- This topic has 19 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 19 years, 6 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hi. 🙂
I think this is my first message on here, so hello to everyone! 🙂 I have picked up lots of very useful information from many people here, so thank you. 🙂
I would like to ask a relatively simple question: how many Ariel tablets should we use in our new Miele Premier 520 machine? This is a 5 kg, A+ energy machine that practically washes in a ‘puddle’! 😯 We have a water softener that has turned our very hard water (according to our water company) into soft water. This also works on our shower and dishwasher, so we use less salt – although still a little salt of course – and soap, etc.
We use the Water plus feature, which we have set to increase the water levels in the wash and rinse, as well as it adding a further rinse. This makes the machine wash in a slightly larger ‘puddle’. 😉
For a 5 kg machine with soft water, on the Ariel box (on top and underneath), it suggests using two tablets; however, the Ariel website suggests one tablet! I e-mailed P&G, and they suggested trying either one or two, depending on the results.
We use Ariel Colour & Style mostly, but we do one or two washes a week with Ariel Biological. A maintenance wash will be done every month from the drawer with Ariel Biological powder or tablets.
What would you engineers suggest – one tablet or two? 🙂 Does using Water plus make any difference to the amount/number of tablets we should use?
I understand that powder is easier to dose, but we tend to make a terrible mess with that! 😉 Also, we always put tablets in the drum (except for maintenance washes) because we do not want to gunk the drawer up. We kept our last machine’s drawer clean through that with just the occasional routine clear out for cleanliness’ sake.
Many thanks! 🙂
Regards,
Carl
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
carlstock wrote:How many Ariel tablets should we use in our new Miele Premier 520 machine? This is a 5 kg, A+ energy machine that practically washes in a ‘puddle’! 😯 We have a water softener that has turned our very hard water (according to our water company) into soft water. This also works on our shower and dishwasher, so we use less salt – although still a little salt of course – and soap, etc.
Without a hardness test, I would now assume medium-soft at a guess.
I would be guided by the whats on the box re – med-soft and how soiled.For a 5 kg machine with soft water, on the Ariel box (on top and underneath), it suggests using two tablets; however, the Ariel website suggests one tablet! I e-mailed P&G, and they suggested trying either one or two, depending on the results.
There is no definate rule its all trial and error. 1-2 tabs in a relatively soft water environment is fine and also depends on how soiled the garments are.
A monthly maintenance wash will be done every month from the drawer with Ariel Biological powder or tablets.
Excellent, I wish everyone was as switched on as you are.
Also, we always put tablets in the drum (except for maintenance washes) because we do not want to gunk the drawer up
You won’t with Aeriel, they just disintegrate with water contact, only tablets I would recommend placing in the drawer IMHO
HTH
Greg
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
Hi, Greg.
Thank you very much for responding.
I do believe, from the tests and as you have said, that our water will only ever be medium-soft at best, not completely soft.
Also, according to P&G, Ariel tablets can be placed in the drum (at the bottom of the drum and towards the back), and this is mentioned on the box. However, P&G say they should, as you have said, be placed in the drawer for best results; but we have not have not found Ariel tablets to clog the drawer up anyway.
Apparently, putting the powder or tablets in the drawer is most important with Ariel Biological powder or tablets because of the chance of the bleach in the detergent affecting the clothes, especially any with colours, on contact – that is, before the detergent is fully dissolved.
Anyway, I know many of you at UKW have undertaken all of the detergent courses and testing. 🙂
Many thanks,
Carl
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
Hi Carl. 😉
I live in a very soft water area and only ever use one tablet ( Ariel of course) even on a full load. For a half load we often break a tablet in half to prevent oversoaping.
Jim.Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
Hi Carl,
Two tablets will probably give you optimum results whether in the drawer or in the drum. The prefered method is in the drawer, so there’s little change from the use of powder and, with no water pressure issues, I’ve never seen that not to work and even with pressure issues it takes literally no pressure to cause an issue.
Putting the tabs in the drum and talking of bleaching is P&G being overly cautious methinks as the tabs would have disolved long before there was an issue.
