i have heard that significant savings can come from using a front loader washer . they wring the clothes better & the savings effect from the reduced dryer power.
I’ve heard the same thing, but that is not relevant to the question at hand! The question being asked is a very simple one, I don’t know why it is so difficult to get an answer.
Again, the question is, How much electric power does the washer by itself draw to wash one average cycle of clothes… Assume that I have an infinite supply of free solar heated water (in a gravity feed water tank), and will be line drying the clothes - thus NO other electrical energy will be used to produce a load of clean clothes - HOW MUCH ELECTRICITY WILL I CONSUME?
I have a newly installed whirlpool energy star horizontal washer and a kill-a-watt on the job right now measuring computer power usage (130 watts running, 14 phantom). I have the tools to give you your answer as soon as I catch the wife about to run the wash. Maybe someone will beat me to it. Obviously it is trivial and can be classified as “splitting hairs” but you want an answer.
Related note. That 160 KwH per year usage rating for my washer includes dryer time I believe. There has been a SINGLE and very important innovation made in electric dryers that we all need to be aware of. The moisture sensor. Old washers had a timed cycle that would heat the clothes past dryness. Newer dryers sense that the clothes are dry and shut off. My dryer time is well under an hour now, I recall 38 minutes, compared to the couple of hours when drying wet clothes from an oldschool washer.
Refrigerators don’t suck much juice at all. Before anyone can speak about the worthiness of upgrades they need to measure real world consumption with a kill-a-watt. Otherwise they are depending on manufacturer’s claims.
Sorry to interject again, Goose, but while we wait for Highbeam’s report, I punched up some numbers that are being thrown around here and came up with the following approximations. You say that your current toploader uses about .2kwh/load and that you are paying about $.15/kwh. This works out to about 3 cents a load for electricity to drive the washer. I think the DOE figures an average of 10 loads a week for the “average” family, if memory serves. Multiply out for the year and I wind up with about $15/year. If the front loader is twice as efficient, which would be a stretch, you are only going to save about $7-8 a year. Divide that into the $1000 (or whatever) price tag, and I think we will all be long gone before you save any money, even off the grid! I might even suspect that you don’t do any where near 10 loads a week, unless the GF has a LOT of unmentionables! As Pook so eloquently put it, you ain’t gonna save…
I believe the new machines have motors that are inverter driven, which might save some on the mechanical portion of washing the clothes, but still, how much are you going to save and how much are you going to pay to do it? The savings will come from the reduced drying time, which is considerable. If Highbeam could do a load in a conventional washer and measure the consumption on the dryer, I believe we would see a big difference.
Not to continue throwing gasoline around, but the refrigerator is the third largest energy consumer in the average household, after HVAC and DHW and more than cooking uses.
Thanks Highbeam, I will be interested to see your results for certain, even if it is mostly of academic interest. I agree that the dryer and hot water are probably bigger parts of the equation, but given that we are running natural gas for both, the DOE numbers don’t really tell us much of use.
Moisture sensors aren’t anything new BTW, our current dryer at ~15 years old has one, and it is not a “fancy high tech” model - it is a simple enough item, basically just a pair of electrodes on the back of the drum that measure the resistance of the clothes tumbling past them - water has fairly low resistance, as it dries the resistance goes up until some threshold is reached at which point it switches into the “cool down” mode.
I haven’t actually timed our dryer, but it has a “timed perma-press” cycle that we set to it’s 60 minute maximum on the timer. At some point, usually about 40-45 minutes or so, it beeps and goes into cool down mode, where it tumbles for 30 seconds or so and beeps every 5 minutes or thereabouts until the timer finally shuts everything down at about 90 minutes....
The only loads I see that take longer are when I do the bedclothes - Full size mattress pad, fitted sheet, comforter cover and pillow case, a definite “maximum load” that I have to put in the washer with great care to make the washer finish the cycle w/o going into out of balance shutdown… This takes two dryer cycles to get things dry enough that I’d want to put them on the bed, they are still “clammy” at the end of the first cycle.
However if I’m reading the DOE energy star info properly, the washer “energy consumption” is supposed to include water heating (but they don’t tell you how much that is) but NOT dryer power, though they mention that dryer time will be reduced due to the clothes being spun more.
Chris - your math is probably pretty close to right on the cost per load - my electric is actually $0.15367 / kwh, but that is not a significant difference. The fine print on the DOE page says they are figuring 392 loads / year, or about 7.5 loads a week - (don’t you love the round numbers? ) talking with the GF, it sounds like a pretty reasonable number for our useage…
Another interesting item to consider - the DOE talks about their energy consumption numbers as being how much you will save “over the ELEVEN YEAR lifetime of the washer” - IMHO this is NOT GOOD - why should we want an appliance that is only considered useful for eleven years? Our current washer is over 15 years old, and is still going strong, has NEVER needed a major repair - I think I’ve replaced a couple of belts, and had a time or two when a sock has gotten jammed between the tub and the basket, but that’s about it… Most people I know with older washers have had similar experiences, and I have to wonder how much energy is wasted in making these new crapola machines that are only good for eleven years? (I’ve got COMPUTERS that have gone longer than that!)
