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Using more water is a feature IMO. I want clean clothes. I don't care insane people decided to live ten million a city without enough water to use, there is mor

by hoseja 4y ago

Using more water is a feature IMO. I want clean clothes. I don't care insane people decided to live ten million a city without enough water to use, there is more than enough where I live. Why should I be uselessly frugal with abundant resources and suffer as a result.

avianlyric 4y ago
More water is only a feature if you’re using stone age detergents. Modern detergents don’t benefit from more water, but they do benefit from better agitation. Modern detergents use enzymes to break down dirt and material to bonds dirt to your clothes (like oils and fats), they need good agitation to physically separate the loosened material, where surfactants in the detergent can then bond to dirt and keep it suspended in the water. They’re so good, at keeping dirt in the water, that you just need enough water to saturate the clothes, and form a small amount of cleaning liquor. A drain and rinse cycle then completely removes the dirt from your clothes. Adding more water makes the agitation far less efficient, because rather than being able to pick up and drop your clothes on to other clothes, or the hard surface of the wash drum, your clothes hit water first which cushions the impact. Resulting is less effective removal of dirt. Finally modern detergents work best with plenty of time. The enzymes doing the heavy lifting don’t get consumed in the process, so the longer they’re in contact with your clothes, the more dirt they can break down. (Also worth mentioning enzymatic cleaners don’t damage most fabrics at all, because they’re carefully designed to only target dirt)
rsynnott 4y ago
Using a lot of water doesn't really correlate with clean clothes. Actually, it may slightly negatively correlate; the biggest water users are old-style top loaders, and per Which, Consumer Reports et al, those are pretty consistently worse at actually _cleaning_ than either modern front load machines or modern high-efficiency top-loaders.
londons_explore 4y ago
More water uses more energy to heat too. And the energy cost of heating water is much higher than even that of desalinating water. A modern machine makes clothes just a little wet for the warm wash cycle. That detaches all the dirt and gets oils emulsified. Then later it rinses with lots of cold water. That gets you the best of both worlds - you still get really clean clothes, but only had to heat a small amount of water to do so.

by hoseja 4y ago

avianlyric 4y ago

More water is only a feature if you’re using stone age detergents. Modern detergents don’t benefit from more water, but they do benefit from better agitation. Modern detergents use enzymes to break down dirt and material to bonds dirt to your clothes (like oils and fats), they need good agitation to physically separate the loosened material, where surfactants in the detergent can then bond to dirt and keep it suspended in the water. They’re so good, at keeping dirt in the water, that you just need enough water to saturate the clothes, and form a small amount of cleaning liquor. A drain and rinse cycle then completely removes the dirt from your clothes. Adding more water makes the agitation far less efficient, because rather than being able to pick up and drop your clothes on to other clothes, or the hard surface of the wash drum, your clothes hit water first which cushions the impact. Resulting is less effective removal of dirt. Finally modern detergents work best with plenty of time. The enzymes doing the heavy lifting don’t get consumed in the process, so the longer they’re in contact with your clothes, the more dirt they can break down. (Also worth mentioning enzymatic cleaners don’t damage most fabrics at all, because they’re carefully designed to only target dirt)

rsynnott 4y ago

Using a lot of water doesn't really correlate with clean clothes. Actually, it may slightly negatively correlate; the biggest water users are old-style top loaders, and per Which, Consumer Reports et al, those are pretty consistently worse at actually _cleaning_ than either modern front load machines or modern high-efficiency top-loaders.

londons_explore 4y ago

More water uses more energy to heat too. And the energy cost of heating water is much higher than even that of desalinating water. A modern machine makes clothes just a little wet for the warm wash cycle. That detaches all the dirt and gets oils emulsified. Then later it rinses with lots of cold water. That gets you the best of both worlds - you still get really clean clothes, but only had to heat a small amount of water to do so.