My advice would be two tabs as recommended.
K.
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
Hi. 🙂
I must admit that, on two loads with the new Miele, there was rather a lot of foam with an all-towel load and another cottons load on the Cottons 60ºC programme.
I know it’s important not to load too many towels into a machine at once, but we had to stop the machine some way into the programme and put it through several rinses because there was so much foam. This was with two Ariel Biological tablets, and that is partly what prompted me to ask on here about how many to use, as well as pointing out to P&G that there were inconsistencies between the labelling on their packaging and their website.
Considering how there appears to be even less water during a wash than in our B-rated Bosch – this Miele is A+ for energy – I would guess that perhaps the detergent solution is even more concentrated. (I may be wrong on this.)
As I have said, we live in a very hard water area but have a softener fitted. My Dad and I forgot to tell my sister this after fitting it, and she admitted that she had a head full of foamy shampoo in the shower that was foaming all over her head! She thought she was “in Wales again” (at university)!!!
The actual softener we have used is the Hotpoint Calblock:
http://www.theservicecentre.co.uk/Servi … odacc.html
There are a couple of posts on UKW:
https://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/modules. … ic&p=11694
I am not sure what you engineers made of this water softener :look: :dark:, but please do not laugh at me if you think it is terrible! 😉
Despite having little faith in Hotpoint/Indesit products, this seems to work, and we have had them for a while now, although we would of course prefer a ‘whole house’ solution. I thought this Calblock would be a con, but it seems to work – especially as my sister was caught out whilst washing her hair! 😉 We have one of these on the washing machine, dishwasher and shower.
It even fits on our shower (which is permanently plumbed into our hot water system) and has completely stopped any limescale formation on the shower head. We descaled the shower head first and then fitted the Calblock.
Many thanks,
Carl
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
Hi Carl,
Don’t forget that your Miele machine has an ‘automatic foam sensing’ facility which will increase the number of rinses should you put in too much detergent. 😉
With a towels wash it is a good idea to also press the ‘Water Plus’ button. 🙂 A good general guide is to use just 1 tablet for small or lightly soiled loads and for quick wash cycles. Use 2 tablets for everything else. 8)
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
Hi, Martin. 🙂
Thanks for your reply.
Our Bosch had a ‘rinse sensor’ and would add extra rinses if necessary. I know the Miele will add another rinse if need be – I managed to read the manual on Miele’s website before buying the machine – and I have noticed the “Excess detergent” light.
The large amounts of foam have only appeared on two cotton loads – one with towels at 60ºC and another with those E-cloths at 75ºC. I would guess this is because those loads did not need two tablets – one would have done. The foam was three-quarters of the way up the door, so we turned it off, let the foam settle and then drained and rinsed the load!
Both loads had Water plus on. In fact, we have Water plus on by default – I have stored it in the machine’s memory for all loads because I have eczema.
There is a little bit of foam on other loads, but it’s no different from our other machines, really.
From what you have all said, this is probably really due to too much detergent on those two loads, which were really half loads, I guess. We thought it may have been due to the loads being hand washed beforehand and not being able to rinse out all of the detergent particularly well by hand whilst we waited for a new machine.
Thank you for all your help. 🙂 I know it sounds like I’m going round the houses about a simply issue, but I know some things with domestic appliances are not always as simple as they may seem. 🙂 I have a neurological condition called M.E., so I tend to be somewhat forgetful at times and cannot have more than about one thought in my mind before it goes into meltdown! 😉
Regards,
Carl 🙂
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
I would just like to point out that the powder we used for handwashing was Ariel Biological or Colour & Style, not any handwash powder that produces lots of foam! 😉
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
I’m not an engineer or washing machine expert but I know a bit about enzymes and whenever possible I like to give something back to this excellent forum which has helped me out on a number of occasions.
If you are doing your regular maintenance washes at 90C (as is recommended on here I think) then there is no point in bunging in expensive biological detergent when you do these high temp washes. The enzymes in the biological powder are “killed” at this temperature – essentially turning the detergent back into a non-bio one!
