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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I have just mailed Miele with the following text, re their “pre-sales enquiry” form on their web site. If I receive a reply I will post it on here for anyone else interested to see.
Dear Sir / Madam,
Your washing tips leaflet shows (page 39) the AllWater machine which uses on site hot water and can also use alternative water supplies. The latest Which? washing machine report now states that “Heating water in your boiler is more efficient than heating it in a washing machine, so plumbing a hot water supply into a washing machine usually makes it cheaper to run.”
On the blog at I want a washing machine with a hot water valve there is extensive proof that a vast number of consumers want a hot fill machine but are being denied this option in the UK by the manufacturers many of whom, like Miele, make hot fill models for other parts of the world (at my last check Miele hot fill machines were available in every part of Mainland Europe, Russia, China, USA and Australia but not UK).
In view of the latest advice from Which? an dthe fact that your l;eafl;et dated March 06 and still available at John Lewis and on line states that same, please will you tell me when the AllWater will be available in the UK and if there are no immediate plans to import it exactly why not?
For those of us who have used old hot fill machines that were bought in the 1980’s and which have only just become unserviceable it is extremely annoying that we now have to pay in excess of 4 times as much per cycle to use a modern so-called efficient machine which will not use out existing hot water – which is free for those of us with solar water heating.
I look forward very much to hearing form you at your earliest convenience and remain,
Yours sincerely,
I have a 20 year old Hotpoint washer that is now getting almost impossible – it really needs a new loom and other bits which are unavailable. But we got lots of hot-fill use from it. We have solar panels which for 8 months of the year give us ample hot water, and we have wood for winter heating. So now I can’t get a replacement hot-fill machine from what I read here – is this really true? What sort of nonsense is this?
Hi Phil,
Welcome to the growing crowd of us that are forced into this ludicrous position by the manufacturers’ imbecilic practices.
A friend of mine has recently bought a 6 year old Hoover which has hot fill still and works quite well.
Hoover have terrible brand reliability these days (they are in fact Candy) however if you are between the rock and the hard place, as we on this board generally are, my only suggestion is that you also buy an older machine, accepting that in doing so you could be buying one that has a short life or which may end up needing more frequent repairs than your old Hotpoint has until now.
I have just had the hot fill / cold fill discussion with my father. As I teach people about domestic appliances for a living I thought I was in a very good position to explain why cold fill has become the predominant machine on offer.
If you have a hot water tank then cold fill becomes a no brainer. When you turn on the tap in the kitchen you will see that it takes a while for the heat of the water to come through from the tank. Every meter that your tank is away from the tap, you have to remove a litre of water to get to the hot water held in the tank. For most people, this is about 15l.
Even the most efficient machine that takes around 55l will not take all of that in one go – so when you start to wash, only around 10 – 12 litres maximum will go in – and this is all the cold / luke warm water between your machine and the tank. And then you end up heating it up just as if it was a cold fill.
Even if you have hot water almost on demant – say with a condensor boiler, you probably have your boiler set at around 70 degrees. If you wash at 40 or even 30 you can see that you won’t be using soley hot water – you would be mixing again with the cold.
Mixing takes more time that heating as you have to get the temperature right.
Just to confuse you all more, for most manufacturers, the final rinse is always cold – so all that lovely hot water in your tank won’t be used for that part. Roughly speaking – of the 55l I mentioned above – you would be lucky if you used hot water for more than a third of the wash and because your tank is hotter than the wash (after all we don’t only wash towels at 70 – most washes are the quick wash at 30 or 40 – not for environmental reasons but to prevent damage to the clothes) – you would be lucky if you used more that 5 to 8l from your actual tank – and I’m being generous here.
With any domestic appliance – you simply get what you pay for.
There is a play off with electronic equipment of efficiency against age.
If you have a washing machine that is 10 – 15 years old you are more likely using twice the water that my 3 month old machine does. I’m on a water meter and this less water is really important to me financially.
Also, the average drum size for full load 10 years ago was 4 – 5kg – now we have standard 7 – 8kg; even on integrated.
So, I’m washing twice the laundry in half the water.
