Clean Rinsing Detergents

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Perhaps you should define what you interpret as clean rinsing? I realise it's an issue very close to your heart, but since detergents haven't moved on much from all the discussion you've initiated previously, and taking into account everyone's input on it, we might be at a loss as to how to answer your question any further.

What exactly is the gold standard you're aiming for in rinsing?

What have you been trying yourself and what are your findings?

Apologies if that sounds harsh but, y'know, maybe we need to delve a little deeper here...
 
My definition of clean rinsing is the rinse water is crystal clear with no bubbles on the 3rd or final rinse. Clean rinsing is defined as leaving no residue. If you google 'Clean Rinsing' detergents you will find a few come up such as 'Charlies Soap' and 'Rockin Green'.

I am just curious to know why there is always foam in the rinse cycles if the detergent is being rinsed but nobody has answered that yet. My thoughts are if foam is still being seen then there must be residual detergent in the drum.

Maybe detergents today are not meant to be completely rinsed off the fabric and therefore it would be better to use a soap based product.

Things like underwear and bed sheets are fine but when i wash at 40 using liquid i sometimes find the t shirts and trousers dry like cardboard despite using only 30ml of Ariel Excel Gel.
I have come to the conclusion its the product and not a fault with my machine but cannot find a good detergent yet that is suitable for coloured clothing that needs the bare minimum of rinsing. Thank goodness i am not on a water meter.
 
You're right...

I don't think anyone ever has come up with the definitive answer as to why today's detergents cause foaming into the rinse. No doubt there is some residue that isn't being rinsed away, but then again fibres are absorbent and difficult to rinse totally clear of detergent. Indeed, I think the accepted wisdom is that rinsing is simply a process of dilution rather than total removal - fabrics just have to the wash water diluted to such an extent that any residue poses no problem.

 

I recall reading once that nonionic surfactants used in detergents are extremely difficult to rinse away but that shouldn't necessarily pose a problem.

 

Soap, as has been discussed many a time on here, is actually very difficult to rinse from fabrics. Your rinse water might look crystal clear but that's not to say there wouldn't be significant residue in the finished laundry.

 

As to stiff clothes, is it only when you use the gel that it's a problem? Would a powder product for colours work better? You might think a liquid would leave clothes softer but sometimes it isn't the case: I remember years ago that Ariel Futur powder for colours left clothes softer than the Ariel liquid for colours, for example.

 

Seems you need to keep buying small packages of the various products til you find one you can put up with. The own-brand products - often by McBride - seem to be less susdy on the whole if that's any help. But yearning for crytal clear, bubble-free rinse water might - for the moment anyway - be a rather fruitless experience!

 

 
 
@ SuperElectronic I used to use the Persil colour powder but they have added brighteners to that now so not suitable so only leaves me with Ariel colour powder. What do you personally use? I have the same water hardness as yourself being not far from London. Do you use the recommended amounts or less?
I used to use Simply liquid and that was fine but they don't make it no more. Ill find a solution no doubt :-)
 
Here Is My View

Today's detergents, especially liquids have increased their surfactant levels in order to pack more cleaning power to deal with modern wash temps of >100F.

The four main components of good laundry practice have not changed nor the fact if you lower one the others must be increased. So when doing laundry at warm or cold water you either must add more detergent or increase the concentration so smaller amounts will still provide results.

Sadly there is often a fine line between using the proper amount for each load versus too much which causes problems in rinsing.

Then there is the fact that certain surfactants and or liquid laundry detergents will never rinse totally "clean". Indeed P&G used to state as much on the website for one of their detergents. In response to a query from a consumer as to why the rinse water still had foam, P&G said it was normal.

We also must consider besides more concentrated detergents washing machines are using less water. So you've got super concentrated water and detergent doing the cleaning, then rinsing taking place often with much less water than in the past.
 
If you feel like paying the water bill----

There is no reason why a person could not reset the machine for an additional rinse and spin.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
Have you ever washed by hand?

If you have then you will know how difficult it is to remove the detergent from your hands afterwards.

My understanding is that the foaming and cloudiness still left in the final rinse is zeolite residue.

You could carry out hundreds of extra rinses and this wouldn't go away.

My general rule is that if the water in a successive rinse is no clearer or less foamy than the previous one, then the clothes are as well rinsed as they can be.

Clear rinse water will form droplets on the seal or glass, this means that the detergent is no longer present as detergent breaks down the membrane that water forms, preventing it from forming droplets.

Matt
 
First of all washing machines` rinsing efficiancy is usually determined by residual alkalinity, not froth. Of course if intermediate spins are affected by froth, rinsing efficiancy degrades, but:

Cotton is very absorbant and nearly impossible to rinse bubble free and cristal clear in a frontloader because even the smallest amounts of man made surfactants whip up froth. This does`t necessarily mean the clothes are not sufficiantly rinsed.

