I’ve had the week from hell. I’ll spare you all of the detail; suffice to say that in a two-week span my washer, dryer, cable/internet, computer and frackin’ toaster all died on me.
So I hurried out and bought a new washer and dryer. The last ones were computerized but not fully so - I could turn a dial to the setting I wanted and away I went. I have washed in cold water all of my adult life. I don’t like the cost or the wear on fabrics of washing in hot water (not to mention shrinkage).
So what follows is my own damned fault. I picked out the least fancy washer and dryer I could find. They don’t have dials, more like touch pads, but no extra features that I would never use anyway. As the last ones went as a result of not their internal features, but the control panel - I didn’t want to go down that road again.
So instead I’ve discovered this new washer won’t allow me to pick a temperature setting. It determines what temperature to use based on setting - but of course I picked basic settings so it only has “heavy duty”, “normal” “gentle” and “rinse”. Well unfortunately the normal setting washes in scalding hot. I can only get cold water in the “rinse” but it has no wash cycle for that - only rinse.
I want to bypass the hot water and hook it up only to cold so that I can continue my long standing preference for cold water washing. (And perhaps keep the heat in house under 100 degrees and have enough hot water for showers and dish washing). Will bypassing the hot water and only hooking up to the cold water pipe work? Or the will the machine (that knows better than I what’s good for me) refuse to work if it doesn’t detect hot water? I swear this beast was designed by Microsoft. Anyone else ready to lose it as a result of our holier-than-thou auto-correct world?
I would have sent the machines back - but I live in a weird old house that has two staircases - the front stairs have the incline of a ladder at a 65 degree angle and the back stairs have the dreaded narrow walls and low stair well. It took 3 men 3 hours to get them up the stairs. Oh and a stair case to repaint and walls to retouch so I don’t have the heart to send them back.
Maybe you can flip the hoses on the back of the machine…ie, attach the one intended for hot water to the cold water faucet and vice-versa. Note I have no idea if this will cause the machine to malfunction and/or summon demonic entities bent on vengeance, but it might solve the temperature issue.
It’s a Whirlpool and I only see a model number on it (W104844486A) It says Whirlpool Front-loading Automatic (that doesn’t seem like a model to me, but what do I know?) I don’t know if it matters that it’s manufactured by Whirlpool Canada.
A Y to feed cold into both hoses makes great sense to me. Thanks!
Well, I don’t know about your particular model, but my Whirlpool washer has a heating element to heat up the water to the proper temperature if the water coming in is not hot enough. So hooking it up to cold only might be pointless, and actually waste energy. A good read through the manual might tell you if this is the case for your model.
Have you read the manual? There are certain clothes that must be washed in cold. There is no way that a wash machine doesn’t have a cold wash, cold rinse setting. Wools, Polartec, silks… I’d say look at the user’s guide again. Also, if this is a ‘cheap’ washer like you posted, I very much doubt that it actively uses any temperature sensors, so you’d probably be just fine with a Y on your cold water hose to just run cold/cold into the machine.
Well, I stand corrected, I just pulled up the manual (might just be for a similar model). It seems that even “normal” uses warm water. The only way to get cold water is to use the Rinse/Spin setting. But that doesn’t seem like real wash. The manual I’m looking at says you can force a different temp by holding down the wash temp button…but I’m guessing if you had that button, you wouldn’t be asking this question. It also mentions an ATC or automatic temperature control where it monitors the incoming water temperature…who wants to guess that your’s DOES have that feature. But I think (I guess anyways) it just adjusts the hot/cold mixture, so it’ll probably just close the cold side and open the hot side if that’s the case, but if you have cold water on both sides, it won’t really make a difference.
Either way, hook up the cold to both sides and see what happens.
WOW, I’m so glad the OP posted this thread. I’d never have guessed that I’d have to be careful to find a wash machine that did cold/cold! I’d be livid the first time my woolies came out all felted down to 1/3rd their normal size.
Oh boy. I rather wondered about whether it might have it’s own heating element, because I couldn’t believe how hot the water is. It seems much hotter than I get out of the tap. Dangit.
Normally I would have a leisurely read through the manual so that I did, indeed, know what all it would do for me. This time (perhaps it was the angst of not single clean pair of, well, anything) I went right for the washing leaving the manual for tomorrow’s reading.
It’s listed as Energy Star (energy efficient - I don’t know if that’s a universal rating). Frankly I can’t see how something that either uses that much hot water or uses its own element to heat water is efficient use of energy.
