Help! meaning of program symbols on an older washing machine (zanussi 918t)

I don't think the numbers are standard. In the UK the symbols have temperatures in Celsius, as you say. In the US they seem to use a system of dots. The dots number from one to six, these might equate to your numbers, if so then the US symbols are at:

it's neither of those - the US dots are 1 for cold to 6 for hot, our machine has 1 for hottest. Maybe it's inverse.

These are the old format ITCL (International Textile Care Labelling) symbols. They relate to the nature of the textile rather than directly to the wash temperature so there might be some variation between machines and heavy/light/economy wash programmes. Also, in many cases they relate to how the fabric is handed in the wash, e.g. wool must not be lifted and dropped back into the wash water but should be gently agitated to reduce shrinkage (which is often done by having a higher fill level and/or less drum rotation).

Here's a rough translation...

Old ITCL number 1 95C e.g. white cotten 2 60C e.g. colourfast cotten 3 60C e.g. white nylon, polyester, or mixtures 4 50C e.g. coloured nylon, polyester, or mixtures 5 40C e.g. non-colourfast cotten, linen, viscose 6 40C e.g. acrylics, wool/man-made mixtures 7 40C e.g. wool, wool/cotten mixtures 8 30C e.g. silk 9 95C e.g. cotten with finishes unsuitable for high speed spin

Those are the newer format ITCL symbols (as in last ~20 years). I looked for a website to explain the ITCL symbols, but google didn't turn one up that I could see.

They seem to have been fairly standard on the machines I've used. Something like (these are the ones I can remember).

Cottons

Synthetics

That's not to say there aren't alternative programme numbers out there, but these have been on several makes I've owned.

Christian.

looks like Andrew's right - i checked the programs: Cotton/Linen:

Synthetics/Wool:

(we rarely use the synthetic programs as they finish with the machine full - you have to advance it to a drain&spin setting - but the door is unlocked and we nearly always forget and open it, flooding the kitchen.)

it was the corresponding temperatures I was interested in, as we are expecting to start laundering nappies soon and these require 60 degrees, I hear.

thanks for the info,

rob.

Personally we do them at 95C. And they're Napisan soaked beforehand. And then there is still the occasional one which isn't quite... how shall I put it... erm... "white" when it's finished :-) Of course, if they're all just "wet" then 60 is probably fine. With an average of 2.3 soiled nappies a day though (see report below), a full load of wet-only is unlikely. If you use waterproof "wraps" note that these cannot be washed hotter than 60C, and I think some prefer 40C. Check the label.

These links might be of interest:

Pro:

Con:

The report from the ea published last week is very interesting (1.7M PDF download) and is reasonably fair as far as I can tell. The main message I got from it though was that a large part of the environmental impact of washables is the manufacturing (cotton is particularly bad) and distribution. In that case, although there may be little gross difference between disposables and resusables in terms of environmental impact for a first child, for second and subsequent children the figures should come down heavily in favour of reusables. Oh yes, and apparently we resuable-users have an average of 47 nappies (IIRC). We have two dozen, and only really use half of those as the other half are a bit thinner.

Resusables win if you:

o Wash only full loads,

o Air dry where possible & consider a gas-powered tumble-dryer,

o Don't flush non-soiled nappy liners (unnecessary water use),

o Keep them for second and subsequent children

Practically speaking, we're not exclusively resuable. We found terries/muslins awkward to fit when the children were very small (under a couple of months), and after a few months old they don't handle the overnight session very well. As a result we always use disposables overnight, and usually on long car journeys too.

Sorry for veering off-subject :-)

'Spect Mary'll be along shortly to say how good terry nappies are.

Hwyl!

M.

Ding dong! Did that fire off some old synapses ... ?

