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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Quote from SteveB:
It’s perfectly true that by the time the washing machine has stopped filling hardly any hot water will get to (probably) the majority of people’s washing machines. There are plenty of people (including yourself) where this is not the case but the manufacturers claim it’s the case for the “majority”. It’s certainly true for my own washing machine, which would hardly get a drop of hot water on a mixed fill wash because it’s so far away from the hot water cylinder and the gravity fed water pressure is just too low.
I’m not pro cold-fill washing machines, though I understand and have described at length the arguments manufactures gave for abandoning the hot water valve. Where I disagree with manufacturers is when they think it’s best to design washing machines that are efficient in this area only for the “majority” and ignore the minority (which is likely to be be a significant percentage).
I don’t think in these environmental and energy-saving times it’s good enough to design washing machines that are efficient for only the majority of customers. I believe they should all have a hot water valve, and be sophisticated enough to work efficiently according to the environment it’s placed in and not according to a perceived majority set up. There should be an option to customise the washing machine for use with solar powered heating, combination boiler or gravity fed hot water cylinder. They should also be able to be told if the customer never uses biological detergent which is the case for a lot of people because optimum washing practice is different for both types of detergent.
The argument about not taking in much water was made when the average drum size was only 5Kg, and these days it’s 6Kg, with 7Kg and larger becoming more common with larger capacity drums. So it’s fair to assume that if the larger capacity drum washing machines use more water there is more time for hot water to get to the machine. This does seem to weaken the argument about not getting enough water to the machine in time but I’m not sure it totally destroys the argument.
Whilst it’s technically true to say the heat from this water will be transferred into the floorboards and walls I think it’s still wasted hot water. It won’t make any noticeable difference to the warmth of the house, and in summer we definitely don’t need extra heat in the house.
I don’t mean to be factious when I make this analogy, but I can’t think of one involving a legitimate practice. If I draw a bowlful of water off and just leave it in the bowl until it goes cold that water was clearly wasted. I don’t think I could argue that it wasn’t wasted because the heat only transferred to the kitchen and contributed to heating the house. With the best will in the world when a washing machine draws hot water it fills the pipework with hot water which is effectively wasted – though why manufacturers would care about this has always been puzzling to me. No one would have thought about it until they brought it up as an argument for getting rid of the hot water valve.
Hello Phil: Washing machines are designed to raise the temperature of the main wash slowly which they claim gives better results. In particular if you use biological detergents they say wash results are improved if starting from cold and slowly warming up.
Also, if washing on a 40 degree wash programme washing machines might be designed to move on once the temperature reaches 40 degrees so if the water is already 40 degrees from the start it could also reduce wash efficiency by shortening the wash regardless of whether you use biological detergent or not.
However, I don’t see anything wrong with using the mixer valve to warm the incoming water a little – especially in winter when the cold water is pretty cold indeed. I would guess something like 15 degrees would help but not hinder though that’s just a guess.
Does anyone benefit from enzyme detergents if they mostly wash cottons? Cottons benefit from a fairly hot wash using standard detergents and may be whiter after an occasional wash at 90 deg C.
Also what is the cost and CO2 impact of extra or more expensive detergents compared to the CO2 impact of heating the water in the machine by CHP, solar or gas condensing boilers? Could the detergents be worse – has anyone come across reports?
It’s disturbing to see trends in design of washing machines which seem totally contrary to the spirit of A labelling. Over 30 years ago an expert in Denmark proposed that new washing machines should use more energy-efficient motors and controls and they should totally stop heating water in the machine. Instead they should have intelligent hot fill to enable the machine to take in water at up to 60 deg c (assuming the DHW tank contains water at 60 deg C) or if needed it could mix the hot and cold (assuming unvented plumbing) and take in water at 40 deg C. At the time, all UK washing had the cruder form of hot fill which we’re lamenting the disappearance of.
But here we are 30 years later, with it appears all the washing machines on sale only being suitable for people who wear synthetic fabrics and use enzyme detergents (which are damaged above 40 deg C). Some people are allergic to enzyme detergents and can’t tolerate them.
I think if anyone had the time to monitor their WM’s elec. use and submit it to an independent organisation then quasi-government bodies like the EST would be forced to back down. It’s not the first subject on which they’re technically totally incorrect but are embarrassed to change (i.e. to reverse) their advice to the public.
