Once in a while, with a load of all whites I will use some liquid bleach. Of course I still use he detergent and place the liquid bleach in the bleach compartment of the detergent tray. Usually just the whitest white cycle on the machine + powder detergent gets my whites super white. I have also used Tide boost +bleach packs...they work well.

I do use bleach when I run the Clean Machine cycle each month, if I am out of Tide Washing Machine Cleaner. Cleans the machine beautifully.

Are you comparing chlorine bleach with oxygen bleach? While chlorine bleach can be derived from a powder, that's uncommon except for a few washer cleaner products.

I use a lot less liquid chlorine bleach than I used to, both in the laundry and elsewhere. In the laundry, percarbonate powders have replaced chlorine in many situations. Powder sodium percarbonate powders seem more effective than sodium peroxide based liquid bleaches. So, if you are interested in oxygen bleach, consider powder first.

A problem with oxidizers in liquid detergents is reaction with enzymes. It has taken a lot of research to make liquid detergents almost as good as powders.

It's probably good to run an occasional chlorine bleach load. I sometimes use the clorox washer cleaner product, which seems to be chlorine bleach and lye. The toxicity of chlorine bleach is potentially good or bad, so I don't want to eliminate chlorine entirely.

Additives to laundry detergents improve performance of less effective products. The downside of an additive approach is that the interaction of the chemicals in the wash water has not been evaluated with a scientific approach and understanding. I don't think it makes sense to use a low performing detergent and add product like oxyclean and borax in an effort to get better cleaning.

I was only asking due to curiosity. For instance, there is Ultra Tide Plus Bleach. I believe it is an HE product (could be wrong though). I read a lot of comments here and on other forums and people say their laundry is whiter than it was with a nonHE machine. I wondered if people had stopped using liquid bleach or had continued or are they using a detergent with bleach added.

I use liquid chlorine bleach on whites every 2 or 3rd run, or depending on how "grungy" a given load may be. Of course, do not add it immediately at start of the cycle or it will kill the detergent enzymes. My machine has a timed dispenser that adds LCB during the last mins of the wash period so the enzymes have time to work.

I'm not a big bleach user but I live on a farm so sometimes I do use bleach like when we have animals giving birth and I have barn towels to do or if my clothes get super nasty. I've always just poured liquid bleach in the dispenser. Our washer is a Samsung HE and I do not find it washes very well. At least not like I was expecting it should after we used the super old one that came with this house. Part of it could be our water though which is very hard and alkaline.

Very hard water washing would probably benefit from adding something like Calgon. Walmart probably has liquid Calgon. Your local area may have another brand additive that is considered best for your particular water.

In the long run, a whole house water softener is probably less expensive than paying for all the damage and buying extra detergent/soap that results from using very hard water.

We have a softner and I also use borax, but we're on a well so it's still pretty hard especially when it's getting close to the time when we need to add salt. I basically live on a gravel deposit so that changes the alkalinity. Great for drainage, but not so much for ph.

I think better detergents are formulated for moderately hard water. This is why some people with soft water can use only one or two tablespoons. But this has also led to people with soft water giving out bad advice to those of us with harder water.

I have moderately hard water (9 grain). The label recommendation on detergent usually seems about right for me. Although it's difficult to know what is best.

dzzmiller, I should have said that for just normal clothes washing, it comes out clean, no issues or anything. It's just that we have a lot of dirty barn clothes and situations where we've had to clean off baby animals so that is very hard to come clean, even with bleach added. I only use either Tide Free or PC Free. I did actually make my own last year and it surprisingly wasn't too bad. It was a powder though and I do like the the liquid. I didn't have any issues with it dissolving though, which surprised me. Maybe it was because there was borax, baking soda and washing soda (that I made from baking soda). Lots of water softening items.

littlemonkey, have you tried adding sodium percarbonate? I use the Tide free products too. But never for truly dirty items. Assuming your hard water is adequately treated, a long enough warm or hot wash should be able to adequately clean almost anything cleanable with detergent plus oxy. Tide powder probably treats hard water better than the liquid "free" products.

For really dirty, I don't use the prewash function which is tap cold water (LG FL). I do a short warm or hot wash with extra water, and then another wash. I have very cold tap water much of the year.

A commercial laundry would never try to clean really dirty laundry with just one fill. They may not completely replace wash water multiple times, but they do get the dirt level down before the final wash.

