How cold is "too cold" water?

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kenmore71

kenmore71

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I realize this subject has been discussed in various places on this site somewhat regularly. That said, I came across something recently that sparked my interest again. I was going through a "new to me" Maytag washer repair manuel that covered the years 1975 - 1986. That would have been primarily the *08 model center dials, ALL of the *10 series machines and the very first of the *12 series machines. In this manual was a listing for the following cold water tempering valve.

kenmore71++2-28-2012-16-07-26.jpg
 
Does this mean that Maytag considered 75 degrees to be a normal "cold" water temperature or was this just a temperature that Maytag found to be a pretty good compromise to achieve fairly consistent warm water mixing?

I just measured the incoming municipal water supply temperature at my home in Mpls. It is 42 degrees. Now, when that mixes with the 140 degree hot water in a cold machine we're left with water that is about 85 degrees. With today's detergents, I have not had any problems getting non-white clothes clean. But, when you stop to consider that in some parts of the country the COLD water supply in the summer is warmer than 85 degrees it would seem that we have a lot of variation here!!!

Incidentally, I went through the usual searches to see if I could find one of those Maytag valves online. I can find no trace of it ever existing except in the repair manual that I scanned above.

I know that thermostatic mixing valves are commonplace these days in many school and health care situations to LOWER the hot water temperature to prevent scalding. Has anyone tried using one of these for the opposite function: to temper incoming cold water to more "useful" winter temperature of say 60-65 degrees?
 
ME

When the tap cold water falls below 75, I activate the tempering valve to keep the cold water for the 4 front loaders between 75 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. To get the valve to deliver that temperature, I have it turned to its coolest setting. I think there must be a minimum temperature for even cold water detergents. Washers from the good old days considered warm water to be 100F. Today, a lot of people keep their water heater set lower than 140F so the mixing of a cooler hot and your tap cold gives a warm temperature that would be considered cool/cold. Fortunately, with a non-thermostatic fill valve you can turn down either the hot or the cold faucet to custom blend your warm temp. On the machines with a warm rinse setting, I throttle back the hot faucet to blend a 75 to 80 degree rinse water temperature.
 
For Laundry Purposes

One always thought and or assumed from readings that about 75F to 85F was the target range for "cold water" at least for washing. IIRC many detergents of old had directions on the box stating the product wouldn't dissolve/work properly in water cooler than that.

Very cold water can be bad for laundry purposes. Considering many parts of the country had or still do have winters where the ground freezes solid and many reservoirs/bodies of water where the supply comes from, you could see some darn chilly tap water temps.

Very cold water causes textiles to constrict which can lead to poor rinsing results. Also as often noted here soap and or soap based laundry products will not rinse nor work well in cold water. The old formula tallow/fat based fabric softeners formed a gunky mess in very cold water which probably lead to the stuff creating a mess inside the machine.
 
Cold Water

Recently, I have been only using cold water because the hot water pipe out to the garage was capped off due to a leak. The cold water has been 60 degrees or colder, I've been using regular liquid Tide and getting good results. I add all color bleach and recently Borax. I pretreat the stains with a 4 parts water to 1 part Purple Power mixture. I just washed a red tee shirt that had grease on it from when I worked on my "classic" (1984 Chevy Citation) and there is no trace of the grease and oil on the shirt. When we lived in Yuma Arizona, the cold water was well over 90 degrees in the summer. Some people there turn their water heater off in the summer. I left mine on to help with cleaning the dishes in the dishwasher. One of the "house tasks" is to run a new copper cold water pipe to the garage (the old one is galvanized steel) and I am planning on installing a tankless water heater for the garage.
 
Washing Water Temperatures

For good cleaning of clothing nothing should ever be washed in water colder than about 100 degrees or around body temperature. Yes things can be cleaned in colder water but you end up using excessive amounts of detergent to do so which also makes it harder to rinse the clothing. Its cheaper to use at least a little hot water for cleaning. Rinse water temperature does not make much difference if you are using detergent [ not soap ] as long as the water is not frozen solid LOL.
 