On the other hand synthetics are less absorbant and in particular polyester has a tendency to attract grease so no bubbles in the last rinse might even indicate not compleatly clean.

Soap as has been mentioned already is most difficult to rinse out even if the water looks perfectly clear.

As to stiff clothes, do you live in a hard water area? Constant underdosing of detergents leads to calcium build up on clothes which is unfortunately irreversible. If you want to cut back on detergent I would use a seperate water softener not for the washer`s sake but for the clothes`.

Have to say when I was young I was obsessed with rinsing as well. I only used half the recommended dose of detergent and have always reset the timer to some extra rinses because of the foam. Had problems with stiff clothes as well.
Today I use the recommended dose of detergent, hit the extra rinse- water plus button and let the machine do it`s thing. Honestly never had a skin reaction because of the foam and no more stiff clothes.

I would also like to share another observation with my fellow Sudsophobes here ;-)
If you use Listerine after brushing your teeth you are supposed to spit only, right ?
Sometimes I follow a clear water rinse and guess what, the surfactants foam up like crazy in the rinse with water, even more than when squishing the undilluted product around and I`m still alive.
 
Alkaline residue may determine whether laundry is rinsed "clean", but far as one is concerned if there is still visible froth and or "soap" draining out in the final rinse water, then the laundry isn't rinsed properly.

Find with P&G liquids (Tide) there is a fine line between proper dosing that gives clear rinses by the fourth (of five) in my Miele versus having to do five, six or even more to get all the "soap" out.

Have found some of the cleanest rinsing detergents to be the vintage products in my stash that used phosphates as builders. Gain, Fab, All, etc... all from the 1970's or so rinse quite cleanly. Vintage Tide "ultra" OTHO is a hot mess as it is today for clean rinsing.
 
Ariel

Here are some photo's taken today doing a towel wash on 40 degrees Celsius with Ariel Colour Excel gel with a dose of 37ml which is for hard water. As you can see the first rinse has the foam on top of other wise clear rinse water. I will upload a picture of the final rinse and a bowl of water with the residue that I have been talking about.

I think Laundress has hit the nail on the head that these liquids and liquid tabs are so concentrated that they are hard to rinse out and I think the maker's must recommend too much.

liberatordeluxe++6-25-2013-10-08-59.jpg
 
Running machine empty on a cleaning cycle after using 37ml of Excel gel. Prior to using the excel gel before the towel wash I did a maintenance wash with Ariel bio on 95C. Can you see the amount of suds left despite no clothes and only using the product once? Not good is it!

liberatordeluxe++6-25-2013-10-15-57.jpg
 
@ Laundress is Tide like our Ariel?

I finally got the towels residue free after applying a cup of cider vinegar in the rinse and they are once again soft so I won't buy gels anymore. I have noticed that underwear is icky after being washed in gels too so i think these gels are best avoided.
 
Maybe I shouldn't admit it but your rinses look much like mine do (and have done for most of the past 15 years). Unfortunately I can't find a final rinse shot in my files.

 

I can't say I have much problem with clothes being stiff from what I'd term as detergent build-up, except perhaps with Ariel bio which left towels a bit on the harsh side (the tablets were better than the powder). Too much static drying is the main culprit for stiff laundry in my experience.

 

The slimy/sticky feel certainly used to be a problem with Ariel liquid of 10-12 years ago but not so the last time I used it; I've never used the Excel gel to find out what it's like, having been wary of the overpowering perfume element that might have been tweaked for the better of late.
 
Ariel Gel

Mine is the French "Alpine Frachie" version and am here to tell you anything more than the minimum amount (<15ml) causes huge froth and rinsing problems in my Miele.

Ariel sold in the UK and elsewhere is P&G's Tide sold in North America as far as being the top shelf offering. While today both products share similar chemical technology (Acti-Lift can be found in both Ariel and Tide for instance), IIRC there are changes to suit the different markets.

Another example is the Ariel line of in wash stain removers/bleaches sold here as Tide.
 
Laundress:

I've found sometimes they just get the forumlas horribly wrong too.

For example, Persil (Unilever) in the UK and Ireland had a LiquiGel format which was ridiculously foamy. I remember using the normal dose in our washing machine (as prsecribed on the bottle) and it over-foamed so much that there was foam pouring out of the drawer of the machine when it ran the first spin!

They launched Persil Small and Mighty and it was a completely different forumla and very low foam.

It can also behave very differently in different machines as the drum design and the way they operate can whip up more foam. A lot of European machines (including Miele and BSH machines) use scooping systems to ladle large amounts of water up from the outer drum and dump it over the clothes. I think Miele's Honeycomb and Bosch's similar drum actually has the effect of picking the water up from the end of the drum and cascading it down rather than allowing it to just sit at the bottom and that can really whip up a lot of foam if the detergent's prone to it.