Zout is great for pre treating organic stains. At under four dollars for 22 ounces it doesn't add much expense either. I rate the utility of Zout well above chlorine bleach. It seems to me that chlorine bleach is only superior to Zout in maximizing overall whiteness. For challenging stains it is best to give Zout a full five minutes before the item hits the wash water.

Ok I totally had to look up what sodium percarbonate is. And why yes, I have used it in the past. When the kids were small I used to buy oxiclean, but it's just so expensive. Since it's not like the barn stuff is worn out in public and those towels are used strictly for barn, I don't bother with the extra expense of it. I do think it works very well as a laundry booster though for people who want to spend the $ on it.
Borax is pretty good too though and it's fairly cheap. I use it on sheered wool from our sheep. It is amazing how white the wool gets. We sheer ours once a year and the top of the wool looks brown from all the dirt, poop and vegetation. You wash it in dawn and borax and poof, sparkling white. If borax or dawn would like to send me an endless supply please feel free. :)
Sorry to get gross for a second, but birthing fluids and baby animal poop are so hard to get out. Newborn clostrum poop is I think the worst thing to try and wash out. It sticks to everything and it stains yellow. It's like super poop.

The main reason I use LCB is to sanitize towels and sheets. I just don't think peroxide or oxyclean will do the job. My hot water is tap hot, about 125 to 130 degrees not hot enough to kill the nasties.

Ya but we only use products without scent (Tide Free, PC Free) so I can't use the combo. A few of us get rashes and eczema if we use scented products. I even have to use bounce free when I use the dryer.
So it's not really better if you can't use it without irritation.
Also I'm in Canada and regular price is more around 30 cents a load for Tide. I do usually get it on sale though.

I have never used liquid Chlorine bleach in my washer (Miele f/l) and won't. The OxiClean with cold prewash followed by hot (140F) or Sanitize (165F) wash has handled everything. No need to pretreat.

However, if I was doing the kind of laundry little monkey does with barn stuff, I would definitely use liquid Clorox at the end of those loads. That's the only way to truly sanitize. There was an anthrax scare in my office just after 9/11 and we had to disinfect things. The CDC explained that 1 part bleach to 5 parts water was the only solution that would kill that bacteria.

Can I just put out there that we do not, nor have we ever had anthrax. LOL I just like to bleach barn loads because I don't want the ecoli or the possibilty of staph on my other loads that go in.

rococogurl - how long does it take to wash a typical load in your machine?

The sanitize cycle in FL, as well as the wash temps of heated dishwashers, is designed specifically to kill e coli. Peroxide will too, if chlorine bleach isn't desirable.

While I would use beach if someone mailed me weaponized anthrax, regular laundering is considered adequate to eliminate any spores found naturally in agriculture.

Sickness originating from handling manures is not common. In my experience eating in restaurants is more dangerous than working in a barn when it comes to contracting intestinal illnesses.

@maylingsmom - My front loader takes about 1 hour 15 mins typically. That's for a load of towels, or T shirts or cottons and includes an extra rinse (3 total). The longest cycle, Sanitize, takes 2.5 hours. I use it infrequently for stain removal (it's also the machine's maintenance cycle).

littlemonkeys -- Goodness, I was not suggesting that anyone had any disease. What I was suggesting is that a Clorox solution will sanitize anything, up to and including anthrax. I previously had no idea it was that powerful. It is also used to sterilize food prep areas, of course. You seem to know exactly what you're dealing with and don't sound like you need instruction. I'd use Clorox if I was washing any type of pet/animal stuff in the same machine as household.

My LG dispenses bleach late in the main wash, which is dumb. Better designed machines use two rinses with bleach and dispense it in the first rinse. This allows a small amount of bleach to be used, without having to guess how a large soil load in the main was will use up the bleach. Or at least some machines used to do bleach this way. Hopefully regulations have killed off the better bleach dispensing design in all washers.

I think I'm probably not alone in assuming my new fancy washer was more flexible in operation that it really is. LG seems particularly adept at marketing less important features which helps mask limitations to the potential buyer.

its optimal to run the bleach in the last 4 or 5 minutes. It allows the detergent and enzymes to work to their potential first. Most FL have two rinses by default. It's a matter of semantics running bleach in a rinse. It's really just an additional drain and fill with cooler water then bleach is added, followed by two rinses. For the nay sayers on bleach there is no product that sanitizes and kills such a wide spectrum of viral and bacteria organisms, mold, mildew, and several contagious diseases. It also has the benefit of disinfection in cooler water temperatures. Consumer machines even hitting 158F isn,t hot enough to touch what good ole Clorox can in a 5 minute bath.