so in the difficult times in which we find now ourselves?

marcusbrutus
#186. February 17th, 2009, at 4:46 PM.

Well I ended up getting a machine delivered today.

Long story, but result was a Fisher&Paykel WH80F60W1 for AU$5 more than the cheapest WH70F60W2 I could find (delivered). Price also included removal of THREE old machines! (WAF++;)). Total=AU$820. Price quoted was more, but by the time {WOMAN} got off the phone (she waved her magic plastic card) the sale price had dropped AU$80!!… not sure how that happened, neither is she . Almost a shame we don’t live about 5km further south, as we’d then be eligible for ~AU$105 rebate for having an efficient washing machine! (The 8kg is 4.5 stars vs 4 stars for the 7kg). Ah well.

I’ve tested the following so far:
Cotton 90 (initial cleaning), Cotton 40 [aka "standard test mode"] (11 towels), and Daily (approx. 7kg … FULL!).
AFAICT hot water was only used on the first two of those modes, although all were at least luke warm at some point, but it’s extremely hard to tell if or how much hot water is being used. eg: 90 degrees is HOT and makes me wonder how much power it uses. At this stage I can only hope that the hot water inlet helps.

I guess if I’m desperate to find out I’ll either have to measure the temperature of the hoses, or perhaps see how good my (infra-red) modified webcams are.
I could always try measuring an identical wash with & without the hot water connected, I suppose … we’ll see.

Either way, I feel somewhat more comfortable that hot water is available and used when necessary(?), as I _feel_ that my hot water service will be cheaper than the machine’s heater (alone) due to the lower hot-water tariff here. Totally subjective and hard to measure, I agree

I’m particularly interested in the HOT aspect as we’ve got another baby due in a few months. From experience I know that washing cloth nappies (yes, I came from the ark;) in only cold or warm water can result in thrush/etc even with a white-vinegar soak (the Delta 10 had a faulty hot water solenoid!).

Bottom line: she’s happy to have upgraded from my ancient Simpson Delta 10, believes that it’s going to be better/cheaper/quiter/easier/etc to use, and I’m happy not to have to work on the old monster. (Electrickery and water don’t mix!)

Thanks all for your help.
M.

ps: By “Newton’s law of cooling” using 1KW to raise the temperature from 20 to 30 degrees does not mean that you will use 1KW to raise the temperature from 30 to 40 degrees.

pps: link of interest:
http://www.energyrating.gov.au/appsearch/cwashers_srch.asp

ppps: yes, I’d think the timestamp was correct. I’m ~GMT+10, currently 2:55am. *yawn*

Peter Åstrand
#187. February 17th, 2009, at 8:01 PM.

marcusbrutus, does this machine allow you to disable the hot water inlet? The Rex Sunny, which I’ve recently bought, allows this. This makes it easy to determine how much you save: just use a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt or similar and measure the difference. I will post some figures and details for the Rex in a near future.

marcusbrutus
#188. February 17th, 2009, at 11:04 PM.

Peter, yes the WH80F60W1 comes with a blanking plug for the hot water, as do the 6 and 7 kg models in the same range (according to the manual). I’ll see if I can get WAF+ for a power usage meter .

marcusbrutus
#190. February 18th, 2009, at 1:55 PM.

I was referring to post #149.
I’m not sure if it _is_ actually one of Newton’s Laws that I thinking of, but my point being that it will take more energy to raise the temperature from 30 to 40 degrees, than it will to heat from 20 to 30 degrees.

I’ve managed to locate an equivalent to the Kill-A-Watt in Australia (at Jaycar) and hope to be picking up one tomorrow.

tricia
#192. February 18th, 2009, at 10:16 PM.

All the washing machines iv had have been hot fill ,alwasys said i would never buy a cold fill but my husband happend to be at the shops with me when it came to choosing this on its a washer dryer and i cant stand it ….when i do put on a warm wash it takes hours and sometimes short washes the cloths arent even washed properly .

Peter Åstrand
#193. February 18th, 2009, at 11:12 PM.

Here’s some more details about the Rex Sunny. I bought it from http://www.arredatutto.it and payed via PayPal. The price for the machine was €518 plus €56 for shipping, from Italy to our house in Sweden. This includes VAT and everything. “Arredatutto” was very professional, but their web shop is in italian. Google Translator solved that.

The manual is only available in italian. I’ve made Google Translator-enabled web pages of the italian PDF; contact me at “astrand at lysator dot liu dot se” if you want it. Since the machine is so similar to other Electrolux machines, one can also use the manual from another machine. I’ve used the PDF for the EWF 12370W, which is sold on the swedish market.

We have only done a few washes yet, but so far, the claimed energy usage seems true. For example, the last 40 degree synthetic wash only consumed 0,45 kWh. I’m not able to measure how much hot vs cold water is used – I don’t have that equipment – but it feels like it’s using a lot of hot water for the main fill.

To summarize: we are very happy with this machine, this was just what we were looking for.

marcusbrutus
#194. February 18th, 2009, at 11:23 PM.