Tide had a big deal with a commercial for the COLD WATER detergent, where this guy adds Tide to a container, and a tray of ice, with a swatch of clothing, stirred it around, pulled it out, and the stain was gone.......

but I agree with John.....WASH water should be 100 degrees for cleaning...

what ever happened to COLD POWER detergent from the 70's......it worked then, why not now.....

but just the same for different results, Florida residents with 80/90 degree cold water in the summer don't have issues with a cold wash........Minnesota in the winter will....
 
Tide ad with ice cubes

Of course, they never said what the temperature of the water was before the ice was added. It could have been warm.

When I first moved here, one of my co-workers lived in an English basement apt with a 24" Kenmore and the 115 volt dryer above it. She started complaining of how the washer did not do permanent press well and how it was all wrinkled at the end. I asked her how she was washing them. In the winter, in Washington, back in the 70s, when we had some really cold winters, like in January, 1977, the temperature did not go above 32F all month, she was washing and rinsing in cold water. I explained that the fibers needed some heat to relax the wrinkles so a warm wash would work better, especially with a 115 volt dryer that probably was not really getting hot enough to do the dewrinkling. She tried it and it worked. Another misguided, energy-saving career girl who learned some laundry secrets like that not everything could be washed in cold water. Don't even think about her towels and sheets.
 
and WHY are none of our guys on TV news shows or such, as commentaries, guiding our lost people on how to really wash clothes.......

we could have shared recipes on what to do with those darn ole holiday leftovers....

how to decorate rich, rich, rich...when your not, not, not!

and how to remove those unsightly yellow stains on your guest towels!....later on...how they got there!....
 
because people think their Fashion Ed-u-ma-cated!....and have no clue how to take care of them properly!.....its like the Blondes leading the Blind....and then of course you find a out of the bottle Brunette, who's a translator!
 
Rinsing With Warm Water

Oh I don't know.

Despite one's frequent advice about cold water for rinsing (at least where modern detergents are involved for wash day, and not pure soaps), tried an experiment last weekend when doing the wash.

Set the taps to "warm" so the Miele would take in rinse water at that temperature. While no way an exact controlled experiment can honestly say rinsing was better with warm water and the washer seemed to have less difficulty spinning loads than when rinsed with cold water. Wash seemed "drier" when coming out of the washer after the final spin, and yes they dried slightly faster (but not by much) in the dryer.

Also noticed that the heavy items (towels, wash cloths,etc...)that were sent to the extractor before drying gave up water easier and there was less of it than again when laundry is rinsed in cold.

Since all this was going into the dryer wasn't worried about any excess creasing that may come from spinning warmish laundry, but still it was an interesting test.
 
Rinsing in warm water

All of your observations may be correct to some degree, but you need exact findings to see if the savings in drying time even come close to the high cost of heating the rinse water. Every thing I have ever read in regard to using a water thirsty TL washer says that you use several times more energy to heat the rinse water. And with a FL washer the amount of rinse is so much less that it may not be as expensive, but the clothing will be fairly cool when they get to the dryer anyway. And rinsing with warm water in a FL machine will cause a greater chance for mold and odors to develop.

 

I just fail to believe that every washer manufacturer and every detergent manufacturer in the world could be wrong. I guess that I am just the type of person that trusts experts.
 
Here in Australia Cold Power is still one of the major brands in the supermarket. I have tried it but to be honest I have never had great results with cold water washing. In fact most of the detergents here state they give good results in cold water. It is ok for stuff that is not particularly dirty or smelly but for towels and gym stuff, cold water does not get the load really clean and smelling fresh. My Fisher & Paykel intuitive TL that circulates a small amount of warm or hot sudsy water over the load for 5 mins before it fills with cold and then agitates does a pretty good job but I think a completely cold wash is not great. My Aunt who only ever washes in cold water has really manky smelling towels when ever I go visit. We usually take our own towels.
 
