soft water problem...

[paranoidprego]

I have BG 3.0s and just got some Grobaby's. my dd gets a rash after the 2nd or 3rd diaper. i thought it was the BG's against her skin and maybe she was sensitive to that material. but then i used a prefold on top and started with the grobaby and the same thing happened. i'm thinking it is the soft water (this happened to two other friends). is there anything i can do or are we doomed to use disposables and sell our CD stash?
We have a front loader Whirlpool. I use Planet detergent (like a tiny amount). cool water soak first, wash on hot w/ detergent, then another cycle on hot with out detergent. When it was just BG's, i would use some bleach once a month like they said to do.
please help! oh, and i do not have anywhere else to rinse that is not soft water.

thanks!

[poppan]

Soft water is better, not worse, for laundry. You don't have to use as much detergent, it rinses cleaner, and there are fewer minerals in the water to cause build up.

I think you should try using MORE detergent. IME Planet is very gentle and did not disinfect my diapers when I used very little. Diapers are dirty, they need detergent to suspend the soils when being washed so the soils are not redeposited onto the diaper. The rashes are likely from bacteria and not from detergent residue, given what you wrote about your routine.

Additionally, do you know if the soak water is drained away before the main wash begins? It's best to get rid of most of the pee and poo before the wash cycle, for best washing performance. It sounds obvious but sometimes we don't think about obvious things!

[paranoidprego]

I will definitely try what you recommended. and i don't know if the soak water is drained away. i believe it is because it is a front loader and when i open the door on occasion before running the wash there is no water. but it does not spin it out the water.

the woman who sells CD told me to use Planet and said that i should use a tsp for the load and to add some towels in the mix to "trick" my washer into using more water for a 'bigger" load.
my friend told me that there was something to the salt from the water softener reacting with her baby's bum so i figured that could be the reason for us? also, on a cloth diapering blog the blogger mentions that the soft water causes the detergent to get trapped in the diaper fibers causing the diaper to stink,
decrease absorbency and create rashes on the baby.

thanks for the ideas. i will try more detergent. or maybe sitch to another detergent. any ideas?

[poppan]

OMG a teaspoon of Planet for the load... IME that is way too little. I have soft water but it's naturally occurring soft water, not with a water softener, so I don't know if that makes a difference, but I would try more like 3-4 TBSP (tablespoons, not teaspoons).

The throwing in a towel or two "trick" has never made sense to me, knowing what I know about how front loaders work. Front loaders typically have a sensor that decides how much water to use depending on the weight of the load. You throw in a towel, and that increases the weight, but you've also just thrown in a towel that's going to absorb a corresponding amount of water and make it unavailable to the diapers. Added to that is the fact that there is a maximum water level no matter what the weight of the load is. It makes more sense to me to dump a bucket of water on top of the dipes, which makes them wet and weigh more without adding in additional materials that absorb water. If you really want to use more water (I found I needed to), play around with the other cycles and see if there is one that uses more water but still lets you wash on hot. I washed dipes on the delicates cycle in my front loader for 2 years and that was the only way they got clean.

Re: detergent I loved my Tide although I kept trying "greener" detergents because I thought I ought not to like Tide. Eventually I stopped experimenting with the greener stuff and just stuck to Tide, because the other options weren't working for me and I was tired of my kids getting skin reactions every time I went off Tide.