It’s simply that the temperature difference between the water and it’s environment will be higher, resulting in faster temperature loss.

Richard English
#195. February 19th, 2009, at 10:06 AM.

So far as I can recall from my physics lessons, the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of any body is more or less linear. So, in general, a ten degree rise requires the same amount of energy, regardless of which ten degrees it is.

However, this can be affected by external factors and, in liquids, the more significant one is that of vaporisation. Once a liquid gets close to its boiling point, more and more of the energy will be used in vaporising the liquid until, when the liquid boils, no further temperature rise can take place, regardless of how much energy is applied. All that will happen, as the energy input is increased, is that the rate of vaporisation will increase.

A similar phenomenon occurs as liquids move from freezing to a liquid – it takes more energy to raise the tempearture of ice from freezing to one degree than it takes to raise the temperature from one degree to two degrees.

However, since neither freezing nor boiling is likely to occur in most washing machines, the question of non-linear heating performance does not apply.

Peter Åstrand
#197. February 19th, 2009, at 2:53 PM.

The amount of hot water used can be determined by calculation. Warming one litre one degree requires 1.16 Wh. The Rex machine, when using the 60 degree cotton program, saves 0.7 kWh with hotfill. This energy corresponds to warming 1 liter 603 degrees, or warming 603 litres 1 degree. If we assume that the difference between the hot and cold water is 30 degrees, this means that the machine uses 20 litres of hot water.

My machine seems to fill with something like 7 seconds per liter, which means that the machine fills using the hot water connection for 140 seconds. I haven’t verified this yet, but it seems roughly correct: For a 40 degree program I’ve tried, the machine filled using the hot water connection for a minute or so.

marcusbrutus
#198. February 19th, 2009, at 3:00 PM.

the question of non-linear heating performance does not apply.

Richard,
You missed my point.

It’s not that increasing the temperature of the water by a nominal amount differs depending on the initial temperature of the water, it’s that more heat is lost to a surrounding (non-ideal) environment as the difference between the water and it’s surroundings increase.

Marcus.

ps: mains power meter (aka: Kill-A-Watt equivalent) has been purchased. I will attempt to provide meaningful results from tests.

Dave
#199. February 19th, 2009, at 3:29 PM.

Just a couple of technicalities here (I’m being picky, sorry).
Firstly in post 191 there is a confusion of wher decimal points shodul be an which units we are talking about: 2500Kw should be 2.5Kw (or 2500w) and 28000Kw should be 2.8Kw (or 2800w). The figures in post 191 would lead to the National Grid taking a very keen interest in your property and also a rather interesting set of industrial plugs and sockets and cables being neede to plug in your washing machine! Incidentally, most Miele and LG washers seem to be fitted with 1.75Kw (1750w) heaters at present. Most domestic immersion heaters are 2.5Kw these days, older ones (anda few new ones) are 3Kw. Washer heaters are, essentially, smaller versions of immersion heaters.
Secondly, regarding post 196, annoyingly so many new washers have the drain hose coming out at high level (all to do with preventing floods if the pipe falls out of the sink or standpipe I assume, though once the drain pump kicked in the flood would be just as inevitable) so Peter may need to follow his user instructions for “emergency draining” – usually via the pump filer cover or a small pipe located near to this – to test the water in the machine.
Finally, just a thought, but although Washerhelp says that cold fill only washers wash better than hot and cold (post 196 in reply to Tricia) I am not entirely sure that I agree. Doesn’t this rely on the use of Biological detergent (which Washerhelp has explained many times in older posts works best in water that is slowly heated and won’t work at all well in water that is very hot from the start)? If, like me, Tricia uses non-bio detergent or some of the “gentle wash” liquid detergents I think the wash results coudl be poorer in a cold fill machine couldn’t they? Washerhelp has the expertise to comment on this, but my experience is that when I use a cool cycle, such as for dark colours, really quite poor results, often accompanied by incompletely dissolved detergent particles being on the washing at the end of the programme, are an annoyingly regular experience and this was sometimes the case in my old hot fill Hoover too, so I don’t think it is just related to the newer machines.

Richard English
#200. February 19th, 2009, at 4:44 PM.

Quote “…You missed my point.

It’s not that increasing the temperature of the water by a nominal amount differs depending on the initial temperature of the water, it’s that more heat is lost to a surrounding (non-ideal) environment as the difference between the water and it’s surroundings increase….”

Not really. As I said, heating can be affected by external factors and heat loss by conduction to a cooler adjacent environment is one such factor. However, the loss is actually very small in the insulated and enclosed environment of a washing machine’s drum – far less than the that lost to the latent heat of vaporisation at near-boiling temperatures.

And the amount of energy used is actually the same – it’s simply that the loss of heat is (very slightly) more rapid and thus the cooling og the heated water will be slightly more rapid.

Dave
#202. February 19th, 2009, at 5:43 PM.

