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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Thanks for that TC. They will mean there isn’t enough of a market potential to be able to make money. How they know that I don’t know. But by the same token we can’t assume that because you want one there must be enough of a demand.
Your queries may make them think again. At the end of the day if the washing machine has genuine benefits they can be sold in the UK. They must presumably feel they couldn’t market it in the UK because it won’t have genuine benefits for the majority of customers?
I still don’t see how a washing machine connected to and filling only with hot water can be “very eco-friendly” at the same time as cold fill only washing machines which have been forced on us because they are more economical are.
There must be some major difference in how the plumbing is in Europe or Germany at least and the UK. I’m led to believe the hot water cylinder is still very prominent in the UK but not in Germany. A washing machine connected to most UK homes with hot water tanks filling with hot water only would virtually drain all the hot water each time it was used. That can’t be eco-friendly can it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hello Dave. I didn’t actually say it would draw off a cylinder full of water, I said it would virtually drain all the hot water. I accept your point about modern washing machines using much less water, so it won’t be as bad as it used to be.
I was referring to hot fill only washing machines which I thought had been mentioned. A washing machine typically uses between 40 and 50 L of water. So if you have a 180 L tank of piping hot water and drain up to 50 L away then 50 L of stone cold water from the header tank will take its place. I’m assuming that 50 L of stone cold water will cool down the hot water significantly and all this 50 L will need to be reheated. It could still be argued of course that it is cheaper to heat the water up in the hot water system instead of the washing machine but that depends on individual set-ups. In fact I’m starting to become confused with the entire issue. Did I imagine someone mentioned hot fill only washing machines? Surely they are no use?
A hot and cold fill washing machine that uses hot water only on the main wash and last rinse wouldn’t impact the hot water tank much though. I still can’t imagine a hot fill only washing machine being viable in the UK.
The only thing that makes any sense is hot and cold fill washing machines intelligently controlled.
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.
Richard: Regarding the W 3841 WPS Allwater. I don’t normally like to publish e-mails sent to me as it seems like a potential breach of confidence. However I think it is very relevant to mention the reasons why the Allwater Miele was not seen to be viable in the UK market as told to me by the man in charge of washing machines at Miele UK around 18 months ago –
As far as Miele were concerned, most of the households throughout Europe “usually only have a cold water tap. For those households with an additional hot water tap (e.g. in Germany) Miele offers the Allwater washing machine”.
The main issue with this explanation is that most households in the UK do still have a hot water supply for their washing machine which is blanked off because cold fill washers were forced upon them. It’s possible that because of the recent trend for cold fill only washing machines all new houses may only be supplied with cold water plumbing though. However, any washing machine at the side of the sink can easily tap into the hot water supply. Do most new houses have laundry rooms these days though?
It also has to be said that the only reason the hot water plumbing may have declined is because Miele along with all the other manufacturers said cold fill only washing machines were more economical and give better wash results.
If it is cheaper and more economical to let the washing machine heat up the water then we need cold fill only washing machines. If it is more economical to use a mix of hot and cold supply then washing machines should have a hot and cold valve. The whole thing is riddled with contradictions but in reality, as with many things the answer is complex because of the different configurations of plumbing and washing styles and methods.
I still think hot and cold fill washing machines should be available and that a hell of a lot of the public would buy them regardless of whether or not cold fill washing machines are supposedly more economical, which is clearly not even necessarily the case for many people. It’s about time washing machines became much more sophisticated in regards to utilising readily available, and often cheaply supplied hot water.
Now there’s talk of washing machines rinsing much more efficiently using some hot water at least in the final rinse. If so, as Which? tests showed that most washing machines (including even some Miele Best Buys) are “poor” at rinsing isn’t it about time we went back to using a hot water valve? ( Why can’t modern washing machines rinse properly? )
Of all the washing machine manufacturers in the world I would expect Miele to be interested in being at the cutting edge of this.
Things have moved on considerably in the last 18 months. I’ll contact Miele again and see if they have any comment regarding the Miele Allwash and hot and cold fill washing machines versus cold fill washing machines.
In reply to an earlier comment, the Miele Allwater does use rainwater if required. This is why it is named “all water”. I can’t imagine many people in the UK having access to rainwater plumbed to a washing machine though yet. The difference between rainwater and normal water presumably is that one is free?
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!
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.