Here we go again, the mantra of washing laundry in cold water

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I recently stepped down to using warm water (averages 105 degrees) instead of hot on all loads of whites and was stunned to find the detergent actually works better. I’m using Tide 10X Heavy Duty pods for large loads and Tide 4-in-1 with Oxi pods for smaller loads. I’ve also replaced my beloved Clorox bleach with a 30-minute manual soak. These are both significant changes in lifelong habits for me.

I experimented with using temp-controlled cold water for all loads back when Tide ColdWater first appeared, but eventually reverted back to my warm & hot water ways.

I might be more tempted to wash loads of mixed colors in cold if I lived where the water at the tap rarely dips below 75 degrees, but the water here is refrigerator cold half the year. Not interested.

We are decidedly old-school, Bob! LOL
 
Washing in cold in some areas of the country and if you have an electric water heater might save $, for me not so much.  Was looking at my utility bill for June, gas bill was $14.  I have a gas cooktop, gas dryer, nat. gas grill and water heater set as high as it will go.  It's not costing me much to heat my water, I'll stick with hot or warm washes and a warm rinse if cycle permits.
 
Detergents heavily reliant on modern day enzymes do a better job removing stains at lowers temps, no arguments there. Where they fail, quite miserably I might add, is in the final sniff test right out of the washer. There's always a hint of sourness (bacteria?) when I washed a couple of dark towels I rarely use in 120F wash, spin rinse, and deep rinse temps using enzyme detergents. The white towels which are the daily drivers washed in 160F using detergents with little to no enzymes are 100% fresh smelling, all the time, every time. I started washing the darker towels with the whites at 160F and they immediately became just as fresh smelling the very first go around. Yeah, they fade a little every few washes but nobody sees them anyway and I can't take them with me into the next life, so blazing hot water washes it's!
 
Steam phase

I found that using a steam phase during a wash cycle really improves results. I have a Miele W1 and when I select AllergoWash, it does a steam phase for 20 to 30 minutes after the main wash depending on if I choose the short option. The washer spins out the wash water and then covers the element on the base of the drum to create steam.
I use this option if I'm washing dark-coloured towels at 40 degrees and at the end of the cycle the towels smell incredibly fresh and odour free. I've done this for white towels too washed at 60 degrees.
I believe if you use steam for items that can't be washed hot, you can still achieve a good level of hygiene and odour removal.
 
Posted a link to YT video in another thread where some scientist (or whatever) conducted tests on bio and non-bio detergents and stain removal at various water temperatures.

Bio detergents worked best in warm to moderate temps, performance fell off at higher temperatures.

OTOH non-bio detergents were opposite, stain/soil removal was far better in hotter water.

However distasteful some may find it. warm or cold water washing is not going away, and is being heavily pushed from many directions. Both in Europe and North America washing machine and laundry product makers have been given directly or indirectly their marching orders from government. Energy use must decrease but performance cannot suffer.

Modern top shelf (and even some middle) laundry detergents work quite well in temps ranging from 86 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. This is largely attributed to new complex enzyme cocktails along with various other bits like polymers.
 
I rarely do hot or cold wash. Cold only for delicate items.

It's cool, warm, and warm-hot washes and cold rinses.

I always pre-wash dirty clothes, sheets, and towels.

For detergent it's original Oxydol, Simply clean Tide, and Foca detergent (the stuff made out of baby seals. lol).

And for most loads (not towels) a bit of april fresh Downy in the rinse.

bradfordwhite-2022080104555503660_1.png
 
In all fairness, laundry done under ideal circumstances:
the proper amount of unscented detergent
clean, filtered, softened water
thorough cleaning in the machine
the machine is clean with no lingering bacteria to get on clothes.

Clothing is not a thing of wonderous fragrance. It is after all wet cotton mixed with other petroleum based threads of polyester and the like.
The cheaper the clothes the more woven plastics.

But yeah, if you ask a novice person how clean their laundry is they will most likely judge it based on the amount and type of perfume it's giving off.
This implies that one could take a pile of dirty clothes,
hose them down with perfume
perhaps fold or hang the still dirty clothes
and they would be fooled into thinking they were clean.
 
Cold water washes

I generally do 1 load of dark colors a week in 75°F water. I have noticed that detergents do clean much better at this temperature than they did 10 years ago. However, after many washes I find that my clothes can have deodorant and oily stains on them that is removed in one cool wash.
To wash towels or sheets in cold is crazy. Warm is understandable.
 
I don’t wash in cold water at all,

I only wash in hot water if it’s my laundry or warm water if it’s delicate even though I constantly see adverts for “cold power“ and laundry detergent in Australia that advertises that it uses enzymes for “cold” water, I’ll stick with my powders my Oxy clean and my biozet thank you very much, but generally I tend to wash anything in hot water no matter what the hot water temperature is, it’s like one time I think I did my entire laundry in 80°C water at a laundromat that’s about an hour away outside of my city and that was because they had a really hot temperature there and I decided to give it a shot, did a pretty good job, but generally the only time that I’ll end up having to wash in cold water is either and attended laundromat where the operator chooses cold water, that I can’t really help or when hot water is physically not available but thank God for washing machines with heaters
 
In reference to Dan's earlier post about a hint of sourness when removing his dark towels from the washer, I see very little mention of people using ammonia as a deodorizer.  

 

I've included a link to an old AW thread from 2015 where ammonia usage was discussed at length.

www.automaticwasher.org

Household Ammonia in Laundry

Does anyone know how effective a half-cup to a cup of household ammonia might be in a HE machine that has kitchen oily cloths and such in the load? Would this cause harm to the machine? I already use an HE detergent, STTP and at times an O2 bleach. Am wondering if the ammonia might make a...
www.automaticwasher.org www.automaticwasher.org
 

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