I have never attempted to measure the total ENERGY use (including gas and solar in my case) – I would not really know how to reliably go about measuring the amount of gas or solar energy used to heat the fraction of the cylinder-full of water that is used by the washer.

But that, I think, is the whole point: unless you have a combi boiler or an old fashioned “Ascot” type water heater, then the hot water used by your washer or dishwasher is, in effect, free or at the very least too cheap to calculate, both in fiscal terms and in units of gas terms, whereas if you fill the appliance cold and then heat the water by electricity it is a very easy task to measure the electricity use and cost very accurately and it is very significant compared to the ‘free’ hot water in the cylinder.

However, what started me on my personal near-obsession with this situation was that the 2008 LG washer which used over 3kWh of electricity to do a 40 degree wash (compared to the 1983 Hoover which uses well under 0.6 kWh for a 40 degree wash) was both Energy Saving Trust recommended, A+++ rated, Which? best buy and DID have a hot water connection but by design did NOT admit ANY hot water to ANY cycle. When you pay a premium price £800 in round figures) for a machine with all those recommendations and which is specifically stated to SAVE energy, I think it is reasonable to expect that at the worst it won’t use any MORE *ELECTRICITY* than an outdated model, but EST happily admit that they make no such claim and that they don’t even expect this to be the case.

Personally this makes me apoplectic with fury and I am quite sure that any possible saving in gas / oil / coal used for heating hot water is far far far less than the cost of more than 3 extra kWh of electricity.

It’s an old and tired topic now, and as the machine was so unreliable and has long since gone in a skip it’s of comparatively little interest to me any more, but I will continue to tell the sorry tale to anyone who appears interested until and unless the way in which Energy Ratings are applied, awards given and recommendations made is made much more explicit and honest.

After all, if you buy an appliance with a label that says “this is the most energy efficient on the market but it will use more energy than one made 10 years ago” you won’t be very upset when your bills go up, but when you buy one that has multiple claims to “save energy” you do actually expect to see a saving.

Furthermore, you don’t expect to challenge the manufacturer and the recommending bodies and get a flippant “Oh we know” type response.

And I’m 100% with Michael on all he says about extra features, the ability to get past them to what you really want and how manufacturers use features as an excuse to inflate prices.

I find it perfectly credible that a cold fill machine could use 4 times the amount of *electricity* as a hot fill, for quite obvious reasons, but then I would assume that in that case, the hot fill is “good”, meaning that it is actually drawing hot water, not cold water from the pipes.

For myself, I am quite happy for a washing machine to have lots of “features”, as long as they have bog standard settings that are easy to access, sinc that’s what will be used by 90% of users, 90% of the time. I don’t subscribe to the idea that additional features cost (significant) money, or make the machine less reliable. On the other hand, I dI do understand that manufacturers use features to charge premium prices, which is another story entirely. One might reflect that, like the existence of First Class on airlines, the bells and whistles sold to other people for silly money (relative to incremenatl cost) is what makes the more basic machines cheap for the majority.

If the Wattson is truly the only unit that gives both input and output readings then I reckon that a letter to Which? is in order.

They do mention which units allow for data to be downloaded to a computer and thereby analysed. They suggest that the best of those is the Onzo Smart Energy Kit, which has a score of 71% and is presently free from Southern Electric.

In this case: ‘Let the Buyer Beware’ of buying a highly rated monitor which doesn’t actually do what you want it to!

“…The intelligent program I suggested would have taken into account the various delay times imcumbent in remote hot water systems.

Simply build in a bypass that takes the initial hot water flow to the drain and only takes it into the machine for the first fill once it is hot enough. The simple way to arrange for the correct delay would be a user-controlled timer, which would need setting in accordance with the characteristics of the user’s plumbing system.

A more sohpisticated system would measure the incoming water temperature and divert it to the drain until it is warm enough. A default maximum delay setting would ensure that, should there be no hot water in the plumbing, the drain diversion would shut off after a reasonable period and the machine would then admit cold water to the drum and heat it as required.

This second system – surely easy enough to contrive with modern computerised controls – would mean that those of us who have solar heating (whose water temperature can vary from near freezing to near boiling) will not need to adjust the water admission delay.

In both systems the actual water temperature admitted to the drum would be controlled by a simple thermostat (similar to the one used is thermostatic showers) adjusted by the controller in accordance with the washing programme’s needs.

Any competent designer with engineering ability would easily be able to build an intelligent machine of the type I describe – which rather makes me wonder who does design modern appliances? The marketing department, the accounts department, the sales department – or the engineering department?