In article ,
Mike writes:
Its a unique feature of the USA that many inhabitants combine
everything - whites, colours, dirty nappies, delicates into their huge
top loading washing machine, add heaps of bleach and washing powder
then heat it to boiling for a couple of hours before spinning it to
within an inch of its life. Then they tumble dry the washing into
submission when they have a house on a 2 acre plot and outside its 80
deg C, with a gentle breeze and blue sky as far as you can see.

This explains why their clothes 'fade' and 'wear out' at fifty times
the rate in Europe and why they are constantly buying new clothes from
sweat ships in the far east and thereby sustaining their massive trade
deficit. European front loaders with their low temperature cycles and
powder formulations lead to very low levels of fade and fabric damage
using significantly less energy and water.

Not my words but essentially those of a Professor in fabric technology
at a UK university.

Having said that I think the widespread use of disposable nappies
might have improved the quality of their washing slightly.

US and Europe have completely different washing machine technologies
(I use washing machines on both sides of the atlantic). It's not just
the machines, but the wash programs, the plumbing, the mains supply,
and the soap/detergents are all part of the system, and completely
different.

Europe used to use US style washers, but moved away from vertical
axis drums about 50 years as newer better products appeared on
the market. 30 years ago, the economy of the wash started to get
important, and since then, the European horizontal axis drums
(which were already much more efficient than the earlier vertical
axis drums they replaced) have become very much more efficient.
US has more started becoming concerned about wash economy too, but
you can't simply put a European washing machine in the US, as you
can't buy detergent for it (and US soap power won't work in it),
and you can't get enough power out of the mains outlet to power it.
You have been able buy to horizontal axis drum machines in the US
for a while now, but they can't operate like European machines,
for the same reasons.

For any US readers wondering what's so different about European
washers, they mostly now only use cold water supplies, and they
use very much less water. The washing detergents are all designed
for relatively cold washes. Even if you want to do a hot wash,
you must start with a cool wash as a number of the detergent
clensing ingredients are destroyed above certain temperatures,
and won't get a chance to operate on their target dirt if you
expose them to hot water from the start. Max initial temperature
is 30C (86F), and a normal wash is achievable at 35C (95F) max.
If you want to do a higher temperature wash, then the washer
must do what's called a profiled temperature wash from 30C (86F)
to 50C (122F) whereby it increases the temperature slowly over
this range to allow the components of detergent to operature at
their working temperatures. Once you get to 50C (122F), if you
still want to go higher, that can then be done quickly. With a
good detergent (and not one of the eco-crap ones), it's very
rarely necessary to wash everyday items above 35C (95F) anyway.

So European washing machines don't need a hot water supply, but
they are all about 2.5kW, which is well over what can be drawn
from a US outlet. They actually don't use much energy (the heater
is operated only very briefly because the water content is so
little), and they could easily be made to operate at a lower
power, but that's not necessary anywhere in Europe. They won't
work with US soap powder, and it's not necessary to use bleach
in the wash with European washine detergents (so the washers
can use plastic parts which are damaged by bleach, as mentioned
earlier up the thread, and hence most explicitly forbid the use
of bleach). IME, European machines have very much more effective
spin drying cycles -- it was something that became a competitve
marketing feature about 20 years ago.

Contrary to the comments made by Mike above, the low temperature
profiled wash takes a bit longer than a US wash, but does
produce less wear in fabrics. Some machines can be set to do a
fast (less economic) wash if you need to (mine has a 30 minute
program for this purpose).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]