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Here’s a little more thorough explanation of bleach and hot water.
Basically, in a laundry cycle the bleach is added at the very last water fill wash cycle (before final rinse) and this should always be done with hot water or else the bleach won’t activate and be effective in the short amount of time it’s in contact with the linens in this final cycle. We actually just invested in ozone technology for our washers which means that we can do the entire wash process in cold water and with minimal detergents, except for the last cycle with bleach (which is only a whitening agent at this point as the ozone completely sterilizes and sanitizes). We’re able to cut hot water usage down by about 80% and use on-demand water heaters instead of inefficient tank ones. Thus; cold water with peroxide and cold water recommended detergents, then bleach with hot water. Every industrial laundry facility I’ve toured, the equipment manufacturers, and chemical companies like ECOLAB have all be telling us the same process because I have tried desperately to eliminate the need to hot water in our process due to the insane cost of commercial rated water heaters and the energy/environmental impact of heating water.
@RiverRock I wasn’t able to reply to my own post anymore due to limits but thought it would make sense to start a new thread here
I am sticking with cold water. Hot water sets stains in my experience. I have actually turned the hot water valves off behind my machines. I use all white cotton sheets and towels, wash in cold with bleach, hang out to dry. If I see stains when hanging them out I soak/pretreat and wash again. I have only had to retire a few hand towels.
I don’t even have hot water hooked up to my machine. My water is never frigid- it gravity feeds from a big black tank on my roof, so it’s more like tepid. When I do whites, I use some bleach, it doesn’t go in the “last wash cycle”, it gets added right at the beginning of the wash, and it works just fine.
And I don’t use any white linens.
Isn’t it great when some “expert” informs you that what you’ve been doing for years that has always worked just fine actually doesn’t work?
Be easy on the new guy, he is trying to be helpful and has had nothing but grief from a bunch of regulars. He deleted a link in his first post when pointed out it was unwelcome.
I disagree too about hot water and bleach. I use cold for everything.
That’s essentially what we’re doing on a large scale, minus the short hot water bleach cycle. Bleach really isn’t great at cleaning things and will react with certain stains like proteins to make stains that will never come out. Best practice is to get everything as clean as possible before using bleach as a whitening agent.
Same goes if using bleach as a surface disinfectant. Clean with soap or other cleansing product and water first, then apply diluted bleach solution.
Modern HE and even some old top loaders have a special bleach reservoir that does holds the bleach until the right time, which is after the detergents have had a chance to do their work.
I typically don’t trust consumer facing sites and news articles which are simple reposts by lazy journalists but Clorox has a great Q&A section of their site where they do a good job covering the chemistry and how to’s of their bleach products.
You’re just rude. The whole point of this forum is to share information and connect passionate hosts. By your own admission you’re not even hosting anymore, yet trolling my posts with your personal experiences which almost no other hosts can relate to (roof tank water anyone).
If you don’t like my posts and advice about laundry then simply skip them because clearly you’re not interested in continuous improvement and seem to lack the sort of innate curiosity that fuels a desire to be better.
If you’re interested in improving though here’s a fantastic explanation about why white linens are the standard in hospitality uses. The short version: It creates a 2-way subliminal trust contract between guest and host that goes something like ‘nothing to hide here.’
Agreed, our energy consumption is sick in the US. Industrial laundry systems use 80% less water and energy per pound than residential machines and reducing negative impacts caused by y Airbnb’s is absolutely a core value of mine personally.
@RiverRock already responded to the false insistence that I’m trying to drive traffic but I haven’t linked to my website once. Even the survey I posted was a third party survey tool. washbnb is a tiny, tiny company at this time. Driving traffic to our unlaunched website does me zero good at this stage of development. Let’s switch the narrative here, I’m just a passionate host who happens to also be creating a company that helps hosts.
Yes, I’m aware of those surveys- again, I don’t require “enlightening”. My decor style works well with colored and patterned linens, and quite contrary to hospitality surveys, none of my guests have ever expressed any concern that the bedding wasn’t clean and in fact have often said they loved the playful, colorful look.
There may be a hotel “standard”, but Airbnbs are unique and almost anything can work if you understand and know how to attract your target market.
