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Comment by flaburgan | Hacker News Reader

Dryers are even worst but they are very uncommon in France where I live. Washing machines are bad because they have to warm the water.

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I didn’t even hook the hot water up to my washing machine. Nobody died yet

In many places it is usual for the machine to have a small element so that it can heat its own water, none of the machines I've every owned had a hot water line, although one did have instructions for a variant model with such a feature.

In practice having the machine heat the water is usually a good choice because the machine already wants to take a set amount of water and heat it to a specific temperature (based on your chosen programme, silk knickers obviously do not want the hot water you use to clean cotton bedsheets after your youngest didn't wake up in time) whereas your hot water boiler just makes arbitrarily hot water forever.

I think the only reason that you would need to heat your water up is because you have a front load washer and I’ve heard they get disgusting if you don’t use hot water once in a while this is not a problem with the top load washer, mines run for 20 years on cold water and it’s fine nothing has ever come out of the washing machine dirty. I suppose you all have front loaders because you need them to spin really fast to dry your clothes cause you don’t actually have a dryer. Europeans are weird

The machines run perfectly fine with cold water entering them. They just consume more energy to warm the water, compare to for example a heat pump. And same, to spin fast to remove the water out of clothes is hundred times less energy consuming than to try to make the water evaporate for hours in a dryer. So I'm not talking about if the machines work or if it is practical, just about what's more energy efficient.

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