I got some of my informationn from a former member who is about as OCD on certain things regarding laundry. First of all, I RARELY use the Normal cycle. Because it's the Energy Star rated cycle, it has further dumbed down temperatures than the rest. Warm is 86F and Hot is 95F. Also, Normal and Heavy Duty cycles don't use the onboard heater to maintain water temperature unless you select extra hot. Towels, Bedding, Whites, and Perm Press do use the heater to riase water temperature to the specified temperature targets if needed. For those cycles, warm is 90F and hot is 112F. Heavy Duty has those target temps too, but like I said, the heater doesn't come on to riase or maintain once water level has been satisfied. If you use the Allergene cycle (steam is default on for Allergene) or select the steam option for Whites, Bedding, Heavy Duty, and Normal, ability to select any soil level is removed and the cyle is locked into a specified wash period length. Target temp when steam is selected is 160F-162F. Steam option also does not allow a prewash option. Target temp for Sanitary is 158F. Sanitary cycle does allow soil level selection and that will vary the length of wash time and thus water heating phase. I use the downloaded Denim cycle only for extra hot setting. There is no difference between hot or warm wash water temperature for denim, which is 86F. 112F for hot water is pathetic as far as I am concerned, but I don't necessarily need hot going up to 158F, so the denim cycle allows me some flexibiity of lower hot wash water temps beteen 130F & 145F due to the wider range of wash soil level times which allows more variation of wash and heating time. My go to cycle is Perm Press. It has a decent amount of water and a reasonable 90F warm & 112F hot. Also, if you pour 4 or 5 cups of water in the tub before you add laundry, that tricks the machine into thinking it's a large, heavy load and that results in water fills being higher for both wash and rinses. Also, the rinses will be double the time length and final spins will be longer. I always select an additional rinse for each load. For towels, jeans, and anything I add more detergent due to soil level, I select the maximum number of additional rinses. I really like my machine, I just despise the paltry dumbed down tempeartures. Sometimes 90F warm for Perm Press cycle isn't good enough for shifting stains. I let it wash with heaviest soil for about 10 minutes on warm and then pause and select hot water temp and normal soil level and resume cycle. Then by the end of the wash phase, the temperature is increased to between 100F & 104F, which is in the good old days was considered warm water. Washers from the 1950s & 1960s that had a "medium" wash water temperature was 120F. So, 112F is pathetic to me. And back then, hot was what ever your water heater teperature was. I use Tide with Oxi liquid and it's ok. Will be glad to get back to my Tide with Bleach powder.
