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.
Spares
Spares4Appliances is a spares company run by repair engineers who understand all about spare parts for appliances.
I confess I didn’t initially spot Liz’s 15 metres of pipe run statement. I have just checked and the pipe run from my cylinder to my washing machine tap is around 5 metres of 15 mil. This is probably less than some as I live in a bungalow, but I doubt that many normal houses have 15 metre pipe runs. 15 metres, after all, is nearly 50 feet! Normal ceiling height is about 8 feet (say 10 feet with floor and ceiling superstructure) so two floors would be about 20 feet and to reach 50 feet the run from the roof above the kitchen to the cylinder would have to be 30 feet. Possible, I accept, but unlikely since it would be a bad builder who deliberately sited the kitchen as far away from the cylinder as could be.
When I have time I’ll draw off some water to see how much comes out before it runs hot.
Hi Dave and Jim,
Bosch and Hotpoint have never had anything to do with each other. The only relationship is many years ago Bosch made Hotpoint dishwashers and that is it. This was the 1980’s.
These days Bosch are not too bad for their money, not as good as my 16 year old WFF2000. The quality has some what been watered down since then.
Hotpoint is another story, they are Indesit based, electronic failures are very very common. Bearing failures are the other major problem. I had a Hotpoint and at 4 loads a week the timer and PCB went kaput after only 2 and a half years. Any Merloni made machine (Hotpoint, Indesit, Ariston and many more) are the worst machines available today, they are absolute rubbish, not the good solid machines of 10-15 years ago, just more British companies that are going to the wall.
Bosch are far far superior to any Hotpoint machine of today, even modern Bosch aren’t so bad.
So to Jim I would recommend Bosch, the German built machines not the cheaper Slovenian/Slovakian made ones. Bosch spares are fairly easy to obtain. Miele may be good but use restricted servicing practices, their spares prices are extortianate (sp). Although repairs may be few, when one comes up it could write the machine off, even if it was designed to last many more years. ISE are different, independants look after these and there is no mark up on spares, the ISE 10 will do 8000-12000 cycles before it starts to wear out.
HTH,
Oliver.
Hi Liz,
Everyone is different there are circumstances where cold fill only would save money and others where hot and cold fill will save. No bodies house is designed the same, combi boilers supply hot water almost instantly so if it is 5 feet from the washer, why would cold only be cheaper, especially on 60, 70 and 90/95oC washes?
It just boils down to the fact we should have choice, we have our own requirements and do not need telling what we can and cannot have.
Many people (a growing number) have free solar heated hot water, so why use expensive electricity to heat water when it is free? Even if you have to run the cold off first it still makes sense.
Like Phil says you cannot use every litre of water. When you have a bath do you run the cold off before starting to fill it, of course you do, so why not for a washing machine or dishwasher. I do it every day for the dishwasher so it does a hot prewash and I have a Combi boiler. Its down to choice, I do not mind losing a few litres, I would rather my dishwasher washed properly with the hot water than having to stand in the sink cleaning the by hand because of a cold prewash and then the hot mainwash baking the food on to the dishes.
This blog is about peoples own personal chioce, no about what the masses (supposably) want.
All the best,
Oliver.
Guys,
Thanks for your comment – none of which I take personally and all of which I take on board.
I took the opportunity to walk the 10 foot down the office to talk with my expert on washing machines and have confirmed with them that with one of the leading manufacturers who sells in the UK and has 3 major brands on the market the average washing machine sold is 7kg (with 60% of one of those brands being 8kg) in a standard machine.
In addition, the energy usage on all of these machines is substantially reduced compared to any machine over 8-10 years old.
Dave thank you so much for the information from the Energy Savings Trust – I’m particularily concerned with the statement from the Energy Savings Trust. The EST is a non government organisation with part funding from the government (I still don’t see how a NGO can be funded by the government and be a NGO!) and I’m very, very worried by the statement.
Time to Change’s website says that a 10 year old washing machine changed now would save you at least 14% on energy. This is without going for a machine that is targeted as energy efficient.
My understanding on how the EST award their logo is that an appliance must be AAA rated. This doesn’t allow for the A-10% appliances out there etc which by definition, if they are -10% on energy they are 10% MORE efficient than an A rated on energy than other machines and must therefore be using less energy.
In addition, the washing machine for EST should have a 1600rpm spin – for those of you who have had holes appear in your washing you will understand that 1600 spin is only for towels and bedding – not your tee-shirts and delicates.
I can also think of one major manufacturer that has all of their washing machines washing in 20 – 30% less time than 10 years ago as standard and it’s part of their advertising and marketing blurb.
