Objective laundy test!

[dj-gabriele]

Stimulated by the debated sparkled from the cold water washing thread, I decided to come up with a personal cleaning test!

I decided to take one of the cotton rags I use for cleaning up in the balcony or similar dirty jobs and stain it on purpose.
I made two similar set of stains on each side and then let the rag dry in the open air overnight. I cut it in half and in the washer it went.

One half went in the longest 30°C wash my machine can provide, the other went in "cottons 60°C".
I used the same detergent, Reckitt&Benkiser AVA Max 3 powder for both loads.
This evening I'm going to show the results.

Oh and BTW, my machine is a Whirlpool AWOD3080, the crappiest of the front loaders you could buy over here at the time!

 

[dj-gabriele]

Test results

Here is the rag washed at 30°C, as you might notice the stains are really well visible.
In the contrast enhanced photo you can clearly see that little was removed from the fibers.

I'm sure that if I had pretreated the stains or if I had used a double dose of detergent (or stain blaster, oxi bleach, vanish or what else) the results would have been much better. Comparable to those of the rag washed at 60°C.

But, would have the cost of the additional detergent (an pollution) been worth the lower temperature wash?!

 

[dj-gabriele]

Test results #2

This is the rag washed at 60°C
As you can see there are no stains left except for those coming from the peanut oil and the oils left from the Nutella stain.
Otherwise the rag is pristine.

The additional cost of washing at 60°C over 30°C with my utility prices and machine is 7 eurocents (0,10 USD/CAD, 0,09 AUD, 0,06 GBP).

What are your comments? Come on! I'm eager to know what you think!

 

[DADoES]

 
That's what I figured would be the results, although I expected the oils to do better than they did at 60°C.

 

[thomasortega]

That's really nice.

I'm going to do the same as soon as I can.

BTW, this thread isn't to compare which kind of washing machine or brand of detergent is better.
Also, it's not to compare if americans or italians or brazilians or aliens have better or worse laundry habits.

It's only to compare cold water (30C) vs hot water (60C). And also it might help us understanding how or if the water in different regions can affect the wash results.

I just asked my friend Sandra to start gathering her laundry (she has a big family, so I'll have clothes enough to fill all of my washers up to maximum capacity. the test rags will be washed together.
I'm going to use brazilian detergents (the most famous brands) and also some imported detergents to see how is their performance with different water. all of the doses will be according to the manufacturers instructions. and the cycles will be those indicated by the washer manufacturers also, changing only the temperature parameter.

By the way, water in Brazil is ultra soft.

We could make a little joke with the Whirlpool's World Washer name and call this the World Laundry project.

Who else is going to join us? We already have an italian and a brazilian. The test will be much better if we can gather testers all over the world.

 

[nrones]

You have Serbian too!

Video will be online in few hours!

However, it was filmed few months ago actually, and I didn't know for this "World Laundry project" so it was about Stains going with, and without Vanish stain remoover, on same programme (Cottons 60), so it isn't about temperatures, but it is about stains going too

Next test vid will deffinatley be about 60vs30!

Dex

 

[donprohel]

Are you sure you feel good?

Well, Gabriele, I am not sure but... how to say it?... Er... I don't want to be rude, but... The fact is that... I mean...

I am afraid that someone washing such a lurid stuff at low temperature without pre-treating, soaking or additives has a long way to go before reaching the "clean laundry" land.

 

[mrboilwash]

I`m surprised the oil and Nutella stains didn`t do better at 60°.
Seems to me that modern sufactants` main focus is biodergadability, which is a good thing but it also confirms me to stick to 95° whenever possible.

 

[pierreandreply4]

me i would like to had that i wash in cold water and the best way to avoid a stain from remaining on the clothes is to wash the stain when its still fresh me if i have a shirt thats stain i wash it in cold water right away and the fact is that in cold water its possible to remove stains with out using any other productother than detergent. well thats my 2 cents in this matter.

 

[arbilab]

Oddly (?), the standard 13min wash in my FL at ~100F gets the occasional splash of spaghetti sauce off white T-shirts NOT washed immediately after staining. SS should be tougher than that, being deep red plus oily. Detergent = Tide HE powder.

 

[nrones]

Here it is

Again guys, sorry because my test isn't quite what you expected (30 vs 60), however it's still test, and I hope you'll find it interesting!

Dex

 

[dj-gabriele]

@donprohel

Don't worry, I wouldn't ever wear anything cleaned the way I'm showing you.
Oily stains for me simply go to the dry-cleaners. I don't bother with homemade degreasers.
The other stuff gets washed either at 60°C (and sometimes 95°C).
Coloureds and delicates are washed at 40°C all the time. Unless it's wool or silk and they go to the laundry too. (They love me there!)

Anywyay, the stuff washed at 30°C was washed againg at 60°C and this time everything came clean, even the oily patch.
Sorry no photos as I forgot!

 

[rapunzel]

Oil stains, which are rare on my laundry, get pretreated with Gelzyme or Shout, if I cant' wash the item in hot water. A good soaking with some oxygen bleach usually does the trick, even without pretreatment on either hot or warm/tepid.