And that I haven’t hosted since March because of the pandemic doesn’t disqualify me from commenting on a hosting forum (nor is my water set-up material to the discussion, I only mentioned it because we were talking about water temps) - many hosts are in my position right now.
Agreed, we all do it our own way and there is no absolute right or wrong ways to host, well there are some wrong ways but that is not about sheet patterns!
I finally made the switch for the twin beds (4) in my listing to white cotton. I had already switched over the queen beds in both listings. For a few reasons, one being the ability to wash everything together and also what @washbnb said, the perception of clean. My brown sheets were clean but my white sheets look clean…
Water tank on the roof is pretty common in Mexico, how often do you have to have it delivered? Is the water that is delivered potable or do you need to filter it? Just curious…
I don’t have to have water delivered- I’m on the city water line. It fills my cistern and then my pump automatically pumps it up to the roof tank when the roof tank gets low. This arrangement is very common here, because the city lines often don’t turn the pressure up high enough to push it all the way up to the roof. Those who don’t have a cistern and rely on city water pressure may often find themselves without water.
While this is the traditional water system here- gravity fed from a roof tank, a lot of newer places and expats go for having a pressurized system straight from their cistern or well to their house plumbing, so they get better pressure than gravity feed and don’t need a roof tank. But the problem with that is that power outages aren’t uncommon here, so if the power cuts out, they have no water coming out of the faucets because their pressure pump isn’t working. The best set up if you have your own pressure pump here is to also have a roof tank, so if the power cuts out, you can switch it over to the gravity feed.
One of my neighbors did the latter, the other one didn’t, so when the power goes out, they have to haul buckets of water from their pool to wash and flush the toilet. Of course they could have a back-up generator, but they don’t.
I’m feeling so lucky after that post! Our water is delivered to my home, clean potable and pressurised to 18 bars. We can drink it ,wash with it and it never runs out–though I don’t waste it. We put up with rainy weather for all the advantages we get! I’m in North Wales, UK
Yep, had three of those until we got rid and went over to mains only.
Stop it… that is one thing I miss here in Spain, having drinkable mains water. Our is so full of lime it is horrible, hence having to buy it in 8L bottles every week, like most folks do, even the native Jerezanos!
The water here isn’t potable either. People either have private water filter systems or buy water in 5 gallon jugs for drinking. I’ll use the tap water if I’m cooking something that’s going to boil long enough to kill any germs or parasites, but otherwise I’m drinking the bottled. In the rainy season, I’ll often put those jugs under my rainwater spouts to fill up and drink the fresh rain water.
This is a little pompous to be honest. So is the assumption that your way is the right way.
The 'whole point of this forum isn’t to ‘connect passionate hosts’, that’s simply part of the tagline set up by the site owners. We have a huge readership worldwide. Some are hosts. Some are people who are not hosting at the moment because of COVID.
Then we have the potential hosts and potential guests. There are viewers who are just casual observers and there are also journalists and industry experts.
There are students with surveys and kids writing for school projects. Some hosts here have been in the hospitality industry since many years before Airbnb or even the internet. Others have been hosting for a few months only.
I doubt that there is one person who, single-handedly, provide continuous improvement to other hosts. Many of us, even very experienced hosts, learn from other hosts here sometimes.
It’s always a good idea when posting here to explore the forum thoroughly to see how the subject has been handled in the past. Finally most of us here are hosts and not landlords. The two operate in different ways.
Rest assured, I only fill the jugs under the rain spouts when it’s been pouring, pounding rain for several nights in a row (it generally only rains starting late afternoon or overnight) and then only when it’s been pounding rain for at least an hour before filling the jugs. Anything on the roof would have been long washed off. Been doing it for many years and never had any ill effects.
To give you an idea of how hard it rains here, I can stick a five gallon pail under one of those 3" rain spouts and it’s full in 30 seconds. It’s like you just pulled the plug on an ocean.
that is one thing I miss here in Spain, having drinkable mains water. Our is so full of lime it is horrible, hence having to buy it in 8L bottles every week, like most folks do, even the native Jerezanos!