We were posted, in the service of 'er Maj', to a place approx 5,000 feet amsl. We had two ankle-snappers one only six months old, so my wife faced the old Napisan soaking bucket (which we kept out on the balcony) routine. Anyway: Stores informed me that the 'deep-sea boxes' had arrived and promised to deliver them next day. As the consignment included a crated washing machine we looked forward to a massive wash being done. First in went the coloured/cool stuff, then the next etc. etc., finally in went the nappies on the Hot 95 deg 'White' wash ... and off to bed we went. Next morning: I opened the kitchen door to find a really thick fog! Visibility was less than a metre! I hastily opened an outside door and windows ... the washing machine was stuck on "heating" and hadn't advanced to "wash"! With much forehead-slapping I began to recall the effect of altitude on the vaporisation point of water along with the Latent heat of vaporisation ... the water had turned to steam without the thermostat reaching 95 deg! Thereafter the hottest wash attempted was 80 deg. I did consider writing to Hotpoint ... but figured that as even the cafe on top of Snowden was well below 'our' altitude they wouldn't care!

The EA seem to be biased toward the water industry and not too bothered about landfill.

The report looks like it's based on figures for old washing machines, with a modern A rated machine I'd expect reusable ones are much better from an environmental perspective and cheaper too.

Nappies are 3% of household waste, quite a lot considering babies are only in them for 2 1/2 years.

cheers, Pete.

Yes, they make a big deal about flushing liners down the loo, but they use a "low flush" figure of 7 liters per flush. In this country, is that

Water use in washing machines is assumed to be 75 liters (min 50 max

The landfill data *is* a problem. They start from a good point; 91% of this kind of waste (i.e. non-recyclable) ends up in landfill. Then they go on to suggest that 36% of landfill gas is usefully recovered! I'm sorry, but I don't know of a single (ex) tip around here where landfill gas is actually being recovered. Likewise for the remaining 9% that is incinerated they assume 450kWh of electricity to be produced per tonne of waste burned, yet they make no note of how many incinerators actually do generate, and how many just burn, wasting all that heat. (section

The report uses water-usage data from 1995/6 machines and energy usage from 1996 (section 5.14.3). This is a little off, given that they reckon a normal lifespan for a washing machine is 11.7 years; i.e. 1995 machines are the oldest generally still in use (though they supposedly based the report in 2002). As noted above modern machines may use much less water.

As for electricity, the report is based on the average reported usage of the 180-odd people surveyed (not very many really). This was some 32% @

(Aside: does anyone have any complete data for Hotpoint machines? I can only find a minimal amount on the Hotpoint website, and the instruction pamphlet that came with the machine has nothing at all.)

Oh yes, and section 5.14.7 reckons that 9.5% of people iron their nappies!

Where did that figure come from? It seems very high to me. Is it possible that this also includes other sanitary products, i.e. for women and for older people? If not then you have to look at nappies over 2.5 years (4.16 disposables a day according to the Environment Agency) versus 80-odd years of non-nappy use.

Hwyl!

M.

i fear we might end up the wrong side of the balance, for all our good intentions.

Our washing machine is around 20yrs old, so I guess not too efficient, but with probably plenty of life left as it was inherited from my granny who hadn't used it, so has only been used for the last 5yrs or so.

We have a tumble dryer of similar vintage, left in the house by the previous occupants. We almost never use it, we use an airer hanging on pulleys from the ceiling, but i expect we might need a faster turnaround for nappies so it might start seeing some use. Tumble dryers in the shops all seem to be 'C' rated for efficiency; does this mean no-one is even trying to make them efficient, so an older model won't be any worse?

In any case, spending =A3500+ to replace both of these and improve efficiency isn't too appealling.

Also, the reusables we bought are suitable for up to 11lbs, so family history suggests they won't get much use before the next size is needed.

ho hum, we meant well.

Disposable nappies are no more environmentally unfriendly than Terries and worth every penny. Unless you are REALLY broke - go for disposables.

I'd give the EA some credit for making a thorough job of gathering the data, but the presentation and interpretation lets it down somewhat, as I doubt the average person would read the whole report.

If they included a few pie charts it would have been a lot better. Even better would be a web page with some java where you could enter details of washing and drying etc and get a summary of how much better or worse than using disposables is.

Eg if you have a machine with hot fill from gas CH, it would cut the CO2 from washing by up to half, and reduce the cost considerably. With a solar panel providing half of DHW, the cost and environmental saving would be better still.

For drying, electric tumble dryers, gas tumble dryers and line drying will have an significant effect on energy consumption.

Being able to see the differences these things make would encourage people to think of energy efficiency more.

Google provides :) :

though I'd like to know what research is done to come up with this figure - or maybe not!

cheers, Pete.