But I’m also using less energy.
And, my quick wash is one third what a machine 10 years old would be – so I get more washed, in less energy and water and it’s quicker. So it saves me time and money?
I win all round – even if it is cold fill.
the only arguement for a hot fill is Phil’s above – he has solar panels and so his hot water is free. But again, unless your storage is next to the washing machine you will end up heating the water regardless because of the meter a litre rule.
(By the way, my father who was arguing for hot fill, said that he would just run the tap until it came out hot then turn on the machine to get the hot water – I’m on a meter so I’d end up losing 15 litres of water – yes I could save it for the garden but now I’m having to do so much just to save the water when all I wanted was to turn on the machine and wash some clothes late at night …)
One other thing, the reason that the quantity of washing decreases as you go to more delicate functions on a machine is because the gentler the action you need, then the more water to weight is required to ‘cuddle’ the laundry. Washer dryers dry on half the load of washing machines because they need more space for the clothes to tumble through.
Liz’s explanation echoes much of what has been written in the past and I have just two questions:
1. If cold fill is so much better than hot fill, how come some manufacturers make hot fill machines – but don’t sell them in the UK? Do UK pipes always have much longer runs than pipes in other countries?
2. I mentioned a long time ago that one simple solution would be to for machines to use a pre-wash function (drawing water from the hot supply which would initially be cold) thus ensuring that, when the hot water is needed for the wash proper, it will be immediately available. Why has no manufacturer adopted this simple solution?
And incidentally, I am one of the rapidly increasing band that has free solar-heated water for around 8 months of the year.
I have given up with my old Hotpoint and am now waiting for an ISE machine to be delivered. I don’t have the time to mollycoddle an aged machine.
It still seems bizarre to not use already heated water – ours is solar heated or by wood, and the tank is a 1.5m pipe run from the machine. By the way, if the heating is free, what’s the big deal with not using every litre, it’s just part of living in a house! Maybe live in a smaller, more efficient house.
This afternoon we went looking for a new washing machine to replace our H & C fill Zanussi, and were surprised to find that, in the stores we visited, only cold-fill were available, leaving us with Hobson’s choice! An earlier comment (above) mentioned that he (or she) wouldn’t buy a Hotpoint machine. Some years ago, as I was once informed, Hotpoint machines were actually manufactured by Bosch, (in the same way that Candy makes Hoover and Electrolux makes Zanussi), so it would follow that Bosch wouldn’t be purchased either. When looking today we were trying to decide between these two makes (One
is more attractive looking, and may be simpler to operate, whilst the other has an easily-accessed via front door filter – an important consideration for retrieving errant 5p pieces and detached buttons!) Friends’ washing machines always seem to operate much more quietly than any we have had – maybe something to do with our kitchen having a suspended wooden floor instead of a solid one? Anyway, any comments /recommendations will be gratefully received over the next few days, as we won’t make a purchase before Tuesday next.
To Liz B: Don’t make things more complicated than they are. You don’t need FREE hot water to save energi and money; it’s sufficient that you can generate the hot water with some coefficient of performance (COP) better than 1 (plain electrical heating), and that the losses on the way to the machine are smaller than the gain.
A modern geothermic heat pump has a COP factor of ~5, so in this case, as long as you lose less than 80% of the heat in the pipes, you’ll save energy!
Another thing that many people forget is that there’s a difference between cold and cold: Here, in the winter, the incoming cold water might be close to zero degrees. Now, let’s assume that the hot water loses all of it’s energi in the plumbing on the way to the washer, and ends up being just 20 degrees (the room temperature). In this case, you would still make a gain, since much less energi is required to raise the temp from 20 to 40 (or whatever), than from 0 to 40 (or whatever).
Hi Jim,
My contribution to your quest would be to say that Miele are undoubtedly built far better than any other brand that I have ever seen in any shops (leaving only ISE as a possible superior build) and that LG are built to a standard that surprised me greatly by being pretty much equal to Miele.
