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’ve come up with a low(ish)-tech solution to get a reasonably satisfactory solution to the hot water fill.
As anyone who has followed my experiments since the sad demise of my Electron 1100 will know, I now have 22mm feed pipes from the cold water header tank and also the hot water cylinder, to the inlet valves on my nice new LG washer.
The washer is clearly programmed to allow only the tiniest amount of hot water in via the hot valve.
I’m aware that Miele make a washer (not available in the UK as far as I can see) that uses hot water fill and also rinses in warm water as that is supposed to give better rinsing results. My LG also has a “Medic rinse” option which warms up the water to 35 degrees on the last rinse, again supposedly to rinse more effectively.
I’ve also read that many washing machine manufacturers work on the basis that “cold” water is about 23 degrees C (which I believe it is in many European countries).
So…….
I’ve got a TMV3 valve (those under-sink mixing valves that are used in hospitals and schools and so on to limit the hot water temperature by mixing in cold to a pre-set temperature -usually about 43 degrees) and I’m going to fit this next weekend so that the cold feed to the washer actually gets water at about 37/38 degrees – as I don’t wash anything at less than 40 degrees I figure that this means that no matter what the washer tries to do it will get water that is at least warm, and if it really does take in hot water it will get water at full cyclinder temp (which on a sunny day is about 75 degrees from solar alone) in the hot feed mixed with the water at 30-odd degrees from the “cold” feed.
As this new washer (supposedly) uses less water than the old ones, and as a warm rinse should be efficient enough to mean I no longer need to use the Rinse++ option (thus removing two of the 5 rinses and only doing 3) I reckon that the amount of hot water drawn for rinsing will be minimal and not worry me at all in terms of how much I have left for other things, but the amount of time and electricity saved by feeding warm or hot water into the washer should be very noticeable.
All that technicality aside, another plus point in favour of the new LG is that I washed 2 pairs of curtains at the weekend, which to be honest had not been washed for over a year, and on the “Duvet” programme they washed very well and spun pretty dry without a pre-wash or intensive option. (Not, I hasten to add, that I ever had any complaint about the Hoover washing the curtains in the past, but it could only do one pair at once.)
Keep you posted!
I accept what you say about the ideal situation of having a separate mixing chamber and it may well be that manufacturers might eventually go down this road. But a thermostatic admission valve would be a cheap enough thing to fit and would certainly be better than no provision for hot water admission at all.
As I see it, the programming would be such that, for any cycle that needed hot water the valve would admit water from the hot supply (only) until such time as it ran hot enough to operate the thermostat, when it would draw hot and cold as needed to deliver water at the programmed temperature. Then it would admit as much water as needed to fill the machine. If final fill were not hot enough, then the machine’s heater would warm it up. Careful programming could ensure that water was always drawn from the hot supply, even for a cold pre-wash, thus ensuring that hot water was available as soon as needed for subsequent cycles.
To minimise the amount of heating requires, it would be sensible for the programming to be such that the themostatic valve were set just slightly higher than needed thus allowing for the inevitable cooling of the water as it heated up the drum and the washing.
berlin: All washing machines are controlled by thermostats so if the water was already 30 Deg for a 40 degree wash it would just heat up the extra 10 Deg. If the water was already above 40 Deg on a 40 Deg wash it would not heat up any further.
The main problem with doing this, apart from the inconvenience, is that wash efficiency could be affected. Wash cycles are designed to take a specific amount of time in order to allow the washing detergent to work properly. This is particularly the case for cold fill washing machines where the wash cycle programme is designed to work with cold water and heat it slowly up to the correct temperature. If the water is already quite warm or hot to start with then it could affect how long it takes to complete a wash. There is every chance it would shorten the wash programme enough to affect wash efficiency because machines are usually designed to wash until the relevant temperature has been reached and then to move on.
At the end of the day, washing laundry, especially to the standard is required by the energy labels (all washing machines now want to have an A rating for wash efficiency) needs time. Biological detergents in particular work best when starting in cold water with water temperature increasing slowly.
By all means experiment, but don’t forget that the hot water you introduce from a shower will probably cost more than letting the washing machine heat it up.
I have lived in Asia for over 40 years and almost nobody uses hot water washing machines. Back 50 years or so we were all slapping our clothes
on rocks in the local river and I imagine the clothes were just as clean as
ever. Why all this need to heat up (and throw away) vast amounts of
expensively heated water? Wash in your clothes in cold water and see
what you think – there really is no difference.
Also – do not forget to use environmentally friendly wash balls instead of
all that soap.