Hmmm …… 1 pair of black jeans and 2 black tee-shirts in a 7kg washer = overloading? That would be a pretty trypical example of what I use a cool wash for as I possess so very few black or non-fast coloured items and wash almost everything I own on a 60 degree wash. The only other example that I have is washing white net curtains on a cool delicates wash where the same has happened, even in the Hoover washer. The issue of incompletely dissolved detergent is surely not over-loading in such instances?
I had always assumed, and may well be wrong, that the incomplete dissolution was because on a cold fill cycle that only gets to 40 (or 30) degrees for maybe 5 minutes right at the end of the wash the water simply wasn’t hot enough for long enough to dissolve the detergent? When you fill a bucket with cool or cold water and add detergent it’s virtually impossible to get it to dissolve but if you add detergent to a bucket of hot water is froths and dissolves almost as it hits the water – I’m afraid that very unscientific observation was all I based my assumptions on.

Dave
#204. February 19th, 2009, at 6:36 PM.

I use Ecover non-bio which states that it gives excellent results “even at 30 degrees” (but the coolest I ever wash at is 40 even for black jeans).

It’s not the water pressure problem – I am certain of that because I usually open the drawer after the washer has filled up a) to look to see that the detergent is all gone and b) to add fabric softener for teh last rinse because I find that this LG often manages to get the fabric softener into the drum on first fill if I put it in at the start, so now I don’t put it in until well into the programme.

I do sometimes use Stergene (which is not meant for automatics) or Ecover laundry liquid (which is meant for automatics) but both make so much foam that it leaks out of the dispenser drawer all down the front of the washer, even when I only use about half what the bottle says.

I’m convinced that there is some link between teh wash temperature (regardless of how the machine fills up) and this problem because I used to get the same difficulty in the Hoover (which was, as you know, hot and cold fill) when I used the “non-fast coloureds” cycle – which washed at about 40 degrees and filled with cold water on that cycle. My belief is also strengthened by the fact that I don’t get this problem with the LG on 60 and 95 degree washes, nor when I fill the machine up by hand with a hose from the hot tap to “force” it to use lots of hot water. Even with a double sheet, king sized duvet cover, 4 pillowcases and a couple of towels in a 60 degree wash (and the bedding is all dark red so it’d show) I don’t have this trouble.

Not using enough detergent is the only possibility that I have not tested out yet, although I like to see suds in the washer and usually add a bit more mixed into some warm water if it doesn’t foam up much!

I wonder if actually the amount of agitation has anything to do with it, although to be fair the LG does a lot more sploshing about than even the Hoover did.

Tricia has certainly opened up a mystery here!

Jacqui
#205. March 28th, 2009, at 1:05 AM.

I was interested to read the comments on this site. Like Tricia I hate my cold fill machine. (Hotpoint 7kg 1600 spin). I’ve had it a year and it’s ruining my best clothes. I now dread doing the washing.

It seems as if the cold rinse for all the 40 and 30 degree washes is far too cold and no good for soft or delicate items such as cardigans and fleeces and causes them to go hard and tight – I carefully follow the label instructions for these items. On a 40 degree quick wash socks/underwear does not come out smelling fresh/clean. The conditioner never works even if I put in double doses. And even if I do another separate conditioned rinse and spin after a whole cycle the washing still comes out feeling hard and looking awful. It’s taking so long to do the washing and the results are getting worse.

The only washing that comes out feeling nice is the stuff I do on a higher temperature (60 for bedding and shirts which gets them really white and fresh, or 95 for towels etc) or sometimes a 60 degree wash reduced to 50 degrees. I note on these washes the washing comes out slightly warm and feeling soft after rinsing and spinning.

I now use liquitabs for all coloureds as the powder I used previously for coloureds was not dissolving, and bio powder for whites/ high temps. Sometimes though the liquitabs aren’t fully dissolved after a wash! I’m careful not to overload and I have stopped using shortened cycles.

Any ideas how to improve things. Never had these problems with my old hot/cold fill.

PS Used to be able to do all my washing in one morning. Now takes a whole day with my cold fill machine.

Dave
#207. March 28th, 2009, at 5:25 PM.

Hi Jacquie,
washerhelp’s points above are, in my opinion, only part of the answer.
As far as I know there have never been any hot and cold fill machines until the last year or so that used hot water for rinsing (as Washerhelp says) however, I’m not sure if a small number of machines in the past might have ever warmed up the last rinse water as quite a good number of new ones do. I think this is unlikely, but it is just possible that it has something to do with your experience that the washing comes out colder than ever.
As for the washing being spoiled and being hard and unpleasant after the wash, I agree with you totally that this is a new experience with new machines.

Quite aside from this forum I have heard some explanations for this which all point to the amount of water used, rather than the hot or cold fill issue, as being the cause.

1) Inadequate rinsing is specified as the cause of “hard or stiff” laundry in the Miele instruction books. Their recommendation on their machines is to use the “water plus” option to add extra rinse water. On their Prestige Plus range this causes the rinse water level to rise to almost half way up the door so the washing is well and truly saturated and “floating” in the water.

