30ï¿½ Wash

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30ï¿½ Wash
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Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
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Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 9:10 am Post subject: 30ï¿½ Wash

There's a fair bit of advertising about reducing your wash temperatures from 40ï¿½ to 30ï¿½. Does this actually save energy or is it a bit of a con for some households?

The reason I ask is that our washing machine, like many others, has the option to fill with hot water. However, it only hot fills on 40ï¿½ or higher washes so on the 30ï¿½ wash it cold fills and uses the electric element to heat the water.

As the hot water comes from our efficient gas combi-boiler I wonder which is actually the most energy efficient wash and if we had solar water heating the 40ï¿½ wash would be far more efficient!

kevin.vinke

Joined: 19 Dec 2006
Posts: 1304
Location: Niedersachsen, Germany

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 9:23 am Post subject:
I would have thought in your case the 40 wash would be more efficient. Our machine also has a 40 min wash (30 degrees) which is fine for freshening clothes.

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 9:25 am Post subject: Re: 30ï¿½ Wash

Treacodactyl wrote:

I did not know that, so I'm better off turning the dial to 50 and using the hot water from our wood burner. crazy.

lottie

Joined: 11 Aug 2005
Posts: 5059
Location: ceredigion

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 9:29 am Post subject:
That's what I keep wondering as I wash at 30 but we heat water with wood.

Treacodactyl
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Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 9:29 am Post subject: Re: 30ï¿½ Wash

Jonnyboy wrote:

I did not know that, so I'm better off turning the dial to 50 and using the hot water from our wood burner. crazy.

That would depend on your machine. I gather that many newer machines don't hot fill at all, which seems very odd to me.

lottie

Joined: 11 Aug 2005
Posts: 5059
Location: ceredigion

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 9:36 am Post subject:
Mines a new[ 6mths] machine---but I deliberately picked one with that option as I was unsure---it's actually been broken for over a week---being fixed tommorow---downside of being out in the sticks---wonder if the repairman will know?

Barefoot Andrew
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Joined: 21 Mar 2007
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Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 10:16 am Post subject:

At chez-moi, washing machine is located in kitchen, combi boiler is located in the back bedroom (this work was done far before I took ownership). Fair bit of pipework between the two, so even if the machine fills from the "hot" supply, if hot water hasn't been tap-drawn recently it'll likely be filling from tepid/cool anyway.

Nevertheless, didn't know about the 30deg cold-fill. Worth knowing...
A.

bluebell

Joined: 19 Aug 2006
Posts: 189

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 10:19 am Post subject:

think it would depend on how you heat the water. I personally don't use the 30 degrees wash as I have found my washing doesn't come out that clean and needs another wash often. Also my machine is a big American style one and is hot and cold fill with not heater in the machine. So all my hot water is drawn off the Rayburn via the hot water tank.

I think far better to wash once with less washing powder than load up the machine with loads of powder and often wash twice.

sean
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
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Location: North Devon

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 11:23 am Post subject:
No new machines have a hot fill. A lot of them also run colder than the stated wash temperature anyway.

chez

Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35935
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 11:26 am Post subject:
Ours is cold-fill and it ticks me off that it heats the water from scratch when I have a big tank of solar/wood-burner water just sitting there. I have just bought a shower mixer-valve thingy so that I can mix the water from the solar/woodburner tank before it goes in to it. I think that Hardworking Hippy does this already?

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 11:39 am Post subject:

Barefoot Andrew wrote:

sean wrote:

No new machines have a hot fill.

As the length of the "cold leg" of the hot water pipework increases, and newer washing machines take in less and less water, so the actual delivered temperature of the water falls.
Having a hot fill option increases manufacturing cost, complexity (hence unreliability), installation cost and even manufacturing energy consumption.

Sure you'll lose out with cold-fill-only if you do have solar or wood heated water aplenty, and the washing machine installed alongside the hot tank, but for the vast majority of customers, hot fill (esp from a combi, even an efficient one) isn't a very efficient way of delivering heat to the machine.

As to the 30ï¿½ question - does the manual for your machine not spell out the energy (and water) usage for 'standard' washes on the machines different cycles?

Treacodactyl
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Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 12:52 pm Post subject:

My combi is only just over a meter from the washing machine and as I often wash-up at the same time the water's already hot. I would expect the gas to be far more efficient than the electric element in the machine if it wasn't there would be more electric boilers around.

As we are moving towards more solar water heating and sustainable household fuels to heat water surely it makes sense to have hot fill washing machines? Perhaps there could be some separate plumbing that could be used?

Behemoth

Joined: 01 Dec 2004
Posts: 19023
Location: Leeds

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 12:56 pm Post subject:
Could you not just connect your warm water instead of the cold? Washing machine starts, water has reached programmed temp, start swishy work?But then you'd have no cold for the rinse. Um.....

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
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Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 1:01 pm Post subject:
No you can't. If your water is 60ï¿½c and you need to wash at 40 then your smalls might be very small. And, as you say, the rinse would use a large amount of hot which would probably waste too much energy.

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 07 1:05 pm Post subject:
Actually I can see myself going back to a wooden bucket and one of those stick things you manually twist and thrash the washing. Or something like this:

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