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I’m getting very fed up with the performance of my Bosch Excell – but I don’t think my problem is peculiar to Bosch. To give one specific example. My daughter’s baby was sick over her clothes. When the clothes came out of the (hot cycle), they still smelt of the disinfectant in which I had soaked them prior to washing (which suggests they would still have smelled of vomit if I hadn’t soaked them) and there were still bits of undigested bread crumbs stuck to the fabric. Yuk. In an age when we can do so many things that were impossible in previous centuries, why are our modern machines so useless?
Washing machines now use less water to wash and rinse, thereby saving valuable resources. Yippee? I don’t think so. What we the consumers have sacrificed is quality of performance. Clothes now are not washed in sufficient water either to clean them or rinse them (Trust me – I am old enought to remember when washing came out clean.) As a result, the market for stain removers, smell fresheners and the like have increased dramatically. All of these products are bad for the environment – as is the additional water that we have to use on washing that needs doing a second time.
What is the answer? I’m buying an American washer, but I think we need to do some constructive lobbying to sort this silliness out.Ann-Margret
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
Welcome to my world Ann-Margret!
You are spot on with your observations missing one little point. The whole thing was kicked off by our friends in Brussels trying to do us all a favour with the eco-labelling system. Now almost every machine meets the “A” rating, ever wonder why that is? As is often pointed out, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” and this is one such case I think.
And of course, from the people I talk to, as they all have an “A” rating there appears no difference to customers. Worse still a lot of cutomers assume that this is an indication of the quality of the appliance, a notion that’s so far from the truth that the cow will jump over the moon before that’s true! Conversely of course3, it would appear that if an appliance is not “A” or “AAA” rated these days it’s chances of selling drop dramatically.
But you are correct, from information I have had the UK use of pre-treatments has risen dramatically in the past ten years. The EU ratings were introduced in 1996, see a pattern yet?
I am working on a few articles on this subject that I will hopefully publish in the next couple of weeks that you may well find interesting.
K.
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
The thing I find frustrating with some modern computerised machines is you can’t change the programme once the machine has filled. With older designs, if you wanted more water you could turn the dial to a rinse or a wool wash, let it finish filling then return it to your desired programme. Similarly, if you wanted it to fill with domestic hot water on a 40 degree wash you could fill up on the 95 degree setting then move it straight to 40 degrees. If you try such tricks on a newer machine it will most likely empty out and start filling from scratch on the new programme.
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
One of the things that Kevin keeps on about Phidom, but sadly I think we’re past the age of electro-mechanical timers for good now just due to customer expectations. However the are easier (much) to fault find on, especially if you can read a cam chart.
Apparently though they’re more reliable… don’t all laugh now! 😆
They are, so long as you build them right and protect them.
However that’s getting away from the point that almost all customers you get talking to complain about poor wash results and the length of time a “normal” cycle takes these days. But it’s kind to the environment, so they say.
K.
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
Kwatt, I’ll look forward to your articles. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s noticed the (dirty) wool being pulled over the British consumer’s eyes. And no, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised it’s all Brussel’s fault. 🙂
Given what you say about A ratings, strikes me there’s a market for some gadget that over-rides the water level programmer. If I were technically-minded, I’d have a go myself. I’d call it the Guzzler – now isn’t that a great name!
Ann-Margret.
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
Some manufacturers already offer it Ann, albeit in a rather subtle way as they just will not give up on the EU ratings system, nor are they liable to for the forseeable future, If you’ve any interest in politics dig a little deeper into it from an EU standpoint. 😉
K.
>>>Some manufacturers already offer it . . . <<<
That’s interesting, Kevin. Which manufacturers?
Ann-Margret
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
I believe that both Bosch (Bosch/Neff/Siemens) and LG have the facility to do a quick wash which takes about an hour or so. Whether the results are any better I can’t say as I’ve not tested them.
K.
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
And what about the ‘extra rinse’ button or switch? My slightly old AEG has a switch at the rear that increases rinse water on all progs (I don’t use it), but some other machines have buttons for ‘extra rinse’.
Incidentally, I too would be interested in Kwatt’s papers – can you say where they will be published?
Cheers
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
All the information will be available on the site just as soon as I finish them, but given I don’t have a squad of writers at my disposal and have to do it myself along with running a business and dealing with the site amongst a plethora of other things, it takes time I’m afraid.
