Question for USA guys

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American Laundry Behavior

The most common occurrence that I’ve observed when watching people do laundry in their homes is that they set the machine for the “normal cycle” with a cold wash and cold rinse not matter what they are washing.

I’ve asked them if they think they should use hot water and the heavy duty cycle to wash the load of whites, but I’ve been told “No, it’s just a normal load of whites.”
What about using Perm Press/Wrinkle Free to wash those dress clothes, “No, there is nothing special about those dress clothes. It’s just a normal load of dress clothes.”

These same people blame the machine if something doesn’t come out clean, or is too wrinkled.
 
My dads wash everything together on the Normal cycle with cold water and "less soil" selected no matter what the soil level is and wonder why their whites come out blue, why stains never come out and why their Whirlpool Duet has a horrible stench to it. I keep explaining to them why these things happen but they just dismiss all the issues including turning the whites blue as, "we just have a crappy washing machine."
 
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ABSOLUTELY!

My mother is the same: she separates by color and that's it. Actually, she would only need three buttons: Normal hot, Normal warm and Delicate... And one type of detergent and a bottle of softener. She must have inherited that behavior from her mother, who never uses any of the options on her Miele. No surprise my cousin's stinky clothes, which she regularly washes, came out still smelling. Whenever I come over to visit her, I take over as many household chores I can to help her. So once I washed one of these "challenging" loads (this time with Extended Wash and Extra Rinse) and everything came out clean and fresh.

Then again, everyone has different "interests". I, contrary to many other members here, couldn't care less for vintage TVs and radios - or even vacuum cleaners.
 
Indesit made the 4-button-MOON for such people

My granny from the wasboard went directly to a Candy FL.

That machine got bored by running boilwashes only . Sometimes it spun those handwashed clothes that couldn't stand a boilwash

Gran was a bit bleach addicted, so when she was about to wash, everyone here ran to hyde his/her favourite shirt.... dark socks with unidentified WHITE spots were soooo common ;-)
 
There is a REASON ASKOS need 7 or 8 rinses..................

~They do, however, show that the most water-efficient front loaders do a significantly worse job at rinsing than most of the top loaders available over here.

Rinsing is simply a matter of dilution. One top-loader's deep rinse may incorporate as much as 100L (say 26.5+/- gallons)of water.

Assuming a typical front-loader uses 20L of water (5.3+/-gallons of water), one can easily see that 5 top-loader rinses approximates one top-loader's deep rinse.

Reminder:Aa bucket of water is 2 U.S. gallons +/-.
 
Rinsing is simply a matter of dilution

This is true, but depending on the way it is done and on the fabric you're rinsing.

While handrinsing one uses a reasonable amount of water and changes it a few times as necessary, rather than use just a lot of water in a single rinse.

Other effective factors :

- Interim spins, in both VA TL and HA FL & TL

- Sprays while spinning probably do more than the single deep rinse in VA TL

- Water hardness. Hard water requires more detergents, otherwise it helps rinsing (calcium & magnesium salts link with detergents and precipitate, so it rinses better). Soft water needs less detergent but doesn't help dilution.

Asko W have the OPTIONAL 7+ rinses as soft water is very common in Scandinavia. Similar feature have swiss machines ( VZug, Merker, Schulthess ...) as in southern Switzerland (Vallais,Tessin and Graubuenden) soft water is an issue.
Mieles have the water plus sys, Aegs and Bosches have the "sensitive" option..... also, in case of suds lock, these machines add further rinse(s)

So, if one lives in a hard water place he/she can use the standard watersaving setting ..and lots of Calgon/descaler

Where water is soft one hasn't limescale issues but has rinsing ones, so 7+,sensitive,waterplus and such options come useful

Commercial laundries in hard water areas have water softeners to save on chemicals, indeed they have soft hot&cold pipelines for wash fills and hard cold water fills for rinses

Me too had prejudice about the single deep rinse on VA TL, as i didn't know about spray spins ....

Anyway it is true that the energy/water saving "race" has somewhat pushed things beyond a reasonable limit. For our sake this mostly happens on the programme used for eco ratings

I.E my newer machine uses 52 litres @ full load on standard setting. When I have towel & bathgown loads I use the waterplus to have low washing level but 4 high level rinses as the older machine does
 
~Sprays while spinning probably do more than the single deep rinse in VA TL

oh yes I agree. But the clothing is folded over upon itself during spin and there are corners and bits that probably don't get throuroughly rinsed.

Perhaps a spray rinse, then a deep-rinse, then another spray rinse is best.

Alas, this latest water-saving mania kick killed-off all of that.
 
As someone who has stood standing over a Hoover TT doing several "spray" rinses, am here to tell you that the process can indeed be effective. Know this because items that have been processed accordingly, when put into the wash tub for a "deep" rinse, the water is quite clear and free of detergent residue.

Spray rinsing must be designed in such a way that laundry is allowed to absorb water, then it is spun out.

On the Unimac commercial twin tubs, the spin spray basket has a central diffuser cone that sprays a fine mist of water onto laundry as it is spun on low speed, the the machine ramps up to speed to spin the water out. This is repeated several times until the laundry is "rinsed", then the final high speed spin starts.

Merely bouncing water off laundry as it spins very quickly does little if no effective rinsing. It does however help to remove excess foam in tubs, so can be of some use.
 

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