In the industry

anything below 80 degrees is considered too cold for surfactants to do their job. And just think of eating a bag of McD' s fries and then downing an ice cold water right after?? How does that make your stomach feel?
Then think of all that body grease in your clothes-which is the major soil in laundry.Get that out with cold water--NOT!

I still prefer warm water rinsing, and I am not sure you are wasting any energy doing that. If you rinse in cold water- the dryer is going to need to heat that water up to a temperature where it will evaporate it out of the clothing. If you start with warm water-whichBTW has already been standing heated in the tank in your basement then the dryer will use less energy drying the clothes. Now for outside line drying, who cares.

Now that I have switched to LED bulbs, my boiler actually has to work a little harder to heat the house. All that incandescent heat energy is no longer there!
-Dr. Frigidaire
 
Warm Rinsing

We have been doing warm rinses for as long as I can remember, have had great results with it too.

What I am about to say is without full knowledge if the warm rinses are the reason for this.

Just this past December when I replaced the drain pump on our Whirlpool DD, it was the first time the cabinet had been removed in 21 years, and, the outer tub (with the exception, of the usual water line mark) was clean, and I mean CLEAN. There was absolutely no buildup of anything inside. It was like it was brand new, and I was amazed. My guess is that the warm rinse water was keeping it that way. If i'm wrong, then my next guess would be that we usually wash in warm water and use powder detergent.

Anyway, to follow the topic, I think 70F should be the minimum for cold. 65F you can probably get away with, but below that wont work well.
 
Cold water... I used to work at a place where poor people could stay for a few months if they didn't have a place to live.

 

We had a laundry room where people could wash their clothes and bed sheets but for some "economy" reasons they weren't allowed to use the dryer on nice days and they weren't allowed to wash with hot water either... The hot water faucets to the washing machines were always closed!

And here, even in the summer, tap water is very cold because pipes have to be very deep in the ground to avoid freezing in the winter.

I often talked to my coworkers about that and told them we should change that and allow warm and hot water washing, and that bed sheets should even be washed in hot water for sanitary reasons but they refused (and they apparently all used extremely cold tap water to wash their clothes at their home!). Until there was a problem with people having skin diseases which required that they wash their bed sheets and clothes in hot water to avoid spreading their disease!

 

But still coworkers seemed to have something against that and I think they had been conditioned to wash with cold water by all these cold water detergent ads that I remember seeing on TV back in the eighties! 

 

Sorry for the french language ads, but I think most will understand just with the images!

 

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Here in Calgary, the cold water can approach about 2 C here (About 35 F) during winter if it runs for long enough. My GE TL machine would actually start filling with hot water when cold water washes were selected, to bring the temperature up.

I personally don't like the idea of cold water washing myself, but that's more of a personal preference more than anything. I don't mind spending the extra money to wash with hot water when I'm washing anything really stinky or smelly. (ie. Underwear and socks.) It gets it so much cleaner.

With a FL machine, I don't see any reason why not to use hot water, unless the clothing specifically says to wash in cold/warm water. (ie. Non colourfast fabrics.)
 
PhilR!!!

Love those Arctic Power commercials! Especially the Mama who washes in the arctic with the paddle machine and carries home the ridgid underwear--THATS HYSTERICAL>

I also like the "Thunder Butts" who can take the cold water!!

Do they still sell Arctic Power??

Launderess- I'll have to think about CR, it takes the same amount of energy to raise water to evaporation every time. So if you are doing it twice you've used twice the energy. With that hot water already sitting in a hot water heater using it makes no difference. But heating the clothes twice does. I don't see how CR can make that claim.
 
Cold Water Washing: I used powdered Tide ColdWater for about a year-and-a-half, and washed everything in temp-controlled cold water (about 65-70 degrees in my 2002 Frigidaire front-loader). Had great results, although I always used liquid chlorine bleach with loads of kitchen/personal whites. I tried using tap-cold water once (water temp about 42 degrees) and the results were disastrous. The temp of cold water does matter.