Also, my apologies for an error in my text – I wrote 15m and it was a typo – I meant 5 – 10m. My only excuse for not checking my writing was severe cold and coughing.
BTW – as I’m on a water meter I don’t run off the cold water when filling the bath (and I’m too lazy to collect it to water the garden – plus we’ve had the most terrible rain for 2 months so the garden doesn’t need it).
wow – this has been a stimulating reading.
I’m going to have a coffee and wait for your reponses. This has really made me think and question what I thought I knew. Keep it up guys.
L
Hi again Liz,
Well, we certainly agree on one thing straight off: the EST’s statement is indeed extremely worrying. However, I came to get that statement from them in circumstances described in great detail further up this board but which I will summarise here.
My 26 year old hot fill washer finally broke down 18 months ago.
I conducted vast amounts of research before buying new and bought a EST recommended machine with hot fill – which the EST and the manufacturer state explicitly gets it’s EST award because it uses hot fill.
A year in and the machine takes around 3 hours to do a 40 degree cycle which the 26 year old machine did in barely 50 minutes and, much more worryingly, this new EST recommended machine uses about 4Kw of electricity to do the wash but the old machine used barely half a kW.
If you want all the rest of the detail please trawl through the earlier posts.
Because of this ludicrous situation I asked EST to let me see their test report for this machine (which the manufacturer’s engineers have been to at my insistence and tested and declared to be operating exactly as intended – specifically allowing only a 10 second bust of hot water in on ANY cycle at all, and in effect being a cold fill machine).
After a lot of battling with EST they finally stated plainly that the test results were not available due to “commercial sensitivity” but made the statement that it would be expected that a new machine uses more electricity because “all new washing machines will use more electricity than old models due to the extra features”.
I am sure that you will agree that the cycle time and electricity consumption are completely unacceptable and make the EST recommendation a laughing stock.
When I pointed this out to EST and requested that they confirm that they really were telling me that all other current machines use even more electricity they replied saying that yes, that was correct, and adding that they only test machines which the manufacturers ask them to and so there may well be better machines out there, but they can’t recommend them because they have never tested them. (The EST representative who wrote to me also added, again worryingly, that she didn’t really understand the benefits of solar water heating properly so could not comment on that specific aspect of my enquiry.)
Combine these two official statements with the knowledge that is shared extensively on this board by those of us who may have no official capacity but are intelligent enough to know that hot and cold fill connections simply follow the laws of physics and you can, I think, see where we are all coming from on here.
It is especially frustrating for those of us with Solar water heating and those of us who have relatives or friends in other countries where the governments and whatever their equivalent of NGO’s like EST are telling people that they must use hot fill as it is better for the environment. It is like being continually slapped in the face.
As for the time for change website, personally I would trust that to a similar level as trusting a wild lion to wet nurse a new born baby and I have already read a number of newspaper reports and heard several consumer affairs programmes on Radio 4 which suggest, far more diplomatically, that my scorn for TFC is widely shared.
At the end of the day the EST, or anyone else, can sit there and try to baffle us and justify their arguments for cold fill until the cows come home, but when people in the position that I am in, or Oliver or Richard or any of the other regulars here, who have taken out a very old hot and cold fill machine, added a new one to the same house and used it in the same way, and seen their wash times double, treble or quadruple and their electricity consumption do much the same, it’s pretty obvious who is right as the facts speak for themselves.
Even allowing for the very misleading A to G ratings, which quote energy and water use per Kg of load, it is still plain to see that new machines are not doing what they are claimed to do. As you will read further up the board, my old washer had a capacity of 5Kg, my new one has a capacity of 7Kg. That’s not quite 1.5 times the capacity, so if it used 1.5 times the power (and water and time) it would be level pegging, but to use 4 times the power (never mind water and time) shows that it is very clearly not as economical as the old one.
In the old washer I could do 3 loads at 40 degrees in the same time and for 0.75 of the cost that I can do one load in the new machine ……. now come on Liz, tell me how that is an improvement? The EST have admitted that they can’t!
Hi Liz,
The modern cold fill washing machines are just plain rubbish. They wash poorly due to low water levels and they cannot rinse properly either, I know I have eczema and dermatitis. I bought a Hotpoint back in 2005, It washed for well over 2 hours and its performance was abysmol. It didn’t take it long to heat up (about 20 minutes on a 60oC wash), but it kept on washing and washing, for sometimes over 1 hour. It faded my clothes and there was so little water in the rinses nothing was rinsed properly. luckily it packed up.
