Unable to line dry dry nappies and they stink?!

[Flutterbye]

All through summer I was happily using my Motherease one size as usual (rinsing down toilet, dry pailing, rinse in machine before washing at 60, then line drying). However since the weather has turned colder and wetter and the nappies have been dried in dryer or on radiators and they now smell horrid when they get wee'd on again. I've reverted to regular terrys squares 'cause I don't think the Motherease ones are washing properly. What more can I do?? I used them with ds before dd and did have this problem a bit before but not this bad.

Have you tried using vinegar or teattree oil in the wash?

Sometimes sticking them in the tumble drier until they are really dry can help.

I jusr remembered that occasionally I washed mine at 90 when they got smelly, really helped!

Not sure if you already do this but a rinse cycle before the main wash often helps. As todays washers use less water you can often be washing your nappies in concentrated wee/poo especially if you dry pail (as I do). The rinse will wash away a lot of the reidue leaving the nappies a bit cleaner before the hot waash, then just wash at your normal temp. I had probs with smelly nappies prior to this routine, now I run a rinse cycle with every nappy wash.

Washing at 90 can destroy aplix/velcro and the pile on some terry, and also reduce the life of poppers on ME, OL and so on. However I would highly recommend putting a dash of white vinegar in the "softener" part of your washer - works a treat and softens them up, too.

No similar problems with terries then? Perhaps worth giving them one REALLY good wash - pre-wash, wash at 60, then keep putting through rinse cycles until no suds are left will help. Sometimes a build up of soap can cause this so reducing the amount you use may, ironically, help.

Or, try changing to a different washing powder? I use Ecover (not brilliant) or another eco one from naturalcollection.com which is much better but even so I very rarely need to throw them through with Persil (yuck) tablets to get them squeaky.

I had the exact same problem. I now give the nappies a wee rub with soap after I rinse them in the toilet, and then rinse them again to get rid of the soap suds. I then dry pail (making sure that I have squeezed as much water out as I can), put them in a rinse cycle in the machine and then wash at 60 in soapnuts and teatree oil. I've had no problem with the nappies smelling since and they look lovely and clean when they come out the machine.

Also, I used to put vinegar in every wash but I felt that I could smell it in the house if I had the air dry rather than line dry. I now only put it in every few washes.

if I had to air dry

Glad i'm not the only one strugerling with non diposables in this`weather. After the rinse cycle the hot wash and tumble dry are they realy any better than disps from an enviromental view point. Keep telling myself am using them for economy as bought for DS (an april baby- always dried outside) now using same nappies for 6 week old dd

rinse and spin with white vinegar on before washing

then few drops of tea tree oil in the soap powder drawer

I would say yes, that even after all the extra energy you use to wash/dry in cold weather they are better, after all still less landfill, no packaging, no nasty chemicals and just think of all the energy and fuel used to make and transport each disposable....as soon as you add tumble drying into the equation you will get the odd sceptic saying that cloth is no more environmentally friendly than disposables, but it is only one extrs factor you have added, and I know what is better for my children's bums!

Use washing soda in the soap drawer. Gets rid of stains and smells. Make sure well rinsed.

I read somewhere that because nappies are so absorbent, the load had to be smaller to allow enough water to slosh around.
We had the stinky nappy problem for a while and I found that putting in a smaller load on a quick wash worked quite well. I did have a massive nappy bin and washed every three days, but in the Summer I had to change to a small 9 litre bin and washed every other night on a quick wash. This was a wash of around 5-6 fabric nappies plus a couple of pocket nappies and around three or four pocket nappy inserts and some cloth wipes. The only time there were still smells was when the nappies sat in the bin for too long and the smell was a damp mildewy odour.
I found bicarbonate of soda in the soap powder drawer helped to rid the nappies of the smell.
Mother-ease have a bit of polyester in them, which I have found can hold onto smells a bit, so it could be why the smells are lingering.
I found hemp nappies would smell when they were peed on and the only thing that seemed to eliminate the smell was to start using an eco-ball.
I hear soap nuts are good as well, but either way I do find that the nappies smell better with no detergent.
You can get rid of a powder build-up by washing a few times on 60 degrees, or until the bubbles stop appearing in the water.
It is a pain to get washing dry when it is so wet outside, I have found that a good spin at 1600 RPM and ten minutes in the tumble drier gets a lot of the water out of the nappy and they dry in 24 hours in a heated room, apart from bamboo which is more like 48 hours.
I hope you aren't too confused now.

Aside from the environmental issue, I find ds3 on cloths gets far fewer nappy rashes than ds1 and ds2 did in disposables..

Going back to the environmental thing...

When washing daily at 60 and tumble drying the overall impact of washables is similar to disposables in terms of energy use and CO2 emissions, but still less.

ANYTHING you do such as washing at 40, not tumbling until dry, any line drying, etc, makes a huge difference and massively increases the gap between dispies and cotties.

THEN there's the landfill problem on top, and when you bear in mind that only about 30% of a Pampers nappy biodegrades (their figure) you can immediately see the environmental benefits of cloth, no matter what you do with it.

Oh course, the methane generated by the biodegrading of that 30% is many times worse for the greenhouse effect than CO2 anyway. One dispie company even claimed that their nappies were eco friendly because so little of it biodegraded and created methane, and if they made more of the nappy biodegradeable then it would release more methane, which would be a Bad Thing.

Hear hear makes a change. The undisputed fact is the huge contribution made by disposables to landfill and the methane generated. Methane heats up the atmosphere 20 times more than carbon dioxide, so contributes greatly to global warming.
There's a link here to the WEN response to the flawed study that found that disps and cloth used the same amount of resources.
But basically it says"if parents use 24 nappies and follow manufacturers' instructions to wash at 60oC using an A rated washing machine they will have approximately 24% less impact on global warming than the report says.?
and another saving on energy can be made my either cutting out tumbling or shortening the time of tumbling and air drying to finish.