While I bemoan the dumbing-down of water temps in new washers---110-120 degree water is what manufacturers now consider 'hot'---my 2010 Frigidaire front-loader has an internal heater, so by selecting the Allergy option, the water heats to 132 degrees. Water heats to around 155 in the Sanitize cycle, which I use for aforementioned loads of whites.

I've noticed that when I use the Steam option, the clothes are warm at the end of the cycle, which leads me to believe the rinse temps are raised. I don't know if there's a big advantage to that, but it is nice to touch warm rather than ice cold wet items during a Minnesota winter.

Choosing a new washer: Get a front-loader with an internal heater, and preferably, one with a recirculating spray that saturates a large load very quickly. Ultra-low water consumption is here to stay, and front-loaders are more adept at dealing with that.
 
@jetcone

Cit. "I still prefer warm water rinsing, and I am not sure you are wasting any energy doing that. If you rinse in cold water- the dryer is going to need to heat that water up to a temperature where it will evaporate it out of the clothing. If you start with warm water-whichBTW has already been standing heated in the tank in your basement then the dryer will use less energy drying the clothes. Now for outside line drying, who cares."

If you like rinsing with warm water nobody can stop you, if you're fine with it, we're happy ;)
But don't say stupid things! Warming the 80-90 litres of water needed for the rinse in a top loader will use around 3 kWh of energy, which is almost as much the energy needed to dry that very same load. Warming the residual water from 10°C to 40°C in the clothes (no more than around 5-6 litres per load in a low spinning top loader) will simply use a tiny fraction of that energy and the water will start evaporating right away, it will not boil off the clothing. So rinsing in warm water will make you spend at least TWICE than rinsing in cold water and machine drying.

Cit." Now that I have switched to LED bulbs, my boiler actually has to work a little harder to heat the house. All that incandescent heat energy is no longer there!
-Dr. Frigidaire"

So very true but producing ONE unit of electricity costs at least 3 units of gas/coal/oil, heating with fossil fuel directly is better than heating with electricity. So indeed you're saving resources.
 
@ Gabriele

First the heated water, as I stated, is already sitting in my hot water tank 24-7-365. The difference is do I throw the warm switch or cold switch on the washer.

I was talking about water the dryer sees, I never mentioned water in the washer, don't bring in things I didn't discuss. Now lets look at that dryer question again:

A specific latent heat (L) expresses the amount of energy in form of heat (Q) required to completely affect a phase change of a unit of mass (m), usually 1kg, of a substance as an intensive property: L=Q/m


For water the latent heat of vaporization is well known:

2260 j/Kg at 100C. Water doesn’t vaporize below this.

Okay to simplify the discussion if we look at just 1 kg of water left in the clothes as they are put into the dryer:

If that water is already at 100C then to evaporate it must get 2260 j from the heating element of the dryer to go from a liquid to a vapor.

But if that water was NOT already at 100C if it was colder then to just to add 2260 joules is not the whole story. If that 1 Kg of water in the dryer was a block of ice you would first need to heat that ice to a liquid –a phase change.
For ice you would need to add 334 j/kg to get that ice to a liquid state, then to dry the clothes you would have to get that melt water to a vapor by adding another X joules to get it from 0C to 100C and then add another
2260 j to get it to vaporize to a gas . That would bring the total heat energy to go from ICE To VAPOR to (2260 +334 + X) j/kg!

Now if that 1 kg of water in the clothes was water and not ice and already at 100C then you would only need 2260 j to get it to a vapor.

Which is the larger amount Gabriele?? (2260+334+X) j or (2260) j?

So it is obvious strictly speaking that to dry an item in a dryer it takes MORE energy if the initial temperature and state of the water is lower.

Now you can dry clothes with another process of evaporation by relative humidity by exposing damp air to dryer air. That’s how clothes actually dry on a line outside even in winter. But that is not what I was saying.
And by the way what you made the assumption that the water was heated electrically, water can be heated by gas or fire, so your energy units are not universal.
[this post was last edited: 3/9/2012-05:54]
 

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