So I bought a reconditioned Bosch, about 16 years old or so. It has had to be connected to cold fill using a Y adaptor, not through choice and the plumbing was put in especially for the cold fill Hotpoint. I only do 60oC washes. It fills hot only on them so if it had a hot supply it would save alot of money letting the combi-boiler heat the water instead of expensive electricity.
You say you can wash twice as much laundry in half the water with a modern machine. Both myself and Dave can say thats rubbish, both our modern machines cannot clean as well as the older ones, which use sensible water levels. We are on a water meter as well and I do not care about extra water use from the washing machine, I’d rather pay a BIT more money out and have properly washed and rinsed laundry.
It is outragious that a modern washing machine takes up to 3 hours to complete one load, who has time to hang around for that? Unless you put it on when you go to work or go to bed (not likely the Bosch is in a bedroom). This is not safe practice though. The Bosch can do a normal 60oC cotton wash in about 1hour 15 minutes. Even the White Economy 60oC (a longer 60oC wash) is no longer than 1 hour 30 minutes. These times are from the machine being on cold fill as well, it would be less if I had a hot water supply.
Plus, what about a dishwasher, having that on a hot supply is most beneficial. Thanks to Daves experience with his Miele, I decided to put the Tecnik (Bosch made) on to a hot water supply and it performance has inproved greatly. For more information on this please see “CAN YOU CONNECT A DISHWASHER TO A HOT WATER SUPPLY?”.
It would seem to me that people such as EST are talking absolute bo11ocks, it stands to reason there should be choice (what everyone on this board has said all along), as like I have said before we have INDIVIDUAL requirements, we are not robots.
Cold fill may work for some but certainly not others.
All the Best,
Oliver.
PS. I have had to connect the Siltal to a cold only supply as I split the hot supply with a Y adaptor for the dishwasher and washing machine to share, but it kept on leaking (had a flood on new years day), so have given the hot supply to the dishwasher and connected the washing machine to the two cold pipes. It has hardly made a difference to the Siltal because it filled hot and cold at the same time even on the hot programmes. It still does a 70oC wash in 1 hour 10 minutes. So it would seem that it doesn’t use hot water properly either, we were paying to heat it with the boiler and the machine cooled it back down with cold water, seem stupid to me. The wash times have only gone up by about 5 minutes.
And a Happy New Year to everyone!
The Rex Sunny does look like it ticks all the boxes, and the price is very attractive, even with shipping to the UK.
I’m very tempted just to order one right now; my only concern is, I think, what Richard was hinting at: namely that if it’s bought from overseas what happens if you need service or spares?
Electrolux don’t enjoy the best reliability reputation according to Which? (not that I completely trust Which? either but it’s usually a good starting point). If you had one of these in the UK and it broke down would you be able to pop along and buy a spare locally? Would you be able to order stapes on line to fit yourself? Or would you find that like LG, getting parts is all but impossible unless the engineer brings and fits them – in which case how do you find an engineer for a non-standard machine?
Is this another manufacturer that we should collectively be hounding and demanding that they import this model for UK sale, like Miele’s AllWater?
It’s not to do with Hot fill washers directly, but if any of us needs any more evidence that Energy Saving Trust and Government advice is, shall we say politely, to be taken with a pinch of salt, listen to today’s episode of “Money Box” on Radio 4, the last 3 or 4 minutes of the programme, about the Boiler Scrappage Scheme (which is as I’m sure you know a Government scheme and it’s being managed by the EST).
In a nutshell, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on and you’d have to be very well off to be able to afford to take part – rather like buying an EST recommended washer (or any cold fill washer) and having to pay more to run it than an old one!!
If they ever announce a “washer scrappage scheme” (other than the “time to change” rubbish) I would love to hear Money Box’s views on that!!!!!
Hello Dave: I posted about that the other day on the Do we really need to dump our old inefficient appliances to save money and the world? comments.
Also you might be interested in the video on the Are all these environmental issues just a big money making con? article (at the bottom of the article).
Hi All
I have solar hot water and even today between the snow showers, I was getting 47’C from my tubes.
Liz uses some very simplistic arguments for cold water fill, the same ones given by the machine makers. That by the time hot water reaches your machine it won’t need much more to complete the fill.
But any heat lost by the water is still in the house, so not lost only transferred. And the water reaching the machine will be higher temp than cold, reducing electricity bills and time taken to heat up.
My Ariston has been on hot water to cold feed all year but my domestic goddess wife complains about the state of her clothes that have had a hot final rinse.
So, I need one that will take hot water for first rinse, hot until the selected temp is achieved in the drum for main wash and cold only for final rinse. The Electrolux (Rex) sunny sounds right but £500 + shipping is a bit steep.
If I could get hold of a nearly new machine that had a dead controller, I would make my own controller to do as I want