Hot and cold fill washing machines

[Adam Funk]

I think clothes last longer if washed at lower temperatures. I do use the higher ones for handkerchiefs, towels, sheets, & underwear, though.

[Tim Watts]

Possibly. They almost certainly last longer if you don't tumble dry them, judging by how much lint ends up in the filters!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They tend to be top loaders and use a vast amount of water compared to a front loader. What some are used to. The same people like to change the oil in their cars every 1000 miles.

Bollocks. They heat the water to anything you want.

With 99% of domestic hot water systems, the hot to the machine won't be hot anyway - unless you've run it hot from the tap before.

[Muddymike]

On a recent trip to Oregon one motel we used had a front loading washing machine. I did notice it only had one pipe leading to the water supply.

Our laundry room is at the furthest point in the house from the hot water cylinder so absolutely no point in having a dual fill machine.

Mike

[Adam Funk]

That probably helps too, although I compromise with it in order to limit the amount of laundry hanging around in the house during the winter. But I think towels are a lot softer after tumble-drying.

[Capitol]

Normally 240v

[Capitol]

Some don't have internal heaters, some do.

[Capitol]

I agree, washing machines now are designed to conform to the climate change religion and have lost much of their washing performance.

[Capitol]

Front loaders are becoming much more common and the oil change interval is 3K miles. Personally I use 6K. Seems to work to 180K miles at least.

[Tim Watts]

Yes - that is certainly true - mine are stiffer since switching to dehumidifier based drying.

However, it has been offset acceptably by going back to using softener, now there's a nice hypoallergenic one that seems to work for everyone.

[Brian Gaff]

So really what you are saying is that its not so much the single line fill its the actual design of the programmes that run the machine that is the issue. I do find modern machines are very like Windows machines in that the time they take for a program is like a bit of elastic. IE on some fabrics it seems to take an age and still not dry thestuff at the end of a very fastsping but on others its very fast, though according to my friend, it starts off estimating ghe same time for both, so Wahing machine minutes obviously vary in length with the fabric.

I have a panasonic which seems a workmanlike machine and I have few issues with cold fill other then the timing lies really. I may still try the mixer though. Brian

[Capitol]

It was my understanding that softener reduces the water absorption capacity of towels and should not be used?

[John Rumm]

longer cycle times tend to come with lower water usage... The requirements for lower water usage are driven by EU legislation that requires certain minimum "washing efficiencies". They are defined in this document:

What size of machine are you looking for then? That one seems to be a standard size.

Can't really see why, however they let you choose your spin speed normally, so use a slower one if you think it will help.

[Bod]

Ours has a top speed of 1600 rpm and the machine still works 100% after nearly 12 years, Zanussi.

[Tim Streater]

[snip]

12.5K miles for my Citroen. And only that because that's the service interval as I have the semi-auto box. For the manual ones its 20k miles.

[dennis]

Do you care to explain what you mean by that?

[Tim Watts]

It was my understanding that it coats the fibres with something that reduces static cling - no idea if it also reduces absorption but they seem to work OK - better than new when they definately do have some treatment.

[harry]

The best machine is Miele. We have had ours for nearly thirty years. No problems. The last house was a guest house.

[harry]

There are two aspect to washing. One is the detergents, the other is the mechanical action. Machine that useless water, use more mechanical action. This however wears out the laundry. Most wear & tear on clothing etc arises through laundering.

Any machine with no heater will never work well as it cannot achieve optimum temperatures to do the job

[dennis]

You must be using a cheap washer, the one I have washes better than the one I had twenty years ago.