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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Sorry to pour cool water on things: I mentioned the Statesman machine on here a year or so ago and I got in touch with Statesman at the time. to ask about how it compared to the utter sh1t LG that I had at the time. Statesman’s technical people were very helpful but they said that like the LG it would only draw any hot on 60 and 90 degree washes and when I explained that my LG only took about a teaspoonful even on those temp’s they said that they “could not promise that theirs would be any better”.
Subsequently the local shop which sold me the reconditioned August 1983 Hoover washer told me that they knew of statesman and rated them highly for reliability and build but “had a feeling the control boards were the same as LG use from the same factory”. Obviously if this is the case then it’s unlikely they’ll use hot water properly any more than the LG did. Also, given that the LG blew up 4 times in 18 months and was utterly useless at washing and rinsing (and pretty damned poor at spinning), I’m afraid my experience also suggests poor reliability if they use common parts with LG, but that latter point is pure speculation on the part of the local shop, so let’s hope Statesman don’t actually use LG parts after all.
As for other points raised today I’d just like to reiterate that (as Barbara and I know so well, and Richard et al keep backing us up at least in greater part) the old “low tech” solution of simply having two valves and no fancy control gear actually works far better than anything new and crucially (as well as using hot water) old machines do actually get the washing clean, rinsed and spun to a good standard and they do it in a fraction of the time of new machines. I’m all in favour of “intelligent” controls, IF IF IF IF IF they still get the job done, but it doesn’t seem that this happens. (Maybe the Miele Allwater, which Miele refuse to import to the UK and refuse to explain why they don’t, is a good and “intelligent” machine, but since Miele refuse to let us try one over here it’s hard to tell.)
In fact, the “intelligent solution is so childishly simple that I have have a mind to patent it. All that is needed is this:
1. The hot and cold supply feed into a thermostatic valve similar to that used in thermostatoc showers.
2. The temperature required could be set by a control on the machine or, more sophisticatedly, by an instruction from the programmer according to the programme selected.
3. The output from the thermostatic valve feeds into a two-way valve controlled by a heat sensitive switch which bypasses the incoming water into the machine’s normal waste outlet until it has reached the correct temperature, when it switches and feeds into the drum.
4. To allow for those occasions when there is insufficient hot water in the house supply to trigger the bypass, a simple timer will ensure that the two-way valve switches over after a pre-determeined time (which could be set by the owner in accordance with the needs of the house’s plumbing).
5. If it is felt necessary to admit some cold water first (as Statesman suggest) then the same timer could be set to switch the flow to the drum for a few seconds prior to switching it to the outlet.
Simple to contrive and using no more valves than are used in conventional dual-fill machines – albeit, I accept, slightly more complex valves.
HI, Thanks for all the helpful comments. It seems the statesman is definitely not for me and seems
closer to a cold fill. (sorry washerhelp ) but it is exactly an “old school” washing machine that i want.
I am not the slightest bit interested in economy in fact the cold fill machines use more electricity as they take so long. most of the extra programs on my machine i do not use and i do not suppose I am unique..
Thank you Adrian for your honest explanation, It is disappointing not to be able to buy the old type machine , but the option of reconditioned remains. (hopefully). Is all i want from a w.m. is clean , well
rinsed clothes that do not take a long time spent in very little water with undiluted soap powder.
I believe washing machines should be designed to run as economically as the customer desires, and if desired (as per barbara’s last comment) not economically at all. Running “economically” almost always has downsides such as compromises in rinsing ability, taking considerably longer to wash (therefore ironically decreasing the life and reliability of the appliance), not utilising a customers free or cheap plentiful supply of hot water etc. Another example is, if a customer never uses biological detergents they should be able select that as an option so the forced biological friendly processes which add time to the wash process and refuse to use hot water are by-passed..
Well said Barbara!
It occurs to me that over a period of years this board has grown but that the nub of the issue boils down to two very simple things: 1) exactly what Barbara has just posted: users just want a washer that washes things properly, rinses them thoroughly and makes no fuss about doing it. 2) people want to use hot water effectively.
Thinking about this on my way home tonight it occurred to me that there is a such a lot of old loblocks (as they say on the planet anagramania) put about over the use of the hot water. All this nonsense about needing it to be run through the pipes to run hot: firstly in all washers there is some water run into the sump at the start of the fill process. This may be more or less depending on the age and different novelty devices may be fitted to the machine to supposedly minimise the water that goes to the sump never to be seen again, but regardless, the cold water in the pipe before the hot gets there can just run into the sump like it always used to and it won’t be “wasted” at all. Secondly, when you run a hot tap to wash your hands or whatever, you never hear anyone, least of all government ministers and so-called energy saving experts tell you to wash your hands in cold water because by the time the warm water reaches the tap you’re done and the water then cools in the pipe, so why do we get this nonsense spouted at us over the washer filling up?
The more I think about it the more I believe that this is just utter absolute unmitigated loblocks dreamt up by someone only slightly less daft than the body of the public stupid enough to believe it.
Richard’s idea sounds excellent: why don’t you patent it Richard? It sounds to me like a superb solution for the gadget-hungy age in which we live, and with the mixer valve component it actually sounds like a quite sensible advance on old technology that could result in even better results than ancient machines like my Hoover.
