Rinsing Towels

[jmirawm]

I can rinse my towels 6 times and then run another rinse and there is still soap in the water. Does anyone else notice this problem with towels? I have a lady kenmore 90 series. I only put a half cup of gain in the wash. I think next time I can do the towels with no soap, the way the washer suds up after so many rinses! any suggestions as to what I can do to remedy this ?

 

[gansky1]

Try using packaged water softener to "strip" your towels of all the detergent residue. 1/2 - 1 cup of water softener, hot water and a warm rinse should do the trick. If not, the process can be repeated.

 

[davenp]

Plain clear Distilled White Vinegar in your rinse cycle will rid you of those suds. It doesn't scent the laundry, it'll just get the extra soap out.

For a top loader probably 1/2 a cup. You might need to adjust that up or down but it will most definately work.

Dave

 

[appnut]

Tom, I have had the same problem with my LK Shredmore too. I did vinegar rinses for a while as well as started ONLY using low sudsing detergents like Fab, Sears. I even used Tide HE for a brief period. I just can't trust the LK to do a decent rinsing job with anything like Tide or Cheer. Mind you mine are all powders.

 

[westytoploader]

I'm a die-hard Tide user (sudsy version), and with the Maytag's short rinse, towels don't seem to get fully rinsed out, especially on small loads. I usually end up running them through a second rinse. The DD Kenmore simplified this by putting a 2nd rinse feature on the "Heavy Duty" cycle.

Nothing worse than a poorly rinsed bath towel when you're drying off...oy!

 

[westytoploader]

Wait...I just figured it out--I somehow missed the fact that you're using Gain! I used Gain for a short time, and it is probably the thickest-sudsing detergent I have EVER used; it even puts Tide in its place! Every time I used Gain on a small or medium load in the Maytag, a good amount of thick suds shot out the standpipe during spin-drain! And yes, the rinses were sudsy as well. Since your machine is a DD Kenmore it will really churn up those suds and leave your towels soapy! If you use a low water level for towels, raise it up a notch during rinse. That should get rid of the problem. If you're washing and rinsing on a high water level and there's still a good amount of suds...not good...

My new slogan: Clean your floors with GAIN!!!

 

[cleanteamofny]

It looks like no one has come across a liquid detergent that refuses to rinse out!?!

Has anyone tried today's Wisk?
After three rinses, suds still remains in the wash!

 

[Designgeek]

Davenp and Appnut: re. clear white vinegar: Can you say more about that? And do you have any ideas about how it works? And, are there any fabrics that it's not safe to do this with?

What I'm thinking is, this could be a really significant water saver.

Let's say you normally use three rinses. Okay, now you can use two: the first one with white vinegar added, and the second one to remove any lingering white vinegar. Might also have potential in twin-tubs, for multiple loads going through the same rinse water.

Next item I have to look into is, how resource-intensive is the production of white vinegar? If I'm not mistaken, it's basically dilute acetic acid, right?

It could be really interesting to set up a research project...

 

[gansky1]

In my experience with white vinegar, it's good for neutralizing alkali in detergents, but does little for helping to remove suds. I have softened water now and have used the vinegar in both soft and previously hard water and could tell little difference in rinsing performance. Fabric softener is OK for cutting suds, but I don't like it in towels so the only solution is low sudsing detergent or lots of dillution with higher sudsers. I bought some powdered Sam's Choice at Wal Mart as I'd heard it was a great performer. The suds were everywhere - and thick frothy suds. It took two rinses in the 58 Frigidaire to get towels completely rinsed, normally the unimatics with overflow rinsing get rid of everything in one cycle. Back to the Sears HE bucket!

Here's the 59 Frigidaire doing an overflow "LintAway" rinse - it's getting rid of the excess suds and scum by flushing it over the top of the water and out the sides of the tub. "So clean, so quickly, so gently...entirely without harmful rubbing!"

 

[Designgeek]

Gansky1: Interesting; I thought I'd discovered a panacea with the white vinegar.

Okay here's another bunch of dumb questions

Is it correct that detergents work by attaching to various kinds of dirt while staying in solution in the water? Then, to the extent you have actual suds rather than a low-suds water/detergent mixture, does the sudsing action help to float the dirt-attached detergent up to the surface?

Key questions: In that case, if overflow rinse removes the suds, then does most/all of the removed dirt go down the drain with the removed suds? And then, how much dirt is left in suspension in the non-sudsy detergent/water mix that remains in the washtub?

Does anyone here know of a TL in which overflow rinse water is introduced from the bottom of the tub rather than at the top as depicted in Gansky's photo? In that case, clean water is coming in from below, and dirty water is exiting at the top of the load. Or would there be some inherent technical problem doing it that way?

 

[westytoploader]

Designgeek:

I personally don't own a solid-tub machine (that might change if I can find a GM Frigidaire "Agitub" washer or pre-1980 Speed Queen...), but let me try to explain this. Overflow rinsing is possible only in solid-tub machines (some have a perforated liner which makes them look perforated...but trust me, any overflow-rinse equipped machine has a solid washtub). The tub has no perforations or holes except at the very top, and therefore, by spraying water into the tub, it has no place to go except up and out. When spin starts, centrifugal force throws the water over the top of the tub and out those holes into the outer tub (the cabinet actually served as the outer tub on some machines).

