How cold is "too cold" water?

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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]
 
I am all for rinsing in water that is not painfully cold, but water does sublimate so it could go from a frozen solid to a vapor without having to absorb enough heat to change from a solid to a liquid state before changing to a gaseous state. Water will evaporate, albeit at a slower rate, at lower temperatures. That is why you can hang things to dry and they will dry eventually. Depending on water to be boiling hot, 100C or 212F, for vaporization is not achieved in most dryers except maybe Filtrators and some condenser combos. With those machines, which depend on high temperatures, heating up the load with warm or hot rinse water heated by a gas water heater certainly helps shorten the drying time since you are shooting for raising the temperature of the whole dryer atmosphere above 200F for cottons so that there will be a great temperature difference between the steamy air and the cold air or water temperature for condensing. Air flow dryers can slowly, but eventually, dry clothes on 120 volts at much lower temperatures. A Maytag HOH dryer has a heating element about 400 watts larger than the Filtrator, but the air flow through the drying load keeps the exhaust heat around 110F because of the cooling effect of evaporation. It is only after the load is dry that the temperature starts to climb. That is why the electronic control HOH dryers have the Permanent Press (or Wash 'n Wear in older models) cycle. It is after the load is dry that this cycle allows the temperature to climb to 160F to make sure the wrinkles are relaxed out of the no-iron fabrics before the dryer goes into the thermostatically controlled cooldown. That is also why Maytag recommended this cycle for items needing extra drying.

Beyond the better rinsing in cool water, say 75F, because the fabrics are relaxed and water can more easily flush out the detergent and dirt held in the fibers, relaxed fabrics give up more water in extraction because they compress better. Maybe the real trade off, since most of us are not using condenser dryers, although Jon uses his Duomatics, is if a significantly greater amount of water is left in fabrics spun after a stone cold rinse than in fabrics rinsed in warmer water. Maybe not, but those of us who like to rinse in cool water as opposed to 42F cold water will continue to do so and those who don't mind rinsing in cold will continue to do that.
 
Heres somthing I found interesting on a commercial for ALL with Oxi liquid.......

for heavily soiled kids clothes, as shown in the commercial......read the fine print at the bottom when they show you a pic of before and after.....

items pretreated and washed in WARM water, Normal cycle............and yet they push for you to use COLD for savings...even their own test are showing that Cold is not getting them clean....

makes you wonder

but I also think theres a big difference between a traditional TLer and a FLer on hot water useage.....I was always a Warm/Cold user with the TLer...since I got the FLers...its either Warm/Warm or Hot/Warm........whats the harm, its only a few gallons......
 
so your energy units are not universal

Sorry to prove you wrong but a kWh (or 3,6 MJ) is a universal quantity of energy, be it electric, or otherwise.
Another stupid thing to say is that "water is sitting already in the boiler" the difference is in using it or not, because the boiler has to be replenished once you draw water from it.

And I exactly told something pertinent to your post. Also what you said, about boiling water doesn't relate to machine drying clothes, you don't "boil" them, but use a stream of warm dry air to solve the water in it, sure there's going to be phase change and such but it's not BOILING.

What I was saying is (and re-read my previous post correctly) that doing such will cost you TWICE.
Pre-warming your clothes with warm water will cost you 3 kWh of thermal energy (regardless of source) considering all the water used by the machine during the rinse, the actual water in the clothes yield a thermal energy of around 0,200 kWh negligible compared to the total use.
Detract that from what a dryer use and you might go from 3,5 to 3,3 kWh of thermal energy needed to dry the load...

So in the end you have 3+3,3 = 6,3 kWh with warm rinsing or 3,5 with cold rinsing.

If you want a more detailed insight about that we can discuss it privately as I like to be clear and don't want to pose as a tedious guy :)
 
to dj gabriel

this will be my only post in this topic but for me if i would have to use for x reason a vintages machines i would have the wash and rinse temp knob set only on cold water wash or warm water wash but i would only use the cold rinse temp because i am one thats wents to save in energy and not all fabrics can take a warm rinse i for 1 thing find that using cold water for main wash and main rinse find that the effect is the same as if i would of use a washer with a warm rinse.

pierreandreply4++3-9-2012-16-31-53.jpg
 
No again

"Sorry to prove you wrong but a kWh (or 3,6 MJ) is a universal quantity of energy, be it electric, or otherwise."

kWh (or 3,6 MJ) that means nothing! OVER WHAT TIME PERIOD?? A MINUTE A DAY A YEAR??

AND HOW MANY KWH AM I USING IN MY GAS BOILER??? A DUH!

No a KWH is a measure of ELECTRICITY and a Joule is a Universal measure of any kind of energy!
You have to CONVERT KWH to JOULES to get JOULES just as you TRIED TO DO AND DIDN'T!
A KWH is a RATE of Electrical energy!
A WATT= Joule/SECOND! Thats the definition!


Another stupid thing to say is that "water is sitting already in the boiler" the difference is in using it or not, because the boiler has to be replenished once you draw water from it.

Yes and if I DONT use that water it will COOL even sitting in the boiler and to maintain that temperature -----whether I use it or not ---the boiler will come on to keep it at temperature.

And don't call me STUPID again!

[this post was last edited: 3/10/2012-14:40]
 
I will call you ignorant in the matter then

as you're wrong and you don't want to understand.
And by the way, I didn't call you stupid, I wouldn't ever do it as I don't even know you in person but I said that what you wrote was stupid.

A kWh is a measure of ENERGY, a kW is a measure of POWER, two different words and yes, both units can be applied to any kind of "energy" and "power" thermal, electric, as you like, even muscle power can be measured in kW and the energy you burn while doing sport can be measured in kWh. It's just a different unit.

Cit. "kWh (or 3,6 MJ) that means nothing! OVER WHAT TIME PERIOD?? A MINUTE A DAY A YEAR??"
With this pearl you demonstrate your total ignorance of basic physics: the timespan is written in the unit name; that amount of energy is equal to having a load of the power of one kilowatt turned on for one hour and it equals 3,6 MJ or 3412 btu or 860420 calories.

Cit. "Yes and if I DONT use that water it will COOL even sitting in the boiler and to maintain that temperature -----whether I use it or not ---the boiler will come on to keep it at temperature."

SURE! But standby boiler losses are one to two orders of magnitude less than what you can have in drawing hot water, negligible compared to the fuel used for heating water for "real" uses, so if you use the hot water is going to cost you, if you don't use it it will cost you something you can't really count.

If you want real explications be my guest but don't push things that don't make sense, it's not correct.
 

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