Our audit guy looked at our fridge (another ~15 year old unit, the GF purchased it the last year that one could get fridges with CFC refrigerants), and basically said that while an energy star unit would save us on running costs, the savings wouldn’t be enough to justify the purchase of a new equivalent sized fridge - however I haven’t done the Kill-a-Watt test on it yet to find out for sure.
I like round numbers as math was never my strong point. I’d like to think I am a big picture kinda guy when it comes to these things. My point from early on was don’t rush out to buy a new refrigerator or whatever, unless the old one was dying. Then get rid of it; don’t put it in the garage to keep multiple cases of beer cold. It’s still sucking on your electric meter, even though you aren’t in it every day. I’m still waiting for the old Kenmore to die, so I can make the excuse to put a new one upstairs near the bedroom.
FWIW, I had a conversation with an insurance adjustor a while back who informed me that, in the event of a major loss in the house, any appliance (except maybe the furnace?) that is over 7 years old is considered to be worthless! I like to consider them “proven”. Oh, well…
Goose; you still have a belt on your washer? Whirlpool canned their belt drive washers back in the ‘80’s. Just eggin’ ya, dude! Go buy a new washer for Pete’s sake; you got your money’s worth! The GAF has to be worth something, doesn’t it?
It’s the GAF that I’m trying to satisfy in part… This is something that she also wants to know… She is the primary breadwinner in the household, so essentially all major purchases need her approval / support.
If the old washer were dead / dying, it would be a no-brainer to go get the new machine, it isn’t that big of an added cost to get the energy star rated unit. However if I’m going to convince her that replacing a working machine, I have to be able to present a fairly detailed set of numbers showing how it impacts OUR bills, not some hypothetical set of bills that only exist in the gov’ts imagination. The parts of it I can measure I absolutely need to quantify… I need to convince myself as well - so far all I really have to go for is the audit guy’s suggestion, and the gov’t website. Considering that the gov’t hasn’t exactly proved itself to be very accurate in a lot of it’s other claims - ranging from environmental to military, I don’t place a huge amount of faith in “energy star” ratings.
Okay folks, here we go. About a month ago I installed a new pair of whirlpool duet sport model washer and dryer bought from Lowes to replace a dead stacked combo washer/dryer. The combo ended up at 1800$ after all the BS. I will be receiving a couple of rebates from my energy provider and from Lowes but nothing much. These buggers are expensive but when your washer goes TU you really need to act fast as in right F’n now and lowes delivered the next day.
So the new dryer runs for 34 minutes on “medium” heat which I can’t measure but if it was using all of the less than the 30 amps available to it, say 6000 watts, the dryer costs about 3 KwH to do a load. This is only aout two bits (a quarter) in my area.
The wash machine was run with the kill-a-watt today. The phantom load is 2 watts whether the power button is on with the display lights lit or whether they are all dark. While running I see between 40 and almost 800 watts and since a HP is about 750 watts I may conclude that the motor is about 1 HP. I ran the laod on “Normal” whick takes about 54 minutes.
Okay folks, here we go. About a month ago I installed a new pair of whirlpool duet sport model washer and dryer bought from Lowes to replace a dead stacked combo washer/dryer. The combo ended up at 1800$ after all the BS. I will be receiving a couple of rebates from my energy provider and from Lowes but nothing much. These buggers are expensive but when your washer goes TU you really need to act fast as in right F’n now and lowes delivered the next day.
So the new dryer runs for 34 minutes on “medium” heat which I can’t measure but if it was using all of the less than the 30 amps available to it, say 6000 watts, the dryer costs about 3 KwH to do a load. This is only aout two bits (a quarter) in my area.
The wash machine was run with the kill-a-watt today. The phantom load is 2 watts whether the power button is on with the display lights lit or whether they are all dark. While running I see between 40 and almost 800 watts and since a HP is about 750 watts I may conclude that the motor is about 1 HP. I ran the laod on “Normal” whick takes about 54 minutes.
0.15 KwH for the entire washer cycle.
MANY THANKS! This was exactly what I was looking for, and as others had expected (and frankly I had come to expect as well) there wasn’t a huge difference… Using the gov’t 392 loads / year number, that works out to $0.0308 /load or $12.07 / year on our machine (0.2kwh/load x 0.154/kwh x 392) or (if it were in our house) $0.0231 / load on your machine, and $9.06 / year. At $3.01 a year, that is almost a 25% savings in electric for the washer, but also one hell of a long payback period. (OTOH, as far as I can tell, there is NO phantom load on our machines, when they are off, they are quite thoroughly dead...)
