Did a quick search, looks like the Japanese are also interested in it. Has some average expected use values inside the article.
Nice article, sounds like a useful technique for a study, though not as directly useful for a homeowner trying to figure a particular appliance out. Good idea though for sure.
One other thing to consider about the Energy Star washers that hasn’t been mentioned, is the amount of clothing per load. The ones I’ve looked at are supposed to be able to was 10-12 pairs of jeans or 17-18 full size bath towels in one load. My current pre-Energy Star models can only handle 6-8 full size towels or 3-4 pairs of jeans at once. With the jeans I have to put in 3-4 pairs, then other lighter stuff for a full load as the weight of filling it with just jeans would rip it apart. So, you would also do fewer loads for a given amount of laundry.
Depends on the way you do laundry…
I do the typical “bachelor bundle” where I don’t sort, everything I take off goes in the same dirty laundry pile, which I periodically shovel into the washer, etc. (I deliberately avoid purchasing whilte clothing, and require that all my clothing purchases be “Machine wash warm / tumble dry” capable) My standard laundry cycle is 2-3 full loads, so a larger capacity washer would cut down on my number of washer loads, However the dryer would then become a bottleneck, as I don’t think our dryer could reasonably handle much more than one full load in our current washer w/o overloading. That each dryer load ran faster would still not make it less of a pain to have to run two dryer loads for each washer full.
OTOH, (and I’ve asked the GF about this so it’s a “definitive answer” for our house) the GF sorts into different color loads, and while she generally washes full loads with the current machine she is very emphatic that a larger capacity machine would NOT reduce the number of loads that she runs…
I’ve also talked to her about the laundry spinner idea, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled… The idea of adding an extra handling step to her wash did not appeal.
Gas fired rice cookers? Sign me up! Never thought we would get to 4 pages talking about laundry, though.
Our gas consumption averages about 1/2 therm a day for everything (range, dryer, DHW, BBQ) unless the furnace kicks on. Then, it burns 1/2 therm an hour, or more. We are paying about $1.25/ therm delivered right now. After tax and tags, fees and fines, the gas portion of our bill works out to about $50/month. This isn’t bad for a family of four. I’d hate to think what this would cost with electric resistance. Gas is too valuable to burn in a furnace, thus the reason for the Quad.
I have been considering a compressor for the CNG cars, though…
Heh heh… I understand Goose. All I can say is, the matching dryer would accept and dry the load the washer can handle, and when living with a girlfriend eventually kids come along unless surgical intervention takes place. I’m a family man now because of multiple antipregnancy methods failed at the same time, the only thing that put a positive stop to it was snip snip sizzle sizzle. Course, one kid plans to move out this year and the other probably won’t be far behind. But I digress. With kids, suddenly laundry becomes a daily ordeal just to keep up. A super large washer and dryer would at least help with that. Any given day I can come up with three loads of laundry to do, with strict separation into whites, reds, light colors, dark colors, and towels (which get a double wash in hot). If we had one of those Kenmore Duet jobs that can take ginormous loads, then I’d be looking at far fewer loads. Guess since I’ve been a family man for so long now, I only consider things in those terms and forget that other people don’t have the same loads to get through that we do. We do two loads a day, every day, except weekends when we play catchup.
The horizontal jobs are pretty deceiving when you load them. Without that agitator in the middle you can pretty much load them full but not “tight” as the directions point out. So a 3 CF horizontal washer might be a different beast than a 3CF vertical. With all of these loads per day and the greatly reduced water consumption per load it should be pointed out that your septic system will be seeing significantly less influent. I have an old home with an old septic system that is working as far as I can tell. Sending less liquid out to that system can only help it.
My mother told me a long time ago that nobody gets pregnant on accident.
Heh heh… I understand Goose. All I can say is, the matching dryer would accept and dry the load the washer can handle, and when living with a girlfriend eventually kids come along unless surgical intervention takes place. I’m a family man now because of multiple antipregnancy methods failed at the same time, the only thing that put a positive stop to it was snip snip sizzle sizzle. Course, one kid plans to move out this year and the other probably won’t be far behind. But I digress. With kids, suddenly laundry becomes a daily ordeal just to keep up. A super large washer and dryer would at least help with that. Any given day I can come up with three loads of laundry to do, with strict separation into whites, reds, light colors, dark colors, and towels (which get a double wash in hot). If we had one of those Kenmore Duet jobs that can take ginormous loads, then I’d be looking at far fewer loads. Guess since I’ve been a family man for so long now, I only consider things in those terms and forget that other people don’t have the same loads to get through that we do. We do two loads a day, every day, except weekends when we play catchup.
Actually it’s looking more like we need the medical intervention to make the kids SHOW UP… We’ve been actively trying for several years now, and no luck yet - of course both of us are well past the “ideal ages” Granted the practice is fun, but I’d like to see more results… If and when, I agree that different laundry equipment might be in order, but until then what we have works pretty well.
(BTW, short of radical methods, not much is guaranteed, I remember hearing a while back about a couple on second marriage for each, each had gotten knots in the plumbing after having had “enough” w/ previous spouses, guess what happened?)
Aw, jeez, Goose; more than we wanted to know! Practice makes perfect, so get practicing. For us, it was like “accidentally” falling off a log!
