Battery Vehicle Society

Having been brave enough to swallow the cost and have a superb solar water heating system installed, I am a bit miffed to discover washing machine manufacturers seem to be changing washing machines to "cold fill only" . Is this to persuade greater use of 30 degree washing cycles ?

I am having to really look hard for a washing machine that draws hot water from the domestic system,rather than heat it up itself - although my quest isnt helped by the fact the machine has to be silver in colour as well.

Ho hum, there was a time when I was excited by large ,powerful motorcycles,then classic cars... now its washing machines - ageing is a cruel process.....

Tut tut tut

Its a washing machine nought else, it washes cloths, 75% I'd think is hidden away is you really want a silver one I could offer you a tin of slightly aged silver spray paint from the garage



I know what you mean though most are cold fill only, try LG they are pretty good

ChrisB

surely if you connected it to the hot water supply the imersion heater in the machine would not run so long as the water will already be heated and so the thermostat will register the water as being sufficiently warm to continue the cycle without heating it. or at least it wont need to heat it so long.

Errr but would you want a hot rinse cycle you'd also have little or no control over the temp as everything would be washed at what ever came through the cold fill

You need a machine that uses both hot and cold that way if it fills with hot thats two hot it can cool off with some cold fill

ChrisB

This is a very interesting area, it would be great to think that you could make use of hot water generated for free by the sun instead of heating it with electricity in the machine.

There is a very long thread here from the Navitron forum, it discusses sereral workarounds but the bottom line is (and it hurts to say this) its not worth trying to get your free hot water into the machine.

http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index. ... 735.0.html

Modern machines use so little water that they would only let in the cold water held in the feed pipe and end up having to heat it any way, you could be smart and run the hot tap before running the machine to get some hot water in the 'dead leg' but that is it!!

MarkTime

Interesting Mark

Yeah hadnt thought about the fact the modern washer only uses a egg cup full of water to supposedly wash cloths, I'm not convinced they do very well to be honest

Our old bosh (circa 1987 ish ) uses enough water to save a 3rd world country I suspect but theres not a lot thats come out thats not clean, where as a mate of mine has one of these modern must'nt use more than a egg cup full of water and only 0.00005 watts of electric and I've seen stuff come out of there no different to how it was when it went in

Or perhaps your not suppose to wash overals covered in 2 weeks worth of old engine oil, greese and that really sticky black stuff that they pack CV boots with



ChrisB

Having just signed up for Solar Hot Water myself, I was asking the same question but for our dishwasher which is cold fill only.

Surely there is no harm in hot filling it, after all there is no benefit in rinsing plates in cold water

Thoughts please!!

Probably no harm apart possibly from thermal shock to delicate glassware, but some of the 'clever' ones might treat it as an error condition and stop.

As you say theres no worry about rinsing in hot water the one thing you might want to check is the machine spec for the intake temperature as you might find that the machinces max intake temp is 30c or 40c maybe lower

If you started feeding it with hot water above the max intake temp you could run into issues as the hoses internally wont be rated for this and you could end up with hoses colapsing or other such failures due to the fact they never expected the machine to be used on a hotwater supply and of course to cut costs use low temp hoses and fittings.

Just a thought , I could be totally wrong but its got to be worth checking before ending up with a kitchen full of hot water

You might find that even though the machine state a max temp of say 30C if you strip the panels off it and run it up and see if it does effect any of the plastic componants

AH HAVING JUST RE-READ ALL THAT I HAVE FORGOTTON THAT DISHWASERS CONTAIN A WATER SOFTNER AND I HAVENT GOT A CLUE HOW THAT WOULD REACT TO HOT WATER FILLING

ChrisB

Oh God I'd forgotton about these new so called "clever" machines as you say it could see this as an error and shut it down

ChrisB