Miele shrinking clothes - water too hot? Not hot out of machine though.

[orange71]

I've tried the common faults section, and the wider web but there don't appear to be answers to this question. We have a Miele paragon plus which is shrinking clothes - no matter how low we set the temperature.

The clothes aren't coming out hot though.

What could this be? 

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Hello there. Shrinking is usually associated with temperature being too hot. If the washing machine was rinsing in hot water that certainly could account for it. This would usually result in excessive creasing too. If you also have excessive creasing there is a theoretical possibility that it is rinsing in hot water but hot water is just running out by the time it gets to the end. However that's quite a long shot. It's extremely easy to check that it isn't rinsing in hot water by simply pulling the drawer out halfway through a rinse fill and checking the temperature of the water.

So if it isn't incorrectly connected to the hot water what else could it be? It would be highly unusual for a Miele washing machine to apparently work perfectly okay but just overheat the laundry. Overheating is fault that can occur with any washing machine, but these days it should trigger an error code and/or an abort of the wash cycle.

Another thing is to double-check the wash labels. I've had personal experience of this where seemingly ordinary clothes have ridiculous wash restrictions on their labels. Clothing that we would normally have always washed at 40° very often now has a maximum temperature of 30°. Some also have unexpected restrictions on the wash cycle so not only are they 30° but they are required to go onto a delicates wash cycle. Other examples I've found or where items need to be dried flat, and not tumble dried. All of these have been on items of clothing that just seem like ordinary clothes, T-shirts and jumpers. So if you haven't already, make sure you double-check all of the wash labels.