2) overloading the machine, so that detergent is inadequately dissolved and remains in the rinse water has been specified by my local Hoover Service Centre. Obviously you’ve checked the overloading and you use liquid or liquitabs now so that should not be the problem. However, the guy at the Hoover Service Centre did say that older machines coped with overloading because they had much more water in them; newer ones, he says, will not cope at all well because they have so little water. So if there is the slightest chance that you do overload at all, this could well be why you can’t do in your new machine what you could in your old one.

3) The water is possibly not being “held” at the wash temperature for long enough. In a previous post of mine (on the other board) I’ve commented that my new LG washes at the temperature of the incoming water for most of the wash time, then after most of the wash part of the cycle is over it heats the water up but as soon as it reaches the selected temperature it drains and moves on to rinse; the washing doesn’t actually happen at the selected temperature at all; only at “up to” the selected temp. I have read in several places that detergents don’t dissolve very well unless they are in warm water for quite some time, so maybe if your machine is washing in the cold fill water for a long time, then warming up for a very short time, the detergent isn’t dissolving properly? I am guessing here, but if the water is not very warm AND there is not much of it, I imagine this makes the dissolution even slower?

Of course, there is a 4th possibility: your machine could actually be faulty, and if you’ve tried everything that the instruction manual suggests for good results you may have to consider getting a Hotpoint Service Engineer to come and have a look.

Washerhelp’s points about the time taken being more related to the lack of water these days then to the fill temperature are, I am quite sure, absolutely right. Undoubtedly older machines were faster using hot water than cold, because (just like new ones) when the water reached a set temp. the programmer would advance to the next phase of the cycle, but obviously having hotter water to start with made this happen sooner. Nowadays if machines advanced through the cycle at the same speed your washing would come out barely damp and not washed at all due to the low water level, so machines are designed to slow the whole process down greatly in order to get the washing wet! (I exaggerate, but only ever so slightly)

If, like me, your time matters to you then I can only suggest 2 practical answers for both of us: either buy a second hand old fashioned machine or else buy a very expensive model, such as a Miele, which does wash about as fast as you can get these days. (Mum’s Prestige Plus takes about an hour and 25 minutes to do a whites wash, which is only about 20 – 25 minutes longer than my old Hoover hot and cold fill)
I hope this is of some help; it’d be interesting to hear how you get on if you do decide to ask an engineer to have a look.

Jacqui
#208. April 4th, 2009, at 10:27 PM.

Thanks for the responses. Having considered everything, I possibly didn’t appreciate just how little water the machine uses. I’ve got a 7kg drum and may have expected it to handle the same size washes I was doing previously in my 5kg drum with ease.

Applying science to the applicance my plan of action is now to seriously underload it. This means doing loads of washes (at least 2 every weekday and 3 weekends) to get the results to hopefully improve. This will mean at least twice as many washes as previously and I don’t see how this equates to saving the planet, but maybe it will save my clothes!

I am now selecting ‘rinse hold’ on every cycle which means the washing will be held in the conditioned rinse water and tumbled occasonally until I move it on to a ’slow’ spin . There isn’t a ‘water plus’ equivalent option on my machine and doing a repeat ‘rinse and spin’ hasn’t improved things previously.

There’s no problem with the conditioner being taken too soon as I’m forever sneaking up on the machine to check if its been consumed at an inappropriate time and it doesn’t appear to (although it used to before I had the bearings replaced when the machine was 8 mths old). I’m also now using concentrated fabric conditioner diluted with one part water. I’ve read that concentrated conditioner is partly responsible for more black slime in the dispensing drawer. In the past I’ve always managed to keep the compartment of my machines free of slime, having a selection of angle headed small brushes just for the purpose, but the speed with which it occurs with this new machine is alarming. Would it be okay to spray inside the compartment with Dettol Mould and Mildew remover?

Had one improved and successful mid week wash but can’t for the life of me remember which programme and which additional features I selected – guess it’s trial and error and I’ll have to keep notes. However, I tried a wool wash – which I usually avoid anyway – and the clothes came out dripping wet and have dried hard! Isn’t a wool wash supposed to be for delicates? I’ve tried using 30 degree ‘hand wash’ and its not very successful either. A quick survey in the office showed that most people avoid the 30 button too for the same reason.

Working full time this extra washing is a real drag on my spare time and a drain on my financial resources because of the extra liquitabs I need to buy and the house is continually festooned with drying clothes since most of the ‘good’ items including many of my teenagers’ t-shirts cannot be tumble dried. By hey, this is progress!

Hopefully things will improve. Just one other thing though – in the days when the only washing implements I had at my disposal were the Laundrette and a spin dryer (doubling up as a work top) I did a lot of hand washing (in Dreft or Lux) in luke warm water and rinsed in luke warm water and all my knitwear came out just fine and lasted ages!

PS Where can I buy Dreft. I always used to use it when my boys were tiny, and the manual recommends it for my machine but its not stocked in any supermarkets round here.

marcusbrutus
#209. April 7th, 2009, at 6:05 AM.

