You might move house and find the plumbing in the new house only has a cold water supply but your washing machine is a hot and cold fill washing machine. One option is to have a hot supply plumbed in but as virtually all modern washing machines are cold fill now it may be better to use a y-piece to convert your hot and cold washer to use only a cold water supply.
To do this you would connect the hot and cold fill hoses to the y-piece and then connect the other end of the y-piece to just the cold tap. This way you can use your washing machine as normal and both hot and cold water valves will receive cold water. A y-piece can be bought at a plumbers merchant or one of the big diy stores.
You can’t usually just connect the cold hose and leave the hot valve unconnected as explained here – Washing machine is a hot and cold fill, but I only have a cold water supply
Yes it is . Just buy blanking plug for hot fill inlet on the back on the machine.
Thanks Gordon: Some washing machines won’t work on all wash programmes without a supply of water to the hot valve though, particularly older washers.
the reason for cold fill only is it saves the company lots of money
Hello Peter: A very concise judgement. It’s one I started out with and still feel could be quite relevant though after researching became convinced of some of the arguments. I don’t think it saves them any money though, it just allows them to sell them cheaper in a fiercely competitive price-led market.
As even Miele went over to cold fill, and they are a premium high cost high quality product it gives weight to the argument that there were some genuine advantages to cold fill. Miele do not cut corners like that and I don’t believe they would reduce efficiency of their machines just to cut out a few components. Their machines can cost over £1000. If cold fill was just a gimmick to reduce costs by removing the valve and a couple of hoses I can’t see Miele doing it.
At the moment my combination boiler is only heating the radiators and the cold water supply to the boiler has been turned off.
I have an AEG OV lavamat 6100 digitronic and can’t find anythiong in the user guide to say if it is cold fill only but I suspect it’s not as it has both red and blue flexible pipes connected.
Can I just turn off the tap on the red pipe and let the machine use cold without causing any damage?
Hi Anonymous. The link in the main article above explains the potential issues with just leaving the hot hose disconnected.