Miele US W1 860 COLD WASH TEMP

[stephen]

I’ve noticed that if I chose COLD for the Wash Temp on Normal, Wrinkle-Free, or Delicate that the Washer performs differently and does things not described in the manual.
It has a special saturation process described in Manuals for other W1’s outside the US. When I emailed Customer Service I asked what the machine was doing on Cold, they told me it was just including a Soak. I, of course, did not agree with them. When you select Cold it appears to be carrying out what is described in other manuals as PowerWash 2.0. Not sure why they wouldn’t explain this feature in the corresponding manual or why the their Support employees know nothing about it.

From Non-US manual:

Special features
– Drenching phase
The washing machine will spin a few times at the beginning of the pro- gramme. During spinning, the water discharged is sprayed back into the laundry in order to achieve optimum moisture penetration.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting feature and wasn’t sure many people even knew about it, so I thought I would share in a post.

 

[jerrod_six]

I noticed this last year when I got blood on a sheet and pillowcase. I washed everything in cold water and got the same process you described. It carried on the process until about 29 minutes was left, and then more water was added, and the wash proceeded as normal for the next few minutes until its end.

It is probably not technically powerwash 2 in that there is no heating going on but the repeated spinning and spraying - the drenching phase sure looks like the same saturation process. I am glad someone else experienced this because I kind of thought it might be a fluke in my machine.

 

[launderess]

Cold water penetrates natural fabrics more slowly than warm or hot. Maybe this is Miele's way of getting water into wash quickly and more efficiently than just absorption. More so given the puny amounts of water used for washing today compared to cycles of old.

 

[mielerod69]

PowerWash 2.0

I have a Miele WMR861 which has both hot and cold inlets. If I program the machine to just take cold water, it follows the PowerWash 2.0 process. If it's programmed for both hot and cold intake, then the machine does the normal PowerWash without the drenching phase.
It would be interesting to see if you change the water intake setting on the 860 to cold intake only if it would do the PW 2.0 process regardless of the selected temperature.

 

[henene4]

Maybe they're aiming at the higher concentration of detergent they also use for PW2.0.

Over here, they cancel PW2.0 for warm fill machines.

That heating course only works well and makes sense when starting from cold and when having to heat a certain bit.

I'd guess it only does that on cold so it can heat and maintain temps on the other settings?

Just my guesses...

 

[stephen]

@mielerod69

I’ve had it set to cold water intake sometimes because it takes the hot water a few minutes to reach the washer and by then it is done filling anyway. It still only does the PowerWash behavior on Cold wash temp. And only for Normal, WF, and Delicate.