Hi, further to my previous post regards power measurement I’ve had a power meter installed on my washing machine since then. I multiplied the (guess of) cost/kWh by 100 to make per-wash measurements “significant” and discovered that for an average wash (probably Cotton 40 or 60 iirc) with only cold connected that the cost was approx 6.4 cents. The exact same wash, on the exact same cycle (immediately afterward) but with the hot water connected was about 6.0 cents. The total used by the machine in ~7 weeks was about 45kWh.
Marcus.

Neill
#211. April 7th, 2009, at 2:05 PM.

Hi wondering if anyone can help, my sister in law is moving into a new flat and her original washing machine has both hot and cold feeds but in the plumbing in her new flat it only has a cold pipe feed, whats the best solution other than buying a new cold feed only washing machine, thanks

marcusbrutus
#213. April 7th, 2009, at 2:22 PM.

I would tend to agree, however I’d say a difference in the order of 10% is significant, particularly when taking into consideration that my hot water tariff is >>10% cheaper. I’d also suggest the difference (savings) would be greater on warm washes compared to hot, but the testing involved would take more time & energy than I’m prepared to spend .

Neill
#214. April 7th, 2009, at 2:32 PM.

Washerhelp, thats perfect thanks

Peter Åstrand
#216. April 11th, 2009, at 11:08 PM.

marcusbrutus, can you tell me how much energy, in kWh, that your machine consumes on average? The tiny gains that you are experiencing indicates that your machine (Fisher&Paykel WH80F60W1) just like LG does not use the hot intake very much. This is however a problem with these machines and not a inherit problem with hot fill machines. One conspiracy could even be that these manufacturers makes “poor” hot fill machines just to “demonstrate” that the concept as such is flawed…

I’ve done some measurements with a Kill-a-watt on my Rex Sunny now. It seems to work as advertised. For example, a synthetic 40 degree wash only consumed 0,45 kWh. I think this is great and not at all negligible.

It seems like there’s still room for improvement, however: The machine always fills using both the hot and cold intake at the same time, thus blends the hot water with cold. This problems gets worse at the winter, since the cold water is very cold, just a few degrees celsius. If the machine instead filled using only hot fill until the water was warm enough, by measuring the incoming water temperature, then the savings could be even larger.

marcusbrutus
#218. April 12th, 2009, at 6:29 PM.

Peter,
I will hook up the power meter again and measure kWh/wash when it’s finished doing it’s current job.

My comment about 0.4 cents is by no means an average, and keep it mind it was on one of the warm cycles, as opposed to a hot one. I still view it as (in the order of) ~%10 percent. Considering what the machine actually does (spin+rotate+time, etc) I would regard this as significant, particularly as I would expect that the hot/cold mix during fill of that particular cycle means that the effect of the hot water is lower.

I’m now using “Allergy 40″ as the most common cycle so I expect the percentage difference to be even lower … we’ll see.

marcusbrutus
#219. April 12th, 2009, at 6:31 PM.

ps: I couldn’t care less if ~10% puts me in “Scrooge Zone”.

Peter Åstrand
#220. April 12th, 2009, at 9:15 PM.

I don’t know if you are referring to my comment about negligible Peter, I think anyone who thinks that 0.4 of a cent is a significant saving must be pretty hard up or pretty a Scrooge like

“cent” is not a very good measurement, since the energy cost differs a lot. One example with the Rex is comparing a 60 degree cotton wash in standard versus hot fill plus quick mode (which is only available with hot fill). In this case, the energy consumption goes from 1.4 kWh down to 0.55 kWh, thus this saves 0.85 kWh. With Swedish energy prices, this corresponds to roughly 0.1 Euro. This is significant.

On a 40° wash, if the washing machine filled with hot water only at first as you suggest it could damage laundry as most people’s hot water is at least 60°C.

The idea is to use a temperature controlled fill; to measure the water temperature, and then activate the cold fill only when the incoming water is too hot. As pointed out on this page, the first litres are “cold” anyway.

I would say that it is extremely uncommon that the hot water is more than 60 degrees, at least here in Sweden. If it was, people would get burned every now and then. Besides, you wouldn’t be allowed to connect the Rex Sunny at all, since it requires that the hot water is 60 degrees or less. My new Bosch dishwasher has this same requirement.

Hot water coming into contact with certain stains can also set them in and make them extremely difficult to remove.

Sure, whatever. I don’t really care, if that would happen, I’ll just throw away this piece of clothing and buy a new one. Fashion changes anyway. And you can always disable the hot fill if you really want to heat the water slowly; if you know you have a bad stain.

Dave
#221. April 12th, 2009, at 10:52 PM.

The concept of manufacturers conspiring to “prove” that hot water inlets are no good is certainly interesting. You’d think that they would not want to do this for fear of damage to their reputations, however I know that there is a Government Document available on the WWW which I read once a year or so ago in which the Government is proposing to “persuade” manufacturers top drop hot fill on the most scientifically dubious grounds I have ever seen.