My understanding on the front loaders is that you really can’t overload them; if you can still get the door closed, it’s not overloaded. The clothes will tend to pack down when they hit the water, but this is not a bad thing. Toploaders need room to circulate the clothes down to the agitator as that is where the washing is actually happening. Front loaders tumble the entire load at once and wash better than an agitator and are easier on the clothes (they will last longer).
Commercial washers are rated in pounds as it is hard to fake a scale. I think the standard homeowner machines were 14-15 pounds and the super capacity machines were 18 -22 pounds. This cubic feet thing is misleading kinda like horsepower on a vacuum.
I am making room for a washer and dryer upstairs when I redo the master bathroom. Wife likes the idea of not having to go down 2 flights of steps with the laundry. Might have to “instrument” a pair to measure energy consumption…
Telco, what are you doing with the towels that you need to wash them twice in hot water? This sounds a little excessive to me.
Well, I had a bit of minor excitement today… I was doing laundry getting ready for a trip that will take me off line for a few weeks, and figured I’d try doing the meter read to see if I could figure out what kind of gas consumption I was getting from the dryer. What I’ve found is that there are two dials on the meter, one that measures 0.2cf per revolution, and one that measures 2.0cf per revolution, (each of these has 10 divisions per revolution, so you can measure either .2 or .02 cf per div) then an old fashioned odometer style readout for 100cf units, nothing in between… With the dryer running, the two dials both move along at a pretty good clip, and the 2cf dial went around at least once, probably more… So unless you want to sit there and count the dial turns while the dryer is running, the meter read trick won’t work.
The excitement came because I noticed a pretty fair bit of gas stink around the meter while I was looking at it. This didn’t seem good to me, so I called the gas co, and they sent a tech out, who found that we have a very small leak on the gas co side of the connection. It was barely enough to register on his “sniff-o-meter”, and he said it was definitely not anything that would be a safety hazard, but after he was unable to tighten up the connection, said he would send a pipefitting crew out to take care of it.
I told him what I was trying to do, and he said that the best way to measure it was to time the rotation speed of the analog dials, and that they used to have (but he didn’t have a copy with him) a chart that would say what the consumption was based on how many divisions per minute got registered… Don’t have time to deal with it now, but I guess I’m going to want to try and track that down when I get back.
This method measures steady state consumption and is used to verify the burner’s adjustment. It won’t give you actual consumption as the burner cycles many times during operation, particularly near the end of the cycle. If you wanted a “noninvasive” way to measure burn time, you could set up a camcorder with the clock display on to watch the burner during a cycle and replay it to add up the run time. You can get to the burner by pulling off the kick panel in the front of the machine (well, not totally noninvasive).
Wanna see somebody move fast? Just call your gas company and tell them you smell gas. Free call, too!
I’m VERY sensitive to the smell of spoiled clothing, and towels being used as they are usually find their way into the hamper while damp. Damp cloth that dries slowly goes bad. If I smell that spoiled clothing smell on a towel I can’t use it, and I’ll smell it on something that nobody else will. Washing once with detergent and bleach in hot water, then again with hot water, detergent and fabric softener, and the towels come out clean smelling. Drove my wife up a wall when she’d do the laundry, then find her clean towels in the dirty clothes again, so we started double washing and it solved the problem. What’s bad is every now and again one of my shirts will be against a damp towel, and will absorb the smell too, but they can’t get washed in hot. I’ve had to toss (well, take to the Goodwill) brand new shirts because of the shirt will absorb the smell and it’ll get baked in by the dryer, and multiple washings won’t quite eliminate it.
Wow, that is pretty sensitive. I too have a nose for spoiled or sour laundry. To the point where I won’t wash clothes if I can’t put them in the dryer before going to bed. I don’t want them to sit in their juices overnight. For me it is my denim jeans that have gotten the sour smell and when my body heat warms them up I can get a whiff of sour clothes and it jus tbugs the heck out of me.
This method measures steady state consumption and is used to verify the burner’s adjustment. It won’t give you actual consumption as the burner cycles many times during operation, particularly near the end of the cycle. If you wanted a “noninvasive” way to measure burn time, you could set up a camcorder with the clock display on to watch the burner during a cycle and replay it to add up the run time. You can get to the burner by pulling off the kick panel in the front of the machine (well, not totally noninvasive).
Wanna see somebody move fast? Just call your gas company and tell them you smell gas. Free call, too!
Chris
Thanks for the chart pointer - I guess it won’t give me all the info I want if the burner is cycling, but it will at least give me an idea (I hope...)
In the last six months wife and I have gotten more serious about not wasting electricity. Checked last year to this year usage: 2007 ranged between 550-900 kwh/month, highest during summer when the basement dehumidifier was operating. Last couple of months have been between 390-480 kwh/month. I’m guestimating that we will achieve, even with dehumidifier use, about 20-25% reduction.
We did: 1) much more serious about turning off unneeded lights; 2) turn off computers and shut down power strips to computers and other electronics when not being used; 3) shut off ceiling fan that didn’t really seem to help distribute stove heat very much (fan was running 24-7); 4) plus a number of smaller things.
We just replaced our old Kenmore units with the LG Front Loaders. The old units were on their last leg and needed replaced. It is too early to comment on energy consumption (haven’t see a bill yet). But they use a fraction of the water the old unit used and the dryer takes much less time. On the largest, heaviest soiled settings we only use 1/2 the water. On a normal setting we use 1/4 of the water. The dryer is much more efficient also but I think it is due in large part to the speed that the washer spins (twice as fast as the old unit).