The water increase on rinse will effectively wash away any detergent residue from the clothing more effectively than the EU labelling system allows for from what I can gather. Which in turn suggests that the appliances that comply with the standard are not effective enough in doing this without the need for such a function, otherwise why put it there? In short, the “A” rated appliances, whilst arguably more eco-friendly, are not as efficient and therefore not actually as eco-friendly as they appear on paper. It’s a complex subject to get into in many ways but it follows common sense and not a pollitical agenda, which is after all, what the labelling system was put in place by and to serve.
Of course, just my opinion. 😉
K.
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
To give you an idea of the difference, in performance terms, that the detergent alone can make here’s a massively chopped down photo of some of the testing we’ve been doing…
This isn’t very clear (obviously given the size of the image, but the full one is 2.72Mb :?) but it does illustrate a dramatic difference between the different products which is pretty easily visible to the naked eye in many cases. The biggest difference, or most easily visible, is on “grease” which on the reference (top right swatch) is second in from the top right and is black. You can see the varying success with stain removal quite clearly across several products. What you can’t see due to a lack of detail is the “smearing” that some products had on that and other stains actually making the problem worse!
Now, this test was done in several older identical Meile machines for consistency in the results as the machine is accurate and runs like a Swiss watch on a 40C cycle so, being older, it does not have (so far as I am aware) an “A” rated wash and completed the cycle in about one hour twenty minutes. When you run, say a modern “A” rated Hotpoint (just as an example, not having a dig at Hotpoint here), you’d see poorer stain removal and an increase in the cycle length as well as a less stable temperature maintained therefore less consistent results. The trouble being that, if the detergent is used correctly on the correct program then you’ll get a decent enough result but most people don’t do either correctly as they think it’s just a case of banging stuff in, powder (or whatever) and softener if that’s their preference and the results will always be what they are… wrong! There’s a massive difference between detergents and the appliance used, or there can be if they are both used correctly.
Where the ECO labelling falls down is it takes very, very little of that into consideration and the tests, in so far as I can see, are pretty much a joke using unrealistic test methodologies, staining and measures of performance, especially on the wash rating. But it looks good in Currys! 😕
And my opinion on that pretty much carries across the board on ECO labels, good idea, bad implimentation. And the new “flower” one is even worse, basing it’s entire premise on washers on an already flawed testing methodology in my opinion.
The dilema that government and legislative bodies have is that they rely on other people that perhaps aren’t quite independent telling them what’s what. Then on top of that weigh up what’s better, the wasted clothing thrown out because of a stain that someone thinks can’t be removed, the repeat washing in an attempt to remove heavy soiling or th emassive increase in pre-treatments which will entail even more chemicals and packaging dumped into the eco-system rather than just doing the job right in the first place.
K.
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
Kwatt
In reply to this and the tumble drier discussions we have been having – we (DEFRA/MTP) are open to input from anyone (we call ’em stakeholders) who has an interest in appliances, their manufacture, the way they are used etc. We are particularly interested if anyone has reliable evidence about products and the ways they are used that will impact (either negatively or positively) on our ‘policy’ to reduce energy consumption.
I appreciate what you say about the washing machine test methods, and to an extent we agree that they are unrealistic. Unfortunately the bodies that set test methods move at a slow pace and while steps are being taken to ‘improve’, ie make the method more like what people actually do, it is taking a long time and in the mean time the ‘value’ of the energy label is degraded because the bulk of the market has reached the top level. We could also point up the fact that their are ‘tolerances’ on test method results which mean that test results aren’t always what they seem, and we seldom see appliances which perform better than their stated results, although they are usually within the tolerance.
If you (or anyone else on these forums) want to talk directly to the MTP, please use the contact form here: http://www.mtprog.com/Contact.aspx and make reference to the fact that it is domestic appliances that you are interested in. I can’t post my email here, and I am not the person shown on the contact list but your message will reach me.
Best wishes – Icemaiden
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
I might be in the market for a new washing machine shortly (if my cleaning of the powder drawer doesn’t fix the leak) and I was looking at this post and wondering if the answer to the ‘A rating’ problem would be to go for a rating lower than that ‘B’ or maybe ‘C’. Does that work or am I just being foolish?
Re: Has the baby been thrown out with the washwater?
bom wrote: and wondering if the answer to the ‘A rating’ problem would be to go for a rating lower than that ‘B’ or maybe ‘C’.
No simple answer to this question unless you read this : –
http://www.natenergy.org.uk/washing.htm
Martin
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