One does start to wonder who is pulling what strings here ………

Peter Åstrand
#222. April 13th, 2009, at 8:20 PM.

I’m now using “Allergy 40″ as the most common cycle so I expect the percentage difference to be even lower

On the contrary, I think: Allergy mode probably means to use more water, in which case hot fill is beneficial.

Dave
#223. April 14th, 2009, at 11:03 AM.

I’m with Peter (post 222) – on my LG “allergy” cycles use about 50% extra water on each rinse, do 4 rinses not the usual 3 and rinse for longer on each rinse, so overall water use is well and truly increased. The Allergy cycles also heat up the final rinse water to 30 degrees to release any remaining soap, so hot water fill is certainly very beneficial on this machine.
My mum’s Miele also has allergy options which also increase the water level of the rinses, so I’d guess that most manufacturers / machines with Allergy options are going to use more water and possibly more electricity to heat water than on “non-allergy” modes.

marcusbrutus
#224. April 14th, 2009, at 11:04 AM.

I’m not so sure. I understand that the extra rinses in the allergy cycle are cold water, so proportionally, I expect that (say) a Cotton 40 wash might use a similar amount of hot water, but that the Allergy 40 wash would be working longer and therefore use more power. Hence my suggestion that the percentage difference between using hot fill and heated cold fill on the Allergy 40 would be lower. I guess I’ll have to wait until the power meter is free again to find out .

Peter Åstrand
#225. April 14th, 2009, at 12:50 PM.

As a side note, make sure to use power meters which can correctly display the real power rather than the apparent one. Otherwise, you will get false readings: Electronics seldom have a power factor close to 1 nowadays, and of course a machine with an electric motor will have an even lower power factor. If the power meter can display the power factor, you should be safe. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power.

TC
#226. April 15th, 2009, at 5:31 PM.

I asked Miele again about the availability of the W 3841 WPS Allwater in the UK.

This is what they said:

Thank you for your email. The Allwater concept is beneficial if the washing machine is connected to hot water, rain water or well water. Whilst the concept is fantastic and very eco-friendly, the market potential is almost non-existent in the UK. This is turn means that Miele UK will not introduce the Allwater machine in the foreseeable future. I apologise for any inconvenience caused and please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

Laura Adams
Customer Support Advisor
http://www.miele.co.uk

I have responded requesting further clarification as to what is considered to be a sufficiently large “market potential” given that Miele is, almost by definition, a quality / “niche” brand that is not in the business of beating the likes of Hoover et al to the top of the volume shipment league.

Dave
#228. April 15th, 2009, at 7:19 PM.

Thanks TC – great to see that several of us are pestering Miele for this.

I’m going to mail LAura again myself reminding her that her response to me last summer was rather similar and pointing out that I now have proof that she’s had other enquiries and ask her to elaborate a little more on the number of enquiries she (they) need to start considering the requests more seriously.

Regarding Washerhelp’s points above about hot water cylinders.

I am told by German pen-friends that in Germany at least Hot Water Cylinders have made a huge come back in the last decade or so with the massive incentives and investments in Solar water heating. Combi boiler systems are very difficult to add Solar heating to and the only way to do so involves adding a traditional hot water cylinder back into the system; Germany (and I think many other countries, the latest being USA under Obama) has really pushed for home owners to get Solar heating and so the necessity to have a HWC has come back with a vengeance.

I disagree that using all hot water will draw off a cylinder full every cycle. It depends on the size of your cylinder. Most solar cylinders on sale in the UK are at least 180 Litres and many are bigger. If you have a decent sized cylinder like that and you use a modern machine which uses (far too) little water then it’s going to be easy to use hot only fill.

However, more fundamentally, the Miele machine that TC enquired about doesn’t use only hot fill; it uses hot (and cold too if a cool wash is selected) to fill for wash, cold only for the intermediate rinses and hot & cold together for the last rinse which is warm. This makes it very similar indeed to “traditional” washers such as almost all Hoover and Hotpoint models until at most 10 years ago which used mixed H&C fill for wash and cold for all rinses.

I’ll let you know if I get anything out of Laura at Miele.

Peter Åstrand
#229. April 15th, 2009, at 10:13 PM.

Ask about the Miele W 1747 WPS Eco Line instead. It’s a newer machine, and it was introduced in Sweden this year. As I understand it, it does not accept rain water etc. Instead, the primary feature is the hot water inlet.

Richard English
#230. April 16th, 2009, at 8:30 AM.

What nonsense from Miele! Sadly all too many people in customer relations departments seem to see their jobs as that of fending off customer queries and complaints with a load of flabby flannel.

What market research have Miele done that enables them to suggest that “…the market potential is almost non-existent in the UK….”? Whereas it is true that the Germans are ahead of the UK insofar as solar water heating is concerned (the Government grants are higher and have been in place for longer, I understand) we in the UK are catching up. There are now grants available for solar water heating installations and I know of several households in my own village that have installed solar heating.

And it works. My own installation is so efficient that I have only rarely had to use oil or electricity to heat most of my water since the beginning of March. The exception is, of course, my dishwasher and washing machine, which I am forced to fill with cold water and allow the machine to heat it.