Then you've got the water hardness level. In my case the water's extremely soft and a lot of P&G detergents tend to just foam ridiculously where as Persil / other unilever dergetents work quite nicely.

I don't like the Ariel gel format at all. I haven't found the results anything amazing and I don't like the noise of the cap rattling around in the machine. It's difficult to measure it without using the dosing cap and it is not usable from a drawer dispenser as it will not flush down.

With the Persil Small and Mighty you can dose a cap into the liquid dispensor in the drawer and it flushes down perfectly, or just dose it directly into the drum.

The same applies to Henkel's concentrated liquids (Persil in most markets and Le Chat Expert in France).

Ariel Powder used to overfoam too although it's improved a lot since some recent reforumulation. The scent's also now less over-powering. It was really strong for a while!

There's also absolutely no similarity between Euro Ariel normal biological powder's scent and Ariel Colour Power scent. They're completely different forumlations from what I can see / smell.

....

Also, some detergent components are designed NOT TO RINSE ..

The actilift formula is designed to coat your fibres with some kind of stain resistance coating and Persil (unilever) has long-acting scent releasing microcapsules.
 
Liberatordeluxe

Your rinses look about the same as mine too, I think as I said, you could carry out as many extra rinses as you want and you won't get then any clearer.

I really wouldn't worry about it, I'd personally rather have a detergent that cleans really well and leaves a bit of froth in the water than sacrifice cleaning performance for crystal clear water.

I must admit, I use Almat, Ariel or Persil bio powder on everything and have no problems whatsoever...

Matt
 
I may be wrong, as I am relying on hearsay, but I was told if you have totally clear clean rinse water your detergent wasn't doing it's job.
For the most part my rinse water is suds free, but I always detect a bit of cloudiness.
 
In Theory

Residual laundry detergent at least the liquid types aren't going to cause harm to most persons. You may notice laundry appearing dull and or grey after awhile (the dreaded tattle-tale gray), but unless one has allergic reactions or some such things should pretty much be fine.
 
Soap Based Liquid/Gel Detergents

Did some washing last night using the St.Croix "bulles" detergent one had sent from France. This product contains a good amount of soap and that could be causing the problems one has with rinsing. Have to be very careful to adjust dosage to soil level otherwise it takes ages to rinse away all the excess product.

Know the soap content is high because our washers drain into a stainless steel sink. After using "Super Croix" the bottom of the sink is covered in a film similar to what one sees after using pure soap for washing.
 
Ariel Compact liquid

I would of thought soap based detergent was better for rinsing? Correct if I am wrong but is Persil not more soap based than Ariel?

Different subject but whatever happened to Ariel concentrated liquid similar to Persil 'Small and Mighty'? Haven't seen it for years and all you can mainly buy is the Ariel gels. Have seen the Ariel regular in Waitrose sometimes but not often.
 
Ariel Power, you mean?

...that was just put out in the interim before they launched the gel, probably so they could have something equivalent to Small and Mighty on the shelves. A shame really - it was quite nice stuff and had the more subtle perfume the ordinary liquid used to have in the early 2000s.
 
Soap and Soap Based Laundry Detergents

Can be tricky if one has soft water, which we do. That and or you really have to get the dosage properly matched to soil level.

Can use one of the Super Croix packets in the large 50lb SQ washer at laundryette with no problems. However on all but the most foul 5kg load in the Miele it is way too much. By "foul" one means there is enough soils/oils to keep the product busy and used up. Otherwise the excess just creates froth and won't rinse properly.

These are just one's own observations, YMMV.
 
Yes Ariel Power is the one I meant. I really liked it because you were not paying for loads of water as you were with the dilute liquids. Funnily enough have found the excel gel fine if I use the full dose for my hard water and it rinses well then. Funny how if you use less it doesn't. Anyway am sticking to Ariel as find that one is the best for cleaning and doesn't affect my sensitive skin. I get it in Savers anyway so £2.99 for Ariel gel is not a bad price is it. Or Wilkinsons or Roys of Wroxham have it on offer. Hardly use supermarkets for cleaning products.
 
Have finally found the problem of my rinsing problems and its build up of detergent. Despite doing repeat 90 degree maintenance washes with no detergent and no clothes in the drum I still get build up of loads of suds. There must be sludge in the pump but I can not access the pump because it has a strange screw on the fascica kick plate where the fluff filter is. I swear this is down to bloody gel detergents on 40 degree washes. Can anyone help? I don't want to call the Bosch engineer out if its something I can do myself. The screws on the bosch are neither straight or posidrive heads and more hexagonal type screws. Anyone have the Bosch Classix 6 Varioperfect?
 
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