Tomorrow I’ll read the manual. I think I may just have to learn to live with it - and to sort colours more carefully. sigh
Thanks for your help. I will henceforth ask all pertinent questions before buying an appliance that may or may not meet all of my needs. I would never in my wildest imaginings think there would be an washer that wouldn’t let me select my own temperature.
Yep, I feel thoroughly hoodwinked here. I have so many things that I can wash safely in cold or I must hand wash. Hand washing my sweaters and other delicate items? Now there’s a giant step backward for me.
I’ve certainly found that part of the manual that says not all features are available on all models so I’ll have to read carefully . . . again I say “energy efficient”? That is a huge false claim if indeed it does have an element . . . arggghhh . . . I was actually thinking that if all else failed I could use up as much hot water as I could before doing a few loads - but an element would thwart that plan.
I’m now officially more depressed than I was before the new washer. And to think I was excited to be doing laundry tonight.
Oh, how I wish we could switch washing machines. Mine does not have a “hot” cycle, and there’s no way to get one. It only has cold and warm, and the warm is not very warm. Say tepid.
Like Heckity’s, the temperature depends on the setting, but not so much the setting (there are only two: regular and heavy-duty) but the time. I can set it for 10 minutes on heavy duty and get warm water, or on six minutes and get cold water. On the regular it’s six minutes for warm and four for cold.
Mostly this is okay, but there are some things, like dish towels & napkins, that I like to wash in really hot water, and I can’t do it!
On the plus side, I don’t have to be particularly careful sorting the colors. But I don’t like it.
When I moved in here I had to replace the refrigerator and dryer and add a dishwasher, so that was a lot of appliances. I figured I’d replace the washer somewhere down the road. Now I will know to look at one that has a separate setting for temperature. I’ve made a note about it.
wow. I’ve never heard of a basic washer that has such an un-basic temperature setting system. Most washers I looked at push cold wash/cold rinse on you as if it were a religious belief. I recently had to buy a new washer, and got the most basic one I could find that wasn’t just a big old tub with a drain, and it has four load sizes and four temperature settings (though you get a cold rinse with everything) and so many different types of loads I had to copy the chart and post it on the wall to keep it straight!
And I hate this washer.
It thinks too much. Every single frickin’ load takes 45 minutes. My old washer (a Maytag that lasted nearly 30 years) was wonderful. Put clothes in, select setting, push the button and it starts to fill with water. You could keep loading stuff in while it filled. It wouldn’t agitate until you closed the lid, but it got right down to working, and you could open the lid and add things. And I could restart the agitating process if I were felting something. This washer? Put clothes in, detergent in, close lid, push start…and it sits there and ponders. And Thinks. And cogitates. And makes a few noises, does a little shimmy. Thinks some more. Fills with water. Considers. Ponders. Wiggles the clothes around a little bit in the water but I’m not convinced it’s really swishing things about. If you dropped a sock on the floor there is a button to unlock the lid, but if you hold it too long, you cancel everything. And sometimes it makes you wait a few minutes before it will unlock if you choose the wrong minute. And then, at the end, when you may be standing there waiting for it to be all over so you can get another load in and get on with your life, it thinks some more after all the water is spun out. Considers. Yawns. Gives a tremendous bang and spins a little more water out. Stops and thinks. Sprays more water! Then spins again. Thinks. Thinks. Thinks. Gives a sigh and finally lets you have your wet clothes.
But I do get to pick my own temperature. Can’t imagine a washer being EnergyStar certified if HOT is its default setting. Is this a Canadian thing, frozen tundra and all? Because I do know even my old washer said that in the winter, cold water wash might not be your best option because the water might be TOO cold and not dissolve the detergent (if using powder, I would assume).
You know all of that is because it is doing an inventory and reporting your family’s habits back to fashion police headquarters. If you interfere too much (push the stop button too long), it has to start all over again.
The more I read this thread, the more I love my old washer. I haven’t closed the lid on it in years. I look at the wash water and if it’s a bit too dirty (like a lot of crusted up mud), I just turn it off, let it soak for a while, then run it the rest of the way through. I might also repeat the wash cycle, especially if the rinse water looks too soapy or just cause I feel like it. I just turn the dial back to wash and it starts from there. I could fill the tub with tomato juice and ice cubes for all it cares, as long as the ‘water’ level is high enough, it will agitation what ever is in there. I’ve even been known to do back-to-back spin cycles on heavy blankets - the horror!