Cheers
David
It seems that the main argument against a hot water feed is that the water getting to the machine is manly just the the cold water from the pipes, because they need “so little” e.g. 6 litres. So I was surprised to find that my 6-year-old Bosch uses 60 litres. Things must have improved in the last few years? Well, I checked Siemans website and the first machine I came across (WM12S383GB) uses 56 litres.
This changes everything, doesn’t it?
Richard, these figures are total water usage including all the rinses, the amount used on wash is the only relevant amount and is much lower.
I don’t mean to be rude but we are going round in circles again.
a) Andy’s point (post 493) is correct in so far as it’s only the main wash water and, in a small number of machines, the final rinse water, that are going to use any hot water at all.
b) The argument is still completely false as modern machines use so little water to rinse that a large proportion of the total consumption is actually on the wash phase. E.g. at least 6 machines that I can think of use so little on rinses (which is why they get diabolical Which? reviews for rinsing) that just over 40% of the total used is on washing. Siemens don’t make any that I’m thinking of however if we take the example that Richard has posted in post 492, and assume that machine uses water in a similar way to the 6 I’m thinking of, then roughly 25 litres of water is used on the wash phase…..which IMHO is worth drawing hot for in anyone’s money.
For what it’s worth, the cold fill only argument was probably dreamt up by some idiotic civil servant who didn’t understand the first thing about washers, or by some washer designer who hoped the customers didn’t know anything, back in the days when washers actually did rinse properly, thereby using probably 75% of the water on rinses. I still don’t accept the argument because too many people, from all walks of life and with all levels of expertise, have the proof in their own homes that it just doesn’t work, however I’ll concede that when washers used maybe up to 70 litres to do a full cycle, but only about 15 of those were heated, then at least on paper the cold fill only idea may have looked like it had some merit.
The cold fill argument is not just about getting enough hot water into the machine, they also claim you get better wash results starting from cold when using biological detergent. A lot has changed since they went over to cold fill and it’s probably time for them to reassess this issue .
With the advent of larger drum capacities using a lot more water, the fact that many people don’t use biological detergents and the growing number of people with solar powered hot water there’s a case to argue that washing machines should be more sophisticated in this area and not just cater for a majority.
I bought a new machine a few years ago (a Tricity Bendix AW 1201 W) and was surprised to find it only had cold feed. I had recently built my house with solar/wood heated water so was tempted to use hot feed. The manufacturers said I shouldn’t do that, but I took a chance and connected to the hot supply.
It seems to have been no problem for the machine so far. There are some inconveniences though.
We need to monitor the temperature of the hot cylinder before deciding what to wash. Our cylinder has a thermometer on it so that is easily done.
In the winter the woodburner runs most of the time and the water is usually at around 40 degrees. No problems there.
During sunny summer periods the water can get up to 60 degrees so we can’t wash delicate stuff then. We just wait until some of the hot has been used for other things.
Of course the rinsing takes a lot of hot water so, during moderately good weather, the washing uses more hot water than we’d like.
That seems to be the biggest disadvantage so far – too much hot water used by the machine when some of the family also want showers.
I’d like to switch to a dual fill machine if I can find a simple one for a good price, and can be convinced that it will use the hot and cold feeds in a worthwhile way. Perhaps the Statesman mentioned in post 501 above will fit the bill for me.
Any more information or advice on that would be great.
Hi, We are in the position of having Solar heating and a combie boiler. But now only use the hot water for washing, washing up showers and cloths washing. The cloths washer is an Old Hoover that is getting to the end of its days. If what you say in you article is correct then our solar panel’s are not working to their full potential and could be binned. How ever if I fitted a temperature control mixer to the cold feed of the new washing machines set to say 40 would that get round the problem. After all the Machine is only going to heat it to 40 any way. Incidentally I gather that our American cousins fit hot water circulation as standard and I suspect their washing machines can accept hot water as standard.
Why can’t they give US the choice of purchasing what WE want. Make both cold fill machines for those who want them and hot fill for those who prefer them. I am fed up with being dictated to about what I can purchase. I think they are trying to keep the price of washing machines down. Thus – cut back on the hot fill parts. I am having my Hotpoint repaired each time. Waiting for a change of heart. BRING BACK THE HOT & COLD FILL