For the machine to fill from the bottom of the tub, the tub has to be perforated, and then overflow rinsing can't be done. And even if you could do it, bottom fill really isn't necessary in the first place for overflow rinsing--agitation moves the water/dirt around. The 1957 Westinghouse "Sand Test" (vintage videos section) proved that solid-tub machines are relatively poor at sand disposal, so I'm not sure how well a solid-tub would work with "heavy" dirt in clothes.

Did I explain this correctly?

--Austin

 

[Designgeek]

Austin- Excellent, thanks!

Solid inner tubs: yes, that makes sense, and it's obvious enough that I should have seen it earlier.

This still leaves me wondering: does most of the dirt get trapped in the suds? How much is left in suspension in the detergent/water mix?

 

[peterh770]

I cannot remember the chemical name of the concept of how detergents and soaps work, but basically, the detergent molecule has a dirt-loving end and a water-loving end. The detergent molecules attach to water, and then attaches to dirt when it comes into contact with it, lifting it out of the fabric and holding it in solution. If the right combination of temperature, time and agitation are achieved, nearly all soil is suspended in the wash water and removed in the first spin. Rinsing is there to remove detergent residue, not soil, and suds have nothing to do with the cleaning action underwater.

This is why they used to say not to agitate too long, because the "hydrophilic" end of the detergent molecule would loose its attraction to water and redeposit soil on the fabric. I haven't heard this argument used in a very long time. I guess we have evolved! (And with the 50 minute wash on my Miele, I'm glad this isn't a worry!)

With the overflow rinse, I bet that nearly all the fresh water entering the tub is pulled into agitator and doesn't escape out the top until it has made at least one rollover thru the load.

I too never had good luck with vinegar as a softener. I use it like Greg to cut alkali, especially if I use ammonia in the wash, but never noticed any reduced suds in the rinse, reduced linting or softer clothes coming out of the dryer (and with 7 cats, I would notice less hair).

I do use softener on my towels, but it is only about 1/4 the recommended amount. This cuts any residual suds and adds a hint of softness with just about no fragrance and no adverse absorbency effect.

I have noticed that the top 3 detergent makers (P&G, Lever and Colgate-Palmolive) have added anti-suds ingredients to all their liquids. I mop the floors at my laundries with detergent leftovers. If I start filling my mop bucket with water and a cheap detergent like Sun or Xtra, I get lots of suds, but if I add All, Gain, Tide or Fab, the suds disappear. Filling the bucket with a top-shelf detergent, the suds disappear very quickly on their own.

 

[gansky1]

There are, as with everything, different schools of thought with the spray coming into the tub during an overflow period. I tend to think that if there is agitation/pulsation going on, that most of the water is drawn down into the tub and has a dilluting effect on the whole tub of water. With stationary overflow (no agitation) this probably isn't the case, depending on how forcefully the water is sprayed into the tub, but floating off the top of the rinse water was really the point with this type of overflow - especially when real soap was the prevalent cleansing agent used in washing.

 

[kenmore1978]

detergent/soap action

The very first thing that soap/detergent does is very basic, it breaks the surface tension of water, therefore making it "wetter"

 

[Designgeek]

Yes, breaks the surface tension: reminds me of a college prank my dad told me was common when he was a kid: put detergent in a small duck pond, and watch the ducks start to sink until they figure out what's up and fly away.

Understood about the water-grabbing and dirt-grabbing ends of the molecule. I was thinking that to the extent the detergent is churned up into suds, whatever dirt it's hanging on to will float and be easier to skim off the surface. But I can see the flaw in that idea, i.e. that most of the detergent and the dirt it grabbed is still floating around in the water.

I take it that the idea of an agitation limit is no longer relevant? That is, today's detergents don't lose their hydrophilic aspect even if they're left in a long soak?

Peter, how can one anticipate the best combination of time, temp, and agitation to get the maximum results?

 

[peterh770]

That's the best part of washing -- experimentation! If you have a washer with an actual mechanical timer, you can do testing much easier than if you have a computerized timer. The thing is that if you want to see if, say, 6 minutes is enough wash time, you would have take your results over several months of testing at 6 minutes. I can't stand those posts that say "I just tried Brand X and it is excellent." I think it takes longer than a "I just tried" to get consistant results and form a real opinion. Besides, any laundrophile's clothes are going to be cleaner than the average bear's, so it should take longer to see any results. "I have always washed in cold water and always get good results" is another one I'd like to see. Physics and chemistry just don't support that claim. What is good enough for the average cold water bear may not be up to laudrophile standards. Now if the average cold water, Sun using bear suddenly washed in hot with Tide and gave me an "I just tried..and it's GREAT!" statement, I'd be inclined to believe that one!

I wouldn't say agitation limits are not relavant. There has to be a balance between not agitating enough to clean and agitating your clothes into a batch of lint. I assume that some detergents will break down quicker than others.

 

[chachp]

I have a Bosch Axxis+ Washer and use Persil Laundry detergent. I have used this combination for about 3 years now. I don't know anything about how the detergent molecules work with the water, etc. However, I do know though that my combination produces very clear water in the final rinse. I use 1/4 cup Persil and no softener in my towels. I always set my machine for an extra rinse, and I think that gives me 3 rinses total. After I had my machine for about a year I tried the towel test in plain water to see if there appeared to be any soap residue and there appeared to be none.

SOO, that's a long way of saying I don't know if it is the detergent I use or the washer, or the combination of both. I hope that's a value to someone.

Ralph