How to get True Hot Wash

[yogitunes]

Nothing any of us haven't already known, or said before....

puzzling for most, is their trying to save energy by using COLD water, mainly from heating the water, and yet they dry their clothes in an Electric dryer, that heating element is pulling close to 5600 Watts, so you save in one area to waste in another...

granted I prefer Gas fired appliances, water heater, and heating....still use energy, just a lot more efficient and cheaper to use...not everyone has this availability...and again I get puzzled by the one way of thinking, to save energy wash clothes in COLD water, yet dishes HAVE to be washed in HOT, or needing HOT water for a shower.....you will most likely use more HOT water in one shower, than you will washing several loads of laundry!....if you want to be THAT efficient, turn the water heater off or get rid of it!...

IMHO, for me, using a Neptune FL, HOT/Warm setting, and drying in a Gas dryer....not only gives me cleaner clothes, yet being as efficient as possible...then again, maybe I am the one with blinders on

we just also need to look at other areas of energy savings, and not just in the laundry room......

 

[joe_in_philly]

Opps - I just created a thread based on that story, Ray. I should have read here first!

 

[tomturbomatic]

Health and hygiene are blessings, but they come with a cost. The trick is to figure out whether health and hygiene are worth the cost associated with proper cleaning, from bathing to everything in the household. IF these costs are reasonable to you, continue. If they are deemed too high, figure out how you can make the most efficent use of the heated water that you use and balance that against the disinfectant products that you have to use because you are using cooler water for washing laundry and surfaces. The stupidist thing that comes to mind is inadequate washing in cold water and then paying money for products to clean your filthy washer. The utility companies are as guilty as anyone in promoting cold water washing. When you think about what must be living in a washing machine to make it smell so foul, how can you consider the laundry you take out of it to be clean? If you use a washcloth to thoroughly bathe yourself, how could you consider using it again? Towels rub dead skin cells off your body. Do you really want to smear them and whatever has grown on them over your clean body the next time you shower? This further begs the question about how well cold, especially winter tap cold water in northern states, is going to remove this culture of dead cells, bacteria and body oil from your towels and washcloths and whether it will be washed and rinsed away or just transferred from the dirty laundry to the insides of the washing machine. At no other time since automatic washers have been invented have washing machines needed further cleaning after a completed cycle except maybe after doing a really horrible load.

Tests years ago showed that the most bacteria-laden surface in a kitchen is the door handle of the refrigerator.

I guess schools are not teaching anything about hygiene anymore. One of the smartest biology teachers I ever heard of was distressed by the dirt under the long fingernails of young girls. He offered to show them what was living under their fingernails by scraping a bit of the dirt onto a slide. He explained that it needed to be made wet so he added a few drops of water that he had previously taken from the aquarium. The squeals and screams were followed by scrubbing with a brush he had handy. If people could see their filth, they would be cleaner. Instead they use deodorizers which atomize oils into the air to grow more filth.

 

[washer111]

Effective Detergent in Cold Water:

To manage that, you are going to need some pretty nasty chemicals to activate bleaches, enzymes and the like at temperatures below 80ºF (27ºC). Are they suggesting we "save the environment" with Cold water washes, but have to use Engine-Degreaser in our detergent to get good results (i.e. remove body oils)? Antibacterial Soaps? 

 

That is ridiculous! Use the right temperature for the job, your machine will last longer, you will last longer and you will be cleaner, instead of relying on chemicals that end up creating super-dangerous bacteria. Like I've said: Once we switched from a Cold-Water only TL machine to the Miele, which heats its own water, I have not caught a cold to date (1 yr). My clothes are cleaner - not stiff or whiffy smelling straight out of the machine. The times the Miele has gone "Cold Water" on my (Automatic cycle), I can SMELL the difference!

 

As Launderess has put it, there are 3 (or four) components of laundry: Reducing any of them (Temperature, Time, Chemical and Mechanical action) requires increasing the others to compensate: Cold water washing = More detergent, More Washing time = More damage to clothes. Our Miele will increase the cycle time by about 30-40 minutes as you decrease the temperature from 140ºF (60ºC).