LG do still make at least one machine with hot fill BUT … (as you will see if you’ve read over this board) I bought one from LG with hot valve and the intake ofg hot water is so close to zero as to be not worth having, so please DO NOT buy LG just for the hot connection.
I was under the impression that Zanussi by Electrolux were supposed to be pretty good these days, however just 2 days ago my GP told me that her 3 year old Zanussi was “written off” by the Zanussi Electrolux engineer (it needed one new PCB which they claimed to be over £250 as a spare) and the engineers told her that Zanussi machines are designed to have an average life of 18 months before being discarded. If this is indeed the case I’d steer very clear of Zanussi. (Incidentally a member of staff at the John Lewis shop in Sheffield told me a long time ago that Zanussi and Bosch make the John LEwis range of white goods between them, so if you were looking at a John Lewis washer you could be buying Zanussi, but I don’t know for sure).
Bosch do not make Hotpoint any more as far as I understand it, and Andy (Washerhelp) has made a point about this relationship before. I think that of the two (Bosch / Hotpoint) Bosch are likely to be the better built, however in Hotpoint’s favour, parts are very very easily available for repair by independent service engineers and for DIY if you are competent. I’m not sure about Bosch parts – again Andy (Washerhelp) might be able to clarify this point for you.
I’m not sure what your budget is but if I was looking at spending up to £400 myself and had to choose between Bosch or Hotpoint only, I think on balance I would buy Hotpoint, but be aware that my opinion is swayed very greatly by the fact that I do most Domestic appliance repairs for myself once the guarantee has expired and I have 4 local Hotpoint dealerships very near to home so getting parts would be very easy. If you don’t do repairs yourself, or if Washerhelp replies to say that Bosch parts are also very easy to get, I’d go for Bosch for the reliability statistics.
Hi Liz,
I don’t want to offend you but I’m afraid that some of your points are just plain incorrect:
Firstly, as Peter Astrand says above, using hot water to fill the machine almost always saves *some* energy and will save far more in the winter (when incoming mains water is colder) than in the summer, even in warmer countries this will always be true, but the amount of savings will vary slightly.
Secondly The Energy Saving Trust has recently told me in Writing (as I pointed out a few months ago on here) that ALL new washing machines use MORE energy that OLDER ones. They offered a very poor and hard to accept explanation for why this is, stating that it is because of the new features, however why it is the case is not important to us here: the fact that new machines use more than old (like new TV’s use more than old) means that your point regarding the 10 to 15 year old washer compared to the new one is factually flawed I’m afraid.
Thirdly, although it is true that there are a good few machines available with 7 to 10 KG capacity, I think you need to complete your points by pointing out that the majority of machines on offer these days hold between 5 and 7 Kg, and as far as I can tell, the best brands (e.g. Miele) don’t seem to make any machines that hold more than 6 kg. This has to do with many many factors but two which interest me here are the wear and tear on the machine and the wear and tear on our laundry. Unless we all buy sweat-shop-made clothes from disreputable retailers and throw them away after half a dozen or so washes we want our clothes to last a good while. Even if we don’t care, it is still environmentally unfriendly to throw away clothes and household fabrics after only a short time. In the same way we want our appliances to last a long time and not to need endless new parts; even if we say we don’t care and are happy to keep replacing, this again is environmentally unfriendly. In other words my third point is that even if the very very dubious cold fill argument works true for some users, it is not the only factor to consider in being economical and environmentally friendly. (You may save a few pennies on your metered water but you might spend far more than you save on water on repairs to the washer and new clothes).
Finally, your litre – per – meter fact is. I’m afraid, incorrect in most cases: you work on a rather crude assumption (stated in many plumbing manuals so I appreciate that it isn’t just a fiction of your own making) that all hot water pipes are 22mm in diameter all the way from the source to the point of use. Whilst it was common practice to use 22mm pipes from hot water cylinders to bath taps (in order to get a fast flow so that the bath filled quickly) this is no longer a normal state of affairs. Further more, 22mm pipes were only ever recommended (according to my very reliable local plumber who has worked for almost 40 years in the trade), for baths and, for a very brief period many years ago, for kitchen sink taps. It has always been the case that 15mm pipes were recommended for basins and the feed to dishwasher and washing machine taps (indeed I don’t believe that you can get appliance taps to fit 22mm pipes). The advent of Combi boilers and other “mains pressure” hot water systems has meant that 22mm hot water pipes are now all but unheard of. I don’t actually know the volume of a meter of 15mm pipe, but if a metre of 22mm holds roughly a liter of water, then fairly clearly a metre of 15mm holds considerably less.