One last thought, and I know I’ve posted this before several times over the years: it’s all fine and dandy trying to con us into thinking that modern washers are better for the environment and our bank balances, but not only is this proven untrue with the cold fill argument, also we need to factor in the ruining of our laundry by the over-lengthy and under-lubricated (by water) wash process, and the wear on the machines (as highlighted by washerhelp). We’d have to save a hell of a lot of money on electricity to make up for what we have to spend on new clothes and new machines and the economics of that simply doesn’t stack up at all, irrespective of the fact that users like Barbara, Richard and I have found that actually the energy saving claims are simply untrue to start with.
Are there any Which? subscribers on here apart from Richard and I? If so, how about a concerned effort from all Which? members who read this to lobby Which? to demand that they get some answers from the Government about why these untruths are peddled, from Miele about why they won’t sell their hot and cold fill model in the UK (though they sell their commercial hot and cold fill range here) and from other European countries about why, if there was any truth in the cold fill argument, they’ve all turned their backs on it?
I did write to Which? (twice) and received no answer. To be fair it was only responding to one of their regular requests for feedback, not a special letter to the Editor.
Dave: Water cooling in pipes is not nonsense. It affects my washing machine very much, as it does many other people. My washing machine is so far away from the hot water supply that no hot water would get in at all on a normal fill for wash. Therefore a hot water valve is completely pointless and would waste my already heated hot water for no reason or benefit. You can’t argue with physics.
In many cases the amount of water needed to run in before the water runs hot is a lot more than will fit in a sump hose though it’s a good idea having it go into the sump hose and being sealed off by the ball floats as that would reduce a fair amount of the wasted cool water. Trouble is, if there isn’t any wasted water because the water is instantly hot, such as because the machine’s already recently just done a load, or maybe the hot supply is from a supply that provides hot water pretty fast, then hot water would enter the sump and be wasted in there. The only answer is genuinely intelligent systems able to cope with all scenarios.
I don’t follow your second analogy at all I’m afraid. If you had to wash your hands with a limited, set amount of water, which wasn’t much, and that produced the same problem in that by the time the water ran hot enough the tap had already shut off before you could wash in hot water then it would be a similar issue. However, if that was the case then experts would surely advice that you would save money by washing with cold instead of drawing hot water into the pipework to be wasted :-)
Washerhelp, surely it’s not beyond you to fit a spur piece of pipe near your washing machine to run off the cold water from the hot pipe? You don’t have to pour it into a sump, just down a plughole somewhere convenient. Apologies if that sounds rude, but it only took me a couple of days to figure that out and ask a plumber to arrange it when he was next in. I don’t think this is the 1st time it’s been mentioned here either.
I fear that this argument as well as coming up with some very good points from time to time is also at times going round in circles.
Hot water left in the pipes is not a major issue if you have a compact plumbing system. Some people do.
Even if you do not, it is still cheaper to heat say five litres water off the sun or a CHP system and leave three in the pipe than heat two litres with electricity, and it is better for the environment, by emitting less CO2. Sometimes the water left in the pipes will stay warm enough to be useful to a later user – it all depends.
The way for washing machines to reject the first flow of cold water and take in only hot water was existing technology in the 1970s, when a professor in Denmark suggested doing this.
The notion that water is as scarce a resource as energy is ludicrous, in the region where I live (Welsh Water’s supply area.) But the EU label treats water as if it were a more costly resource than energy.
As I may have said before, I think the most productive way forward would be for someone “representing” this forum to put these points to a body that may listen, whether this be a Parliamentary Committee, Which? or the EU, since they usually take comments from “organisations” more seriously than comments from individuals.
@Washerhelp.
Not sure if I was unclear in what I meant or whether you are deliberately playing the “cold fill is good” card.
Either way here is what I hope will be some clarification of my previous post:
1). Water cooling in pipes is nonsense: not that it doesn’t actually cool: of course it does, but that the energy “wasted” by water cooling in the pipes is a minuscule fraction of the energy used by washers filling with cold water and heating it electrically. The argument that it is more energy efficient / more economical to fill cold and heat with the washer’s electric immersion heater is unmitigated rubbish and there is a gathering wealth of evidence to back this up.
2). Water wasted in sump when already hot: same argument applies as above: the energy “wasted” by hot water flowing direct to sump / drain is such a tiny fraction of the energy used to heat cold water in the machine that it is a nonsensical argument.
3). Hand washing analogy: again, the same argument about water wasted in pipes applies but my point is that no one suggests washing hands in mains cold water to save energy. You seem to suggest that “experts” might suggest this if they felt we used enough water to wash hands. If any so-called “expert” is stupid enough to make this recommendation then we really have lost the plot. Not only would hand washing in cold water be detrimental to everyone’s joints and muscles, and probably agonising beyond belief to sufferers of arthritis / rheumatism, but it would also be unhygienic. If any idiot did suggest that we wash hands in cold water to save energy I believe and hope that the medical profession would shout very loudly about the lunacy of the idea. Ergo, water cooling in pipes is a known and accepted necessary fact of everyday healthy living and using it as a reason not to fill washers with hot water is demonstrable nonsense.
I’m never quite sure whether you are an advocate of hot and cold fill washers (in any shape or form) or whether you are actually in agreement with the government / manufacturers on this. If you were just playing devil’s advocate then I apologise for the snotty corrections here.