Better to keep a small packet of cheaper, non-biological detergent for use when you do the maintenance washes.
HTH
Re: How many Ariel tablets – one or two?
dougsta wrote:If you are doing your regular maintenance washes at 90C (as is recommended on here I think) then there is no point in bunging in expensive biological detergent when you do these high temp washes. The enzymes in the biological powder are “killed” at this temperature – essentially turning the detergent back into a non-bio one!
You are quite correct in that biological enzymes have no real effect when it comes to a ‘Service/Maintenance wash’ and it is the higher temperature that kills the bacteria. Using a bleach based detergent is therefore the most effective way in dealing with this overall. 😉
There is also another issue here……?
Accepting the general recommendation of carrying out a ‘monthly’ service wash’ depends very much on the overall amount of wash loads you are likely to do in that period?
Accepting the norm (i.e 2.4 children in an average family) then that scenario will create on average some 40 washloads per month perhaps? Larger families and you could virtually double that amount ( many have their machine on 2 -3 times a day = 85 pm approx?)….That’s a heck of a lot of washing for sure!
Very few people can afford or use the modern sophisticated Bosch and Miele machines with their overfoaming sensors and the like. So therefore the suggested average timeline regarding the frequency of service washes does not truly apply to these machines. (Provided of course they operate them within the manufacturers guidlines in the first place?) I would venture to suggest to carlstock that a ‘monthly’ service wash would best be stretched to a ‘quarterly’ with no ill effect to his sophisticated Miele hardware. 😉
The monthy service wash therefore is just a guideline and not to be taken literally. 🙂
Overfoaming sensor don’t detect bugs just yet so far as I am aware.
The point of the service wash is to kill bacteria build up and the only things I could think that would affect the frequency are the detergent used in the first place, useage and local water conditions. Maybe how good the drain is from the machine as well I guess and a few other minor factors, door open/closed etc.
I shouldn’t think that any of the funky new Miele stuff would make a jot of difference.
Dougsta is correct about the enzymes but there are various grades of bleaching agent used. Let’s just say that some of them ain’t the best.
K.
kwatt wrote:
The point of the service wash is to kill bacteria build up and the only things I could think that would affect the frequency are the detergent used in the first place, useage and local water conditions. Maybe how good the drain is from the machine as well I guess and a few other minor factors, door open/closed etc.
K.
What is the recommendation for the door – open or closed when not in use? When not in use we leave our wm door just cracked open to allow a bit of air in. Are we doing the right thing?
Yes that’s correct as it saves the moisture being trapped and allows the inside of the machine to dry as much as possible. It’s not guaranteed to cure all ills, but it does help significantly.
K.
kwatt wrote:
I shouldn’t think that any of the funky new Miele stuff would make a jot of difference.Oi, K! You dissing my Miele?! 😉 (Only joking! hehe :)) I can’t help the fact that I have Miele appliances in a three-bedroom, terraced, former council house!!! 😉 LOL
Thank you, everyone, very much for all your help. It is much appreciated. 🙂
Regarding what dougsta, said, if my Science lessons from school serve me well, enzymes work best at around 37ºC. That is partly why 40ºC programmes are suggested.
However, using a programme with a temperature above 40ºC should not necessarily be a bad thing. Years ago, I remember reading AEG (and Hoover New Wave, I think) brochures that mentioned the ‘bio phase’. I believe machines still use this, but it basically means that, even if we wash something at 60ºC with a biological detergent, the machine will heat up from cold with cold fill – the best way – and then gradually heat the water up to around 40ºC and then hold it there for around eight minutes. This is the optimum time for the enzymes to get to work. Once this phase is over, I believe the machine will continue to heat up to the higher temperature – in this, case 60ºC.
The only difference now, I guess, is that P&G and Unilever use GM enzymes that may be able to withstand high temperatures! 😉
If the above still applies today, then using a biological detergent in the maintenance wash may be useful, although whether the enzymes will benefit the machine itself (removing grease) is not clear. I would assume that enzymes really only benefit the removal of stains on clothes.
Carl
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.