Add to this that Combi Boilers are (very sadly) the most popular water heating system now, and these are commonly fitted in the kitchen or utility room, which is where most washers are, and it is easy to see that in most installations the washing machine will be very close to the source of heat, so there is a very short pipe run – much less than the 15 metres that you quote. (Indeed a big negative point for Combi boilers is the time lag in delivering hot water which is why they are generally situated as close as possible to the main point of use, to minimise this time lag.)
You also say that mixing takes more time than heating: this is, I’m afraid, patently untrue: mixing can be (and often is) done using a “TMV3 valve”. These are the devices used in almost all public buildings to regulate the maximum water temperature at a tap, for the safety of the user (especially elderly, infirm or children). These devices are very cheap to buy as stand alone devices and work utterly instantly (they’d be useless in their safety role if they did not). Variable ones are available for only slightly more cost than fixed output ones and in Germany an electronic variation(known by the brand name “Alfa mix”) on the same theme is not only available but recommended by their equivalent of The Energy Saving Trust as a retro-fit device to cold fill only washers in order to get hot water into the machines to save energy. If washer manufacturers wished to fit a mixing valve inside their machines they could do so very easily and cheaply using one of these products. However, this is not really necessary as a simple system, such as used to be universal in older machines, does the job to a very good approximation of the right temperature with no extra parts at all.
Lastly I’m afraid I must point out that your belief that you are washing twice the laundry in half the water and in less time is very very hard to swallow since not only is it the experience of most posters on here that modern machines take a stupidly long length of time to wash, but also professionals such as Washerhelp himself have pointed out times many that modern cold fill machines have to wash for much longer than old hot fill ones to get the clothes clean at lower temperatures. The saving on water is only accurate if the machine is used full to capacity at all times and if it is capable of washing and rinsing properly when full: this is not the case: even Which? state that they cannot find ANY machines which rinse “well” these days; their “best buy” machines (incidentally Miele with 5 or 6Kg capacity) only manage an “acceptable” rinse, and even that is in most cases only on the delicates cycles which, as you state yourself, use more water and less load. For most users this means that you have to either use the machine well under capacity or run extra rinse programmes after the cycle is over or both (especially for people with skin conditions).
However, although I have tried to point out factual issues in your post, I think perhaps the point that has most sway with most people is that the UK is now almost the only country left where there are no hot fill machines on the market: in the USA ALL washers are hot fill (and indeed the majority do not have their own built in heater, relying on hot water fill instead for the wash temperature). In all the mainland EU countries that I know about there are lots of hot fill washers on the market, and in some, such as Germany, it is now a requirement that houses have a hot water point for washing machines as standard; in Australia there are at least 3 brands of hot fill washer and it is encouraged by government backed incentives to use hot fill washers; in Russia there are hot fill washers available and it is “normal” to use them (perhaps the temperatures in Russia have something to do with this as incoming cold water will be so very cold there much of the time); in Norway and Sweden there are hot fill washers too (I know this is Europe and I’ve already mentioned the EU).
In order to save energy there needs to be a range of fill options so that householders can buy what works best with their hot water systems; this seems to be recognised and promoted in most parts of the world but over here we still have pseudo-scientists trying very hard to tell us that black is white and that one size fits all: I’m afraid one size does not fit all and never can do.
I’m not sure what, if any, scientific arguments each and every country has for using hot fill, but the fact that so many places do is a very strong indicator that it is worthwhile.
Your father is clearly right on this one!
Sorry Liz: I really don’t want to shoot everything you say down in flames for the sake of it, but I’m afraid that some of what you seem to be teaching to your clients is, to say the least, an incomplete picture with some grey areas.