23 thoughts on “Washing Your Hands With Hot Water”

    1. Well, yes, if you mean car-engine grime, etc. It’s certainly good enough for casual washing, and waiting for hot water also wastes water, if you don’t have an instant heater.

      1. Hot water just dissolves motor oil into the whorls of your fingers. Cool water with Go-Jo works better.

        1. I find that hot water and straight dish soap, combined with a nail brush, worked very well, when I had a car with a leaky diesel engine (and thus pitch-black sooty oil all over my hands). Arguably better than the auto parts store pumice soap stuff, in fact.

          (If there’s actual grease, heat helps liquefy it, which helps immensely.)

          I don’t give a damn about “wasting water” (since I live in a place with reservoir water) or “carbon footprint” (because seriously).

          I don’t wash my hands enough to care about a potential irritating effect – hot/warm water is pleasant, so I’m sticking with it.

  2. Is it just me, or do others observe that all the airport restrooms seem to have the temps on those automatic faucets set at “scalding”? I hate that.

  4. >waiting for hot water also wastes water<

    i dislike how california has imposed its anxiety about water availability to the rest of the nation. in these parts, the water will return to the river it was originally extracted from.

    1. Water has been a problem in the American west since it was settled, and terrible government policies have only made it worse. It costs real money, if you’re a city dweller.

      1. if the american west needs low flow toilets, showerheads, other water restrictions why use the fed gov’t to impose those dictates on those states who do share that problem. most gov’t created problems these days originate in “proggresive” california. if you need to pay more for the resource the market is sending a signal. calif policies in pa distort the market.

      2. Well, the desert west.

        Up here in the populated parts of the Northwest we don’t really have that problem to speak of.

        (Oh, eastern Oregon and Washington have a little, but comparatively nobody lives there; the populated bits along I-5 are all quite wet.)

    2. There’s actually a desal plant going up in Carlsbad (north San Diego county); extracting potable water from seawater is ultimately the way out for California. I’d prefer it be with high heat from an LFTR than reverse osmosis, but you take what you can get…

  6. >, no water wasted down the drain.<

    unless you live in an arid region that thinking is thinking for an arid region. here we worry about floods.

    1. There’s no real value to be had in pouring water down the drain, though, if you don’ t have to.

    1. “I predict this water utility will be standing / until I pay my bill…”

      (with apologies to the late great Warren Zevon)

  8. Being a volunteer in a hospital, they never suggested to us to use hot water, just to lather for 15 seconds. I am surprised that people still subscribe to the global warming thing. Much more likely we are heading into an era of global cooling.

  9. Winter reasons to wash with hot water:
    1) keeps the pipes coming and going warmer, which contributes to the heat budget of your house while helping keep the pipes from freezing if that’s a problem for your particular house
    2) keeps your hands from being chilled, which can contribute towards the sort of mild hypothermia which lowers resistence against the common cold or the flu
    3) general goddamn human comfort

    Next thing you know they’re going to be demanding we take cold showers in -15 weather.

    1. Hah. In my apartment in Dallas, the water pipes to my bathroom apparently run up the outside wall. During the winter, I get ice water from the tap if I use the cold tap. So yeah, I use warm (don’t need it hot) water to wash my hands, because washing your hands in ice water sucks. First off, there’s the cold, obviously, but soap doesn’t seem to lather properly in water that cold, either.

  10. Are the people recommending this the same fools who insisted that hotels don’t need to wash sheets in hot water, and thus caused the bedbug explosion? If you’re cooking, then wash with soap and use water as hot as you can stand. Your skin is covered in dead skin cells, bacteria have a cell wall a few atoms thick; you can wash in water hot enough to kill bacteria without damaging yourself. Or you can just live with increased outbreaks of e. Coli, salmonella, cryptosporidium, etc.

    1. Or you can just live with increased outbreaks of e. Coli, salmonella, cryptosporidium, etc.

      The eco-freaks won’t mind that because they seem to want fewer people around and don’t seem to be bothered by the obvious misery their demands would cause.

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