I still get people asking if I know of any washing machines with a hot water valve. This article gives a few suggestions – but you should read on first to fully understand the issue. It is not as simple as you might think. It could be a complete waste of your time looking for one.
Most washing machines now only have a cold water valve but many people instinctively don’t like this. We all know washing machines wash with hot water, so it seems crazy not to use the hot water we already have in our homes. Heating it all up from cold seems wasteful and unnecessary.
This apparent madness is even more annoying for people who have an environmentally friendly and economic source of hot water such as solar powered.
However, there is a good argument that because modern washing machines use so little water on wash – there is no need for a hot valve. It’s in fact more economical to use cold fill only on 40 ° washes for most (but not all) people as explained here – is a hot & cold fill washing machine more economical?.
What is the science behind cold fill only washing machines?
All this is explained fully in my article Should I buy a cold fill washing machine?
So are there any washing machines with a hot valve?
At the time of writing there are some LG & Statesman models with a hot valve. However, they don’t take in hot water at all unless you use a very hot wash cycle. There is alternatively a British made washing machine with a hot water valve. Ebac’s hot & cold fill washing machine is advertised as using, “Intelligent hot fill technology”.
Some Hotpoint washing machines appear to be hot and cold fill, but they are designed for cold fill because there’s only a cold fill hose supplied and a y-piece adaptor supplies both valves.
I suspect this is a temporary measure, and that subsequent models will just have the cold valve.
So hot and cold fill washing machines are currently very rare. But even if you find one, you need to know that the few I’ve seen rarely even use the hot water valve.
If most of your wash cycles are done at 40 degrees or less it will most likely never use the hot valve at all.
Related:
Several people have asked me if you can connect an environmentally friendly and economic hot supply to the cold valve to utilise it. The short answer is no, for more details read Don’t connect the hot water supply to the cold valve on cold fill washing machine
New comments on this topic have been closed. There were over 600 comments now trimmed down (below) to 233. There are very interesting discussions there.
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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.
“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.
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: 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. Also, what if you don’t want to heat the house because it’s plenty hot enough? When washing in summer the water in exposed pipework that cools down is wasted because the heat it gave out was not wanted.
Of course I’m talking from a UK point of view with UK conditions and houses in mind which may be at times different to how things are in Sweden.
dave: You have some very good questions. The issue is unsatisfactorily ambiguous at times. If you read my original article on Washerhelp you can see that I am balanced and at times even sceptical about the hot water valve issue despite understanding the arguments. But over the course of the comments on my blog articles I have found myself increasingly arguing the manufacturers case. I put this down mostly to the fact that many of the comments do not seem to have take into account these arguments so I found myself repeatedly explaining them.
One difference between dishwashers and washing machines which hopefully explains the anomaly you point out is that the most common temperature for washing machines is 40 Deg whereas dishwashers usually wash at the least 60 Deg or even higher. This would explain why manufacturers recommend using a hot valve for dishwashers but not for washing machines. Some dishwasher settings are 75 Deg. I reckon that if the most common temperature a washing machine washed at was 60 Deg then cold fill washing machines would have never been produced.
At the end of the day I suspect manufacturers are picking and choosing facts in order to justify marketing decisions they’ve made. When they say it is cheaper to use cold fill they are talking mostly if not exclusively about 40 Deg washes. When they say it is cheaper to use hot and cold fill they are talking mostly if not exclusively about 60 Deg and above washes. The figures I have seen showing that a hot and cold fill washing machine uses less energy than a cold fill washing machine on 40 Deg show that the energy-saving is very small and relatively insignificant.
In the UK, manufacturers claim that the majority of people have hot water systems where hot water is not utilised effectively i.e. gravity fed hot water cylinders. They also claim that in the UK most people wash at 40 Deg or even less. In these situations they are saying that cold fill only is best. On top of this they are also claiming that wash results are improved when using biological detergents if the initial wash water is slowly heated to temperature from cold. I can accept all these arguments and fully understand all the logic but have also always said that they are not necessarily true for everyone.
One of the main reasons their argument has credibility is, why it would washing machine manufacturers care if hot water gets wasted in our plumbing when drawing hot water? As far as I’m aware this wastage would not be counted in the energy usage figures on the labels, so if using a hot water valve genuinely saved energy – but at the expense of wasting litres of hot water which cooled in the pipework – I would still expect them to use a hot water valve because the figures would show their washing machines used less energy and would not show that a percentage of this energy was offset (and therefore pointless) by wasted hot water cooling in the pipework or by the extra energy needed to reheat the water used by the washing machine in the hot water tank.
My personal suspicion has always been that losing the hot water valve may have been as much to do with saving on production costs by reducing parts required and improving washing and efficiency label ratings as energy-saving.
Wash care labels
On the wash care labels issue I think the 60 Deg label refers to the maximum safe temperature rather than an instruction to wash at that temperature. Also, modern detergents claim to wash efficiently at 40 Deg even on fabrics that used to need 60 Deg which is why most people are reported to wash at 40 Deg for most items these days. Whilst on the subject, it is a good idea to wash underwear and bedding (if the wash care labels permit) at 60 Deg for hygienic reasons and as bedbugs (or their eggs) are claimed to survive washing at 40 Degrees.
The fad (as you put it) for 40 Deg and even 30 Deg washing is driven entirely by detergent companies. However, it is now also driven by the climate change issue and now the credit crunch. Some years back leading detergent manufacturers started advertising detergents that could get excellent wash results at 40 Deg instead of 60 Deg. This is clearly an advantage because using their detergent meant you would save on energy charges and even wear and tear of the washing machine. It wasn’t long before everyone followed suit and then detergent claimed to wash well at 30 Deg started to be marketed. I’ve even seen an advert recently claiming it washes at 15 Deg. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is surely all leading to cold washes? The whole market, environmental issues, and now credit crunch concerns all point to the holy grail of washing our clothes in cold water. This is another reason why I have not been overly concerned about the disappearance of a hot water valve. However, time will tell. I also believe that even if we did end up washing most laundry in cold water we would still need to do piping hot maintenance washes to prevent the build up of grease and grime and so having a hot water valve available would still always make sense.
Electricity charges
The point about the 50% savings on the Rexs machine is that they were on 60 degree washes. If the family in question washes mostly at 60 degrees then they could save a reasonable amount providing their hot water system can deliver hot water quickly enough and with a short pipe run. If they wash mostly at 40 degrees then the savings will only be (according to their figures) 0.02 KWh per wash.
Thanks very much for your contributions and have a happy new year too – as I hope everyone else will.
Dave: Modern washing machines are supposed to wash just as well if not better using much less water. In the old days they just took in loads of water, enough for a full load of towels etc. to soak in. Over the last few decades manufacturers have used various methods such as spraying water over the laundry using a circulation pump (pioneered mostly by Zanussi I think) and designing the drum paddles so that they constantly scoop up water and sprinkle it all over the laundry.
These methods mean laundry can be saturated effectively using far less water. It’s the same principle as a shower versus bath.
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.
You make some good points Dave. Miele’s honeycomb drum is supposed to create a thin film of water to cushion the laundry from the drum btw, however, that’s just one make, and the most expensive too.
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.
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.