Washing Habits and Machine with Intake of hot and cold Water: Practical experiments

Domestic washing machines typically spend around 80% of the electricity on heating water. Most of this can be replaced by more appropriate heat sources like district heat from combined heat and power production, or gas heating system. In recent years some washing machine manufacturers have marketed machines which can take in both hot and cold water and mix it to the temperature wanted.

Such one machine has been tested in daily household use over 5 months, with habits of very few hot water washes. The result is an electricity consumption corresponding to 67 kWh per year for an average household with slightly adapted washing habits, or 17% of normal today. If the heat is supplied from combined heat and power production as in the actual experiment, CO2-emission is reduced by 81%.

With hot water from oil or gas heaters the reduction will be slightly lower, while with solar hot water it will be larger.