Hot & Cold feed washing machine?

kPATm

kPATm

kPATm

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Joined
7 Apr 2009
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Location
Greenock, Scotland
Evening. Our old washing machine (cold feed) has packed in and we have been given a machine for free but it has a Hot and Cold feed. Is it worth using it with the hot and cold or is it better to convert to just a cold feed. I understand that a Y splitter would be needed but not entirely sure how to connect it.

Is it just a matter of connecting the splitter to the main cold feed then split off into the cold and hot connector on the washing machine essentially giving to cold feeds into the machine? Thanks
 
Yes - just attach the bottom of the Y splitter to the existing cold feed and run two hoses from it. The machine will heat the water.

As to whether it’s worth having a hot feed, depends on your hot water source really. It’s cheaper to heat water with mains gas than electricity usually, and the cycle time should be a bit quicker but unless you’re doing 5 loads of washing a day you’d probably never recoup the cost of having a hot feed installed specially.
 
You sure it will actually heat the water if it's at 20 degrees? I've never had a hot and cold feed washer so I've no idea if they're designed to heat the water up that much.
 
theone8181 said:
You sure it will actually heat the water if it's at 20 degrees? I've never had a hot and cold feed washer so I've no idea if they're designed to heat the water up that much.
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Probably, but it will depend on the cycle temperatures available on the machine. A hot water feed probably won't be much above 55C, and only then when the water is fully up to temperature.

If the machine does a 90C wash, it'll definitely need to heat water to get up to that.
 
Our old washer was a hot and cold feed and it would work with only the cold feed connected but it took longer as it had to heat the water. I think it was more of an emergency mode if you're heating system failed and not ideal, i think only quite old machines now have it?

I don't think you'd want to use a Y to connect cold to the hot feed as it'll just mess up the washing process?
 
I have both hot & cold feeds but my last washer that had both connections I only connected up the cold feed and it worked perfectly fine. At the time I didn't have a combi boiler so I didn't have constant hot water so it was a bit pointless as it would have still had to heat the water up most of the time.
 
I bought a y splitter from Screwfix but it was poor quality and leaked so I just connected the hot and cold feeds. Haven't actually done a wash yet but I will later today to see how it goes. I dont think hot and cold feed machines actually draw from the hot feed unless you wash at 60c and I dont ever wash at that temp anyway?
 
200sols said:
Like 99% of machines sold today will be cold fill only, even the few hot and cold fill ones will barely use the hot pipe unless you do a very high heat wash.
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Yes, but to say they don't exist anymore is quite clearly incorrect.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
I’m inclined to agree. Haven’t seen one advertised in yonks. Recently scrapped one myself - the instructions for removing the transport bolts on the back of the washer were dated 1987...
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https://www.ebac.com/washing-machines/hot-fill-explained/

Wife sisters salon has a couple as they do a lot of hot washes for sanitary reasons.

a lot of industrial grade washing machines are also hot fill for the same reason (and we all know industrial grade ≈ high end consumer).
 
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