Richard English
#231. April 16th, 2009, at 9:48 AM.

Quote “…As I understand it, it does not accept rain water etc. Instead, the primary feature is the hot water inlet….”

I find that hard to understand. What’s the difference between rainwater and tapwater – apart from the added chlorine in the latter?

I’ve not yet done it but I am considering diverting some of my rainwater (all of which I collect) into my cold water cistern which will save me quite a lot of money as my mains water is (expensively) metered.

Richard English
#233. April 16th, 2009, at 10:39 AM.

Quote “…The only thing that makes any sense is hot and cold fill washing machines intelligently controlled….”

Which is what we have all been saying in these pages for at least two yeara. Sadly nobody in the washing (and dishwasher) manufacturing business seems to be listening.

Dave
#235. April 16th, 2009, at 12:19 PM.

I think the reason that the AllWater model uses (or can use) rainwater, but the other model(s) with hot water inlets don’t accept rainwater is probably (and this is a guess) that the AllWater has some sort of filter on the rainwater inlet to ensure that any bits in the water don’t get into the valve? The only other possibility that I can see is that it handles very low pressures better? I know that the AllWater has 3 vales – Hot, Cold Mains and Rain – and that it uses only a mixture of mains cold and water from the hot cistern (which presumably came from Mains?) in the final rinse and Miele state that this is “for hygiene reasons”.

I must say that I agree totally with Washerhelp: it’s astounding that Miele don’t seem to want the publicity, kudos and profit of being at the pioneering leading edge with their machines in this country. If they didn’t actually make the machines to start with I’d better understand but when they make them and simply stubbornly won’t import them, not even as far as I can see for special order, I’m at a loss as to why they’d want to be seen as so awkward and unhelpful. It isn’t in line with their normal standards and policies at all.

Incidentally, it’s a very grey and miserable day here in Sheffield, with quite a strong northerly breeze which is biting, and yet my solar panels are currently cheerfully delivering 22.1 degrees C of heat into my hot water cylinder, which is now sitting at 20 degrees C at the very base of the 180L of water and 60.1 degrees C at the top. The boiler was on from 05:40 until 07:00 this morning, so that heated the water from half way up the cylinder to the top to 65 degrees, then after 07:00 I have had a long PowerShower, run the (Miele hot fill) dishwasher on a 75 degree cycle, run my (LG with forced warm fill) washer on a 60 degree cotton cycle with 4 rinses (all accepting warm water from the mixer valve – see old posts if this doesn’t make sense to new readers) and had a 2 gallon bucket of very hot water to wash the kitchen floor. I don’t know how many liters of water my shower, Dishwasher, washing machine and bucket used in total, but I do know that in the days before the solar panel I’d have had stone cold water at the hot taps by now and would have been popping the boiler back on.

Washing machine manufacturers please take note: warm / hot water really is easily and cheaply available even in dull northern UK!

Richard English
#236. April 16th, 2009, at 3:54 PM.

My solar heated water is presently at 65 degrees centigrade, having had no gas or electric heating at all this whole week. The water this morning was still piping hot from yesterday’s sun (I do have a well-insulated loft, which helps) and now I am about to take a bath which, I know from past experience, will still leave plenty of hot water for tomorrow’s ablutions. And the only cost to me is the water; the heat is free.

Rowan Purkis
#237. April 23rd, 2009, at 9:16 PM.

Oh dear, I have read this with dismay. I was looking to replace my 10 year old Bosch hot and cold fill machine with a new one but am finding it hard to find hot and cold fill. I too have a solar panel and lots of free hot water. I was excited to find that all the modern machines have a delay start feature so that I could time the machine to come on in the middle of the day when the sun is at its hotest. But I am horrified to find that I cannot buy a hot fill machine. I have wasted today surfing the net and I have actually found 1- a Whirlpool 10kg ( too big) 965 cms ( too tall) spin speed 1100 (too slow) at £714. Are there any 6kg ones at all??? I have e-mailed all the manufacturers to tell them I do not want a cold fill machine.

Richard English
#238. April 24th, 2009, at 2:51 PM.

I got an email from John Lewis a couple of days ago, exhorting me to consider replacing my machine with the latest, best and brightest from Miele. So I took a look and yes, there was thins scintillating new machine which in Miele’s own words “saves energy as it uses cold fill only”.

So I wrote to the customer services at John Lewis, expressing my surprise that Miele make such a big deal about their new machine being cold fill only and asking what dual fill machines are still available. And I had a very polite reply what said, in essence, “I don’t know – why don’t you check in one of our stores”. So I wrote back to say that I had tried that and the store staff didn’t know either. So far no further information.

Peter Åstrand
#239. April 24th, 2009, at 4:31 PM.

Rowan: Basically, as I understand it, there are only two hot fill machines available today:

* Miele W1747WPS. This is a 6 kg machine. It claims some very low energy consumption rates: Only 0.15 kWh for a 40 degree 2.0 kg “outdoor” wash. As I understand it, this machine is not available in the UK, and I don’t know where you can buy it on the net either. It is also very expensive.

