Monthly Archives: January 2014

Celebrating two years of blogging.

This blog has been continuously contributed to for over two years now but ‘us’ handymen still have lots to say. Don’t forget if you have a problem or want some advice to email the Guild. Your question will then feature on the Ask a Handyman page here.

Why no hot fill anymore?

As I handyman I get to plumb in quite a few washing machines often as a replacement for one that has reached the end of its life or fatally broken down.

While many of the discarded old ones have both a hot and cold fill, most (if not all) new washing machines have just a cold fill.

You could argue “Well having just a cold fill is much simpler in terms of both washing machine manufacture and the required supply plumbing” and I would have to agree.

But most washes don’t involve cold water so if your wash says 40° or 60° there is only one way that water is going to get warmed up …and that is using electricity.

As a means of heating water, electricity is about as inefficient as it gets if you consider the process as a whole.

Regardless of your bill and what heating the water actually costs you I’m talking about what it costs the planet.

This is because the losses along the way are HUGE.

Compared with the energy content locked in the original fossil fuel (as gas or a lump or coal) you will have lost around 98% of this energy by the time the fuel is first burned the make steam, to drive a turbine, to generate electricity which is transformed to high tension, squirted along miles of copper cable where resistance erodes if further. Then it gets transformed again into the domestic supply voltage level with more losses incurred and finally stuck inefficiently into a heating element to heat the water in your washing machine.

However, take the gas (or coal) straight to your boiler and whether you store the resulting hot water in your airing cupboard cylinder for a while or use it straight away with a combi-boiler the efficiency is vastly better.

The moral? If everyone wanted a hot fill then the washing machine makers would have to supply what people wanted and maybe the Earth’s scarce resources would last a bit longer.