Sounds like typical electrical goods manufacturers mumbo jumbo to me. The fact is that they all don’t make them with a hot fill because for some reason they have all decided not to and that is why the public don’t have much of a range to choose from. All that would be needed is for a heat sensor to detect when the hot water feed runs hot enough (i.e. all the hot water that has cooled in the pipe is allowed to wash through the machine).
When it detects that the hot feed is hot enough for the cycle temperature selected then it should not be beyond the realms of posibility that in this day and age of highly technological and engineering breakthroughs that the electronic plug is put into the preverbial plug hole and the machine can warn you that now is the time to load your machine. That the machine is primed and ready. The end result of this obviously possible addition to washing machines would be that less Electrical Kilowatts would be used to heat the washing water, whatever the temperature of the cycle since the correct water cycle temperature could simply be achieved by the electronically turning on and off the hot and cold feeds as appropriate, until the water in the bottom of the machine is monitored to be at the right temperature (an electrical heater could still be used as a backup heat top up but it would only be needed to add heat to make up for the colder temperature of the clothes). Thus encouraging the use of the hottest water from the hottest sustainably powered water tank.
If the water from the hot tank has been heated for free by the sun or a wood/biomass burner for example then the savings on not having to pay for electricity to heat up your washing machine water as much would be quite great over even a short period of time. Whatever they were they would be savings, both financially for the individual and physically for reducing the amount of CO2 that is subsequently released into our earths atmosphere. It seems that there is not the will to encourage the savings on electricity that could be made not just with washing machines but with most electrical items. Although, without doubt washing machines (and other electrical goods) have been made more efficient they are only more efficient in regards to the amount of electricity that they use to heat water compared to the old machines which were even more hungry for fossil fuel powered electricity.
As markets grow worldwide, white goods companies can afford to reduce the amount of electricity that each appliance is using because overall the number of machines in service worldwide is increasing much more dramatically and overall more and more electricity is being used despite the efficiency increases. So they get brownie points for pretending to do their bit for the environment and also still manage to keep fossil fuel companies that power power stations very much in business and the public very much dependent.
If you think this is just a bit too synical then why are all TVs still made with a standby button?
Mike.
This is similar to my own suggestion #97 since this is similar to what a thermostatic valve would do, with the enhancement that you suggest an electronic valve, rather than my purely mechanical idea.
You idea of letting cold water “wash through” the machine until the supply is hot enough would be a good one – although there would need to be some kind of clever override to make sure that the water didn’t run for days if there happened to be no hot supply. My own suggestion would do that automatically, if less accurately, by simply using the pressure switch already extant in all machines.
Hi washerhelp thanks for the really informative site, Dave’s postings are a joy though i note even he still can’t get the LG to draw Hot water.
You may recall i posted re LG H&C fill in July. Despite considerable correspondance LG are still unable to advise how much Hot water their machine should draw for different loads. The second engineer that called told me that he wouild get the info from their technical people and then had to say he couldn’t.
I am now at an impass with LG and will need to take this misselling to Trading Standards. Their last reply follows here … ‘We believe the machine works to specification, however if the customer feels that it does not, please can he provide documented evidence showing this, this must also be accompanied with a qualified independent engineers report. At this stage we can not comment further and our technical engineer can not assist this customer further as we have not established any manufacturers fault relating to this product’.
Know doubt my getting an independant engineer would invalidate the guarantee if he were to examine the machines workings … perhaps that’s what they want!
My advice hasn’t changed … if you are looking for an H&C fill machine don’t waste your money on an LG, it’s really just a cold fill machine. I also note that all the current LG machines are cold fill so a H&C fill is old stock.
If i get anything more i’ll keep you informed.
Cheers Albert and thanks for your further contribution:
I think the problem you have is that you are looking at this from a misselling point of view and are rightly very disappointed, but it’s not necessarily fair to call it miss-selling unless they’ve advertised the advantages of a hot valve.
You bought the LG because it had a hot valve whereas virtually all other washing machines don’t. However, do LG actually advertise that their machines are better because they have a hot valve? Or that if you buy an LG washing machine you can utilise your hot water? If they do then you definitely have a case.
The problem you are likely to have is showing they’ve misled. Unless they advertise the advantages of a hot valve somewhere the advantages of a hot valve are only assumed advantages. Most other manufacturers have decided there’s no advantage to having a hot valve at all and removed it as discussed at length in my articles. LG just seem to have not got round to removing theirs but they hardly mention it. If you bought one after consulting LG about the hot valve though then you have much more of a complaint.
I think you made a fair assumption (as would others) that having the hot valve would enable you to use a reasonable amount of your hot water but it seems in reality it doesn’t use much although Dave’s experience shows that it does occasionally use a small amount.
A few interesting posts lately.
I’m especially interested in Albert’s post (#106) and Washerhelp’s response (#107) (and thanks to Albert for saying that my posts are a joy!).
