How much Juice does an Energy Star Washer draw?

[Gooserider]

I'm wondering if anyone here has one of the newer "Energy Star" clothes washers, and a "Kill-a-watt" meter? We recently had one of those freebie energy audits done, and one of the suggestions made was to replace our current ~15 yr old standard washing machine with one of the newer energy star front load machines. Our current machine is a Maytag, nothing fancy, but it works well and has been quite reliable. I threw it on my Kill-A-Watt meter, and it seems to be drawing about 0.2 KWh per load, which doesn't seem like all that much... We use natural gas for our water heating and dryer, and mostly use the cold or warm cycles, so we aren't getting hit badly for water and drying costs...

The claim was made that there is a rapid payback in terms of lower water consumption, and less power draw... I am curious about how much less power draw, has anyone actually measured what the power consumption is on a PER LOAD basis? (IMHO this is a far more useful number than some vague KWh/year estimate based on an arbitrary number of loads that might or might not relate to actual use...)

If our present washer was dead, it would make sense to replace it with an Energy Star rated unit, but somehow it's a lot harder to convince me that it's worth putting a perfectly good working appliance on the street just to upgrade the energy rating.

Does it seem like a reasonable thing to do, or are we just getting hit with "green doo-doo" and would we be better off spending our money elsewhere?

Also any particular brands / models that folks have had good or bad luck with?

Gooserider

 

[Telco]

I've got a Killawatt, and put it on my old Maytag, and saw 20 watts per use on a single load. It's not an energy anything. Water usage is where you save the money on the washing machine as the energy star models are supposed to use something like 1/3 of the water of a regular model.

If you want more bang for the electrical buck, replacing a fridge with an energy star should make a difference, the fridge I bought at the same time as my washer uses about 2KWH per day. This is the first appliance I plan to replace.

 

[d.n.f.]

Look at this site:

(broken link removed)

and

(broken link removed to http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=clotheswash.display_products_html)

My Bosch gets 151 kWh/year.

Big savings in dishwashers if you use one.

Plus I needed all new appliances (except a fridge). By replacing the fridge 915 vs 520 I expect to save some coin. Plus my new fridge is super quiet compared to the GE which I just sold.

 

[Gooserider]

Well, we've now run four loads through our washer while it's on the Kill-a-watt, and I'm showing .78 KWh consumed - or about .195 KWh / load, which seems to be consistent with the number that Telco got on his old machine.

Looking at the sites that D.N.F pointed me at, there was a little blurb on one saying that they base the numbers in their list of Energy Star models on the basis of doing 392 loads / year. Going to the list of washers, I find that the KWh/year listed per machine varies all over the place, but even the lowest numbers I spotted (about 125) worked out to about .32 KWh / load, with my quick estimate average of 180 KWh/yr giving me about .46 KWh/load - this doesn't sound that great! Did more digging, and found at the (broken link removed to http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=clotheswash.display_column_definitions) page, that they cook the numbers by including the "estimated electric water heater use" costs - so the number is not useful for my purposes, especially since we do very few loads with hot water, and what hot water we do use is heated by gas.

So I'm back to my original question - does anyone know what the typical Energy Star Washer draws per load, JUST FOR THE WASHER?

BTW, the numbers that I've seen suggest that unless your fridge or dishwasher are REALLY old, there isn't enough savings potential there to justify replacing a working machine... Worth purchasing an Energy Star replacement if the old machine dies, but not doing so just for the energy savings.

Gooserider

 

[Telco]

I dunno on the fridge. The 18.7 cu ft I'm looking at as a replacement uses 407kwh/year, or 1.115kwh/day. The one the wife wants (larger) uses 448kwh/year, or 1.2kwh/day. My existing one uses like 2.5kwh/day, or 912kwh/year. We pay around 8 cents/KWH, meaning that this fridge would save me either 37 bucks a year for the wife's preference or 40.40 per year for my preference, but saving almost 1.5KWH in a day means saving the cost of two solar panels, maybe 4 solar panels, and the required batteries and other hardware.

It would not pay off for on grid, but would definitely pay off for an off-grid application, when looking at it as strictly money. Looking at the bigger picture though, if a million people made this switch, it would save 1.5 gigawatts per day. This is more energy than is needed to send Michael J Fox to some other time, since the flux capacitor only requires 1.21 gigawatts. :lol: If you combined it with a whole range of Energy Star appliances, paying close attention to the labels and not just the Energy Star sticker, I could see you cutting your non-hardwired electrical usage in half or better. And, also need to keep in mind that water usage counts in the savings, too. Not just heated water, but water in general. The front loader washers claim to use half to a third of the water of a top loader, but if you gotta have a top loader (broken link removed to http://www.staber.com/product/810024) makes a top load horizontal axis job that looks good (not used one directly) and if you really want to save you can even use wood fired hot water to (broken link removed to http://www.hardyfurnaceparts.com/new_page_8.htm) These options are pricey though, and I have no idea on the reliability of these guys or anything else. Just found them on internet searches. I was looking at experimenting with an old dryer, and a home made