These days most people wash at 40 or even 30°, and washing machines take in so little water that most people won’t get hot water into their machine before it’s finished filling. Also these days washing machines need to pass certain tests on washing efficiency to be able to be “A” rated for washing efficiency. Filling with cold water and heating it slowly helps them to wash more efficiently, particularly when using biological detergent.

However, as discussed at length on this article and these comments the time has now come for washing machines to be able to utilise hot water more effectively especially for people with solar powered heating. The cold fill option was probably a reasonable progression several to 10 years ago that has now outgrown its usefulness due to the fundamental change in the way people view energy efficiency. It makes no sense to have a free environmentally friendly supply of hot water and not be able to use it inside washing machines and even dishwashers. Particularly when most washing machine manufacturers now say you should do a boil wash once a week to help keep the washing machine free from gunge and black mould.

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!

I still feel that for most people, it’s not worth bothering with a hot water valve until they improve the way washing machines use a hot valve.