I don’t know which model Albert has bought but my LG washing machine (WD(M)14440TDS) is advertsied with the phrase “by connecting a hot water supply to the hot water inlet electricty is saved” and in the instruction manual, which also covers models WD(M)12440TDS, 12445TDS, 14445TDS, 16440TDS & 16445TDS, on page 7 it is stated (and I quote verbatim) “When your washer has two valves. The inlet hose which has red connector is for the hot water tap. If the washer has two valves, the energy is saved by using hot valve.”
Personally I would say that this is a matter for trades descriptions on the basis that I have now tried every single programme that the machine offers (most of which I shall never have any need to use again and a number of which I have run empty or with dusters, etc., in just to see what they do!) and the only ones which use any hot water are cottons set to 60 or 95 degrees. In both cases there are 5 initial short bursts of cold water (less than 1 second each), followed by a similar sub-1 sec burst of hot water. There is then a longer burst of cold (around 2 to 3 seconds) followed by about 5 seconds of hot. At this point the drum starts to rotate after which the cold comes on again and runs continuously until the pressure switch activates and the cycle is underway.
The cold comes on again many times over the first 5 minutes of the programme until the machine is happy with the amount of water in the sump, even after the laundry has absorbed all that it can. (By which time the amount of water drawn is more than my old Hoover drew on Woolens – a ‘half-way-up-the-door fill – even when I have just a single polycotton duvet cover in the machine.)
I don’t see how anyone can say that drawing hot water for at the very most a total of less than ten seconds can help to save energy (even with my plumbing arrangements which regular readers will recall are extremely favourable for hot water supply.)
The water pressure to my hot and cold feeds is now identical as both are drawn from teh same header tank via 22mm pipes, so this is nothing to do with low hot water pressure or imbalanced pressures.
However, what I have done with some significant success is connect a TMV3 valve (set to 25 degrees C) between the hot and cold water feeds and connected the washer cold to this. The washer hot is still directly connected to the hot water draw off from the cylinder (around 75 degrees C). This means that the washer fills with water at about 25 degrees for the main wash and the rinses, but it does save the electricity from heating the water (and shortens the wash time!).
I’d like to know whether I can adjust the pressure switch to allow more water in, especially for rinses (I know this would invalidate the warranty) because the rinsing isn’t as good as it might be. However the main reason I’d like to make this change is because socks, handkerchiefs and even flannels get trapped in the door seal and stick there until the cycle is over and I open the door. This is easily remedied by adding anough water to the rinse (manually via the soap drawer) to bring the level up to the door seal which very quickly gets the offending article back into the drum.
Otherwise I’m quite happy with this machine (it eats soap though!!).
(Anyone got any ideas about re-programming the software for the hot water valve????)
Dave:
Thanks for pointing out that LG do claim that by connecting the hot water supply electricity is saved. This shows that LG were actively saying that their washing machine’s hot valve saves energy. This is in direct contradiction to all other washing machine manufacturers who say that cold fill only saves energy.
This whole issue has spawned two articles and hundreds of comments on my blog. It’s clearly complex and there are clearly many opportunities for misunderstanding and confusion. Your experiences appear to show that hardly any hot water is used in the model you have purchased so if purchasing this model specifically because of the so-called advantages of having a hot valve there may well be a case that you have been misled.
Your experience appears to show that it is virtually a cold fill washing machine anyway, specifically on the most common 40 Deg wash programmes because the overwhelming majority of water taken in is cold. We’ve already established that the hot water valve needs to be energised for several to 30 seconds before any proper hot water starts to run in for the majority of people because of the cooling in the pipes problem. Even with a combination boiler it takes a while before truly hot water gets to the washing machine. The odd squirt or so from the hot water valve during fill in is not likely to make much of a difference as I’m sure you’ll agree.
If it appears (as reported by either you or Albert) that LG have now removed their hot valves and joined everyone else in making cold fill only then it makes the rhetoric about hot valves before look a little like a bit of spin.
The TMV3 Valve
The thing that puzzles me about your set up here is that by connecting the single cold water valve via a third party valve which mixes your hot and cold water to 25 Deg C it may boost the initial wash water a little but surely this is at the expense of wasting gallons of hot water on all of the rinses? If a washing machine uses about 40 L of water on a full wash it means almost half of that will be your hot water. As only a small amount of this 40 L is used on the wash and heated up I’m not sure how much if any savings you can be making with this method. Each time you wash you are using potentially up to 20 L of hot water. However, if I remember right you have solar powered hot water which you see as being free. Therefore this may not be a worry.
On a side note, is solar powered hot water truly free? Doesn’t it cost a lot of money to install and therefore take quite some time before you start to get “free” hot water?