* Electrolux Rex Sunny. This is the one that I recently bought. It’s a 7 kg machine. I’m very happy with it. As I’ve written earlier, I bought it from http://www.arredatutto.it for €518 plus €56 for shipping. See http://www.arredatutto.it/shop/rex-rwfh-12280-w-p-1560.html. I think this is the most realistic option at this point.

Rowan Purkis
#240. April 29th, 2009, at 9:29 PM.

Thanks for the responses
I had 2 ideas-
1. to find out how much to fix my old Bosch hot & cold fill machine
2. See if anyone sells reconditioned hot and cold fill machines.

I used this site to find contacts for both and have been very pleased with the prompt responses. Autowash Ltd in Sittingbourne have offered me a reconditioned 6kg Hotpoint with 1400 spin and a start delay which I was very tempted by, but have decided to have the old Bosch fixed. Lets hope that there continue to be companies out there that will keep the old hot and cold fill machines giong for those of us with solar panels.

Note that my Bosch uses hot water in the 40 wash as well as the 60 and the 90 which contradicts the comment above thats its only worth people who use 60 and 90 bothering with hot water fill. Thats another reason why I have decided to hang on to my old machine for as long as possible

Richard English
#242. April 30th, 2009, at 3:38 PM.

In truth all that is needed is a slightly more sophisticated valve system – one which is controlled by the actual temperature need rather than by some arbitrary number of seconds of water admission.

Dave
#243. April 30th, 2009, at 10:42 PM.

All this talk about how little water gets into modern machines just doesn’t seem to make any sense to me at all.

My new LG washer is a 7kg drum, and as far as I can see that’s one of the smaller ones on offer these days.

It uses vast amounts of water compared to my old Hoover washer, and especially so with the rinse plus options selected which is vital in order to stand a cat in hell’s chance of rinsing away even most let alone all of the soap.

I know we’re only concerned with the hot water used on wash, but even so, suggesting that by the time the hot water reaches the machine it’s already full is simply nonsense in the case of this machine, which boasts low water consumption!

I understand fully all the points made and all the manufacturer’s bumf, but I’m afraid that I simply don’t believe it: actually using this machine puts evidence before my eyes which makes the claims of such low water usage as to make hot connections inviable laughable.

I’m afraid that I am thoroughly convinced that the removal of the hot fill option on most modern machines is a ploy of some sort, as yet I have to work out the real reason, on the part of manufacturers, possibly in cahoots with some other organisation(s).

The most intelligent guess that I can make is that it may be linked to the prevalence of Combi Boilers these days because a plumber friend of mine tells me that older combis, dating back 10 to 15 years, were incapable of supplying hot water to washers and so on because they could not heat the water fast enough when it was flowing as fast as it does into a washer. Seeing as it’s around the same length of time since hot and cold fill machines stopped being “the norm” I wonder if there is some link here? If so it’s time the boiler manufacturers pointed out to the washer manufacturers that these days boilers are better!

Washerhelp’s last point is bang on: we expect – and demand – machines that will make better use of all water supplies. We’re forever being told that consumers now have more choice than ever: in this case it is patently Hobson’s Choice!

Dave
#244. May 1st, 2009, at 6:48 AM.

Yes, I agree with Richard – and this LG claims to have such a system, however either it is insufficiently developed and doesn’t react to the temperature properly (which I hope is the case) or else it is deliberately biased against the hot (if one is charitable one could say this would be to mimic the older machines with electro-mechanical arbitrary controls).

I wouldn’t mind betting that if you bought one of those Miele machines that they stubbornly refuse to make available to the UK market, you’d find taht it has very efficient intelligent controls.

Anonymous
#246. May 10th, 2009, at 3:48 PM.

Thought I’d just let you all know (since there was some debate about it a while ago) that I’ve had the scientists at college onto the business of whether equal amounts of energy are used to raise water temp from (say) 10 to 20 degrees as from 40 to 50.

This does get slightly scientific, so please bear with me.

I’m reliably informed that it takes 1 calorie to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius, so since 1 litre of water weights 1000 grams it takes 1000 calories to raise a litre of water by 1 degree.

1 calorie is equal to 4.19 Joules and 1 kilowatt hour of electricity is 3.6 million joules, therefore there are 859101 calories in every kilowatt hour of electricity.

Put it another way, a kWh of electricity will raise just one litre of water by approx 86 degrees C.

This formula is constant regardless of the starting and finishing temperatures of the water (at least, is is to within succh a tiny tolerance that it makes no difference to anyone other than thermophysicists), HOWEVER, the forumal does assume that the heating device is 100% efficient and that the vessel holding the water is 100% effective at stopping any lossof heat whatsoever. Dirty and soapy water requires more energy to heat it and even the latest and best insulated hot water cylinders are, apparently, only about 85% effective at retaining heat so a washing machine drum and tub, which are not insulated at all, will