However, looking at the dryer, I’m running at least 60 - 90 minutes to dry a load on medium heat using the moisture sensor cycle, (our setting for 95% of the loads we do) although I only draw 0.41 kWh to do it. This is a gas dryer, so that juice only represents the energy needed to tumble the clothes and run the blower - I’m not sure how one can determine the gas consumption. You don’t say, but judging from the numbers you mention, I’m betting that’s an electric dryer.
So the remaining cost comparison times would be to figure out how much water (and what 
g;e is hot) we would use with each type of machine, and the amounts of gas used for water heating and operating the dryer… I think I can come up with at least ballpark figures for those.
All right Highbeam! Thanks for the research. Now if we could just answer the dryer question. Since an electric element has a fixed wattage, all we have to do is put a timer on it to check its energy consumption. A gas dryer also has a fixed burn rate and the burner runs on 120V. If anybody still has a standard washer and a HE washer in their home, we could really nail this thing down.
Interesting to note the dry time is (significantly) less than the wash time. Used to be the other way around. My experience with older machines has been 20-30 minutes for a regular wash and 45 minutes for a dry. We used to set the timers on 45 minutes on the coin op machines in apartments and didn’t get many complaints. Over an hour to dry is excessive and if it takes you more than 90 minutes, something is definitely wrong.
Telco, I have seen your situation before. My wife’s aunt has a house with a dryer vent made out of 3” PVC running through a concrete slab. Her parents also have a house with a 4” vent running underground and it stops working when it fills up with water. Curiously, both houses in Myrtle Beach. Aren’t these things governed by code? Most machines specify a 50 foot included length as a maximum for the vent.
When the time comes , check out Staber washers, made in USA and home serviceable.
I own a Staber. It seems to be doing a great job. I really like the top load and the fact that the tub has two bearing supports instead of one. It seems like a small tub until you load it. They have videos on their web site. And, you can open it up during a wash cycle like a regular top loader.
When the time comes , check out Staber washers, made in USA and home serviceable.
I own a Staber. It seems to be doing a great job. I really like the top load and the fact that the tub has two bearing supports instead of one. It seems like a small tub until you load it. They have videos on their web site. And, you can open it up during a wash cycle like a regular top loader.
I have run across these before on other forums, but never met anyone with experience. It’s basically a home sized version of a commercial “pocket” washer. Anybody else have one?
i have heard that significant savings can come from using a front loader washer . they wring the clothes better & the savings effect from the reduced dryer power.
I’ve heard the same thing, but that is not relevant to the question at hand! The question being asked is a very simple one, I don’t know why it is so difficult to get an answer.
Again, the question is, How much electric power does the washer by itself draw to wash one average cycle of clothes… Assume that I have an infinite supply of free solar heated water (in a gravity feed water tank), and will be line drying the clothes - thus NO other electrical energy will be used to produce a load of clean clothes - HOW MUCH ELECTRICITY WILL I CONSUME?
Gooserider
I own a Whirlpool Energy Star top loading washer and the primary savings are in water usage if I remember correctly.. How it achieves this is by not filling the tub for the rinse cycle but rather it sprays water instead .. I have owned this for about 10 years and never a problem.. The washer also has temp controls for the warm water if you use it and saves energy in that sense however we rarely use hot water for washing..
Yes, I have an electric dryer. No gas at my place and even if I did I have a mental issue with a fire in my dryer. Cripes, the electric ones even burn houses down.
When I replaced my electrical panel my electrician buddy checked each circuit’s loading by using his little clamp on amp meter. Seems that circuits are supposed to be 75% utilized so a 20 amp 220 volt circuit should be passing 15 amps or so. The important item is that little amp meter. It was slick as heck and can measure 220 volt current just by putting a clamp around that circuit’s hot line. It didn’t keep track of KwH but the timer would do that provided that the current remains constant throughout the cycle.
The washer takes about twice as long as the dryer but the washer spends a lot of time doing the dryer’s job by spinning the clothes dry. Lots of time seems to be spent doing things other than tumbling in soapy water. In no case do I see the water level through the glass when clothes are in there. In fact, before using the machine I was directed to run an empty load to clean the sweat shop dust out. The water level only came up about 3 inches into the drum. The washer has a water sensor that automatically fills to that level regardless of wash load size.
There is one more level of washing schemes and that is the “heavy wash” or high soils wash. It probably just agitates for a longer period but I don’t know. 54 minutes seems long enough. I use the “warm” temperature setting and just the HE soap.
Oh and these things are not any quieter than the old style plus the vibration is heavier with the high speed spin.
=murphy’s law!
As Pook so eloquently put it, you ain’t gonna save…
) talking with the GF, it sounds like a pretty reasonable number for our useage…