 

[mysteryclock]

I pretreat all the oil stains I can find with the Tide pre-treater or Persil Color Gel. I haven't found any detergent that can get them out first time & every time without pretreating. And, having two small kids that occasionally use their shirts as napkins, we get a lot of this kind of stain.

 

[combo52]

REMOVING OILEY STAINS

Is best done with a pretreat of a dry cleaning type solvent. I have worn white shirts for years when fixing appliances and cars. Even black grease will come out completely if you spray it with airasol SprayNWash before you laundry it, works every-time. Then wash as usual in warm or even better hot water.

 

[thomasortega]

I don't know exactly on which countries the CIF degreaser can be found but it works great on oil stains.

It's that product made to degrease wall tiles, ovens, dishes, etc (not even close to the oven cleaners, of course).

Just spray and throw in the washing machine. it works great, even on cold (<30C) water. No mess, no rubbing, no nothing. just spray and throw. the stain simply disapears like magic.

 

[thomasortega]

Dj Gabriele

I'm sorry to ask but, only to put things clear.

You washed the test rags together with a full load of clothes, right? Not alone in the washer.

An overloaded washer obviously won't clean well but also a too underloaded machine won't clean too because the garment would be floating while the drum rotates around it.

 

[pierreandreply4]

here is a tip that helps with stain

if your washer has a soak cycle like mine has when i have serious stains i put my washer on the soak cycle with this washing recepie a dose of detergent, spray and wash or tide stain remover + 1/2 a cup of arm and hammer baking powder mix with the detergent and Warm water since thats the trouble with my washer i can not use hot water using the same recepie and soak cycle on a top load where i would be able to use hot water to have the stain remove or prewash cycles i plan soak + prewash on my topload washer daily driver than wash in cold water like i always do would make a diffrence. When i have some some color safe bleach than i wash with a normal load at my reg wash temp

 

[thomasortega]

Can I add a second part to this test?
Actually a second test.

What would you do to remove such stains using only cold water? Of course it's not impossible but... how?

No matter what process or product or whatever you need to do, but... try to remove 100% of the stains without using hot water.

Of course, the alternative gasoline + match is out of question. the test rag must survive. hundreds of years ago, launderess would get perfect clean clothes by washing them in a river... and as far as I know, rivers don't have a water temperature switch.

That would be fun... even better with videos or pictures.

This test consists only about removing "visible" stains... not related to killing dustmites or bacteria.

And remember, this is NOT a competition. Only a test.

 

[dj-gabriele]

All right!

@thomasortega

The rags were washed with a FULL load, 5 kg of laundry for a 5 kg machine.
As I always do I never underload or overload the machine. Otherwise you're playing the waste-game.

@combo52
I know that if I had pretreated the stains they would have come clean the first time but as I said, I don't pretreat and the test was to show how better stuff come clean with higher temperatures without using additives.
It also must be noted that both rags came clean the second time (even the oily stains) as they were re-washed with 60°C water and all the load was less soiled. Of course the rags were washed with mixed kitchen stuff what was very dirty but I didn't bother to pretreat the stains, so that hindered the results. If I had washed the rags in "normally dirty" laundry the 60°C wash would have been spotless. Proof next time I'm going to wash some "normal" whites.

@pierreandreply4

The point of having a (front loading) washing machine is to start it and get clean laundry, not soaking, pre-treating, using additives, pre-washes... and the machine manages to give you that 99% of the time if used properly. No additives, no elbow grease, just a dose of detergent.

@thomasortega again
I can't wash in tap cold as my machine auto heats at least to 30°C.
And besides, I'll stick to my routine of at least 40°C washing as the results speak for themselves! And those were fresh stains of only a day! Go figure if they were older!

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens to mud and dirt and vegetable stains as I went hiking for the day yesterday...

 

[gorenje]

Hi,

here is the Test I made.
First I would like to apologize for these pictures of nasty pieces of laundry, but I gathered on purpose the dirtiest rags from all around. Some others things was so dirty I was ashamed to show it.
I repeat, this was made on purpose, because I wanted to do a test on something really dirty.
This was mainly a load of kitchen cloths, table cloths, kitchen towels and lot of rags. All extremely dirty. In addition to all this stuff I'added also one "Test Rag" stained with different stains.
The stains was 7 days old, because I made the rag one week ago when this thread was created, but then I changed my mind and I've decide not to participate in this experiment. Yesterday I've changed my mind again since I had a lot of time but also a lot of dirty clothes to wash, so I told myself to try the experiment.

So here it goes:

7 days old stained dirty load
Very large load (I would say too much in regard to the soil level)
Washed on the "whites" cycle - prewash and 95°C main wash with only detergent and nothing else.
Detergent used: italian Dixan

Ingemar

 

[gorenje]

other stained items

pic. 2

 

[gorenje]

pic. 3

 

[gorenje]

pic. 4

 

[gorenje]

pic. 5

 

[gorenje]

pic. 6

 

[gorenje]

and here are the results

the full bucket

 

[gorenje]

the rag from pic. 1

this is the "Test Rag" from pic. # 1

 

[gorenje]

pic. 2

the kitchen cloth from pic. # 2

as you can see the oily ragu stain on the right side is still visible, the other two from the middle and the lower left side are gone, along with the rest of the dirtiness

 

[gorenje]

the kitchen cloth from pic. # 3 & 4