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by bombcar 1464 days ago
I suspect washers with heaters come from places that original had cold water only.

The reality is we are overthinking it - "cold/warm/hot" is about all we need, and "warm" is really just "fill as fast as possible" often, since it opens both hoses.
1 comments
bzxcvbn 1464 days ago
The water comes out 60+°C out of your faucets?
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jrochkind1 1464 days ago
Shocking as it will be to you -- I'm just realizing that this differs between US and rest of world -- a home washing machine in the US can only go as hot as what comes out of the faucets. It cannot wash at 90C water, and likely can't even do 60C water. It can only do as hot as the "hot" tap water, which depends on what the hot water heat is set at, which is usually somewhere between 120F (49C) and 140F (60C).
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bombcar 1464 days ago
Do people really boil clothes? Obviously that's not a thing in the US, but I could see it being useful for whites, perhaps.
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masklinn 1464 days ago
> Do people really boil clothes? Obviously that's not a thing in the US, but I could see it being useful for whites, perhaps.

It's usually for really sturdy whites you want to disinfect after they've been soiled for instance. Use of that program has definitely gone way down over time. The energy requirements alone make it not a routine wash thing.

It's also used to basically deep clean the washing machine itself.

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bombcar 1464 days ago
It seems that the high-end commercial units for hospitals, etc come with a steam inlet and the option for an electrical heater added:

https://unimac.com/products/washer-extractors/high-performan...

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bombcar 1464 days ago
It could, but there's a temperature control valve limiting it to 115° or 120°, I forget which.

If I wanted to bother I could run the "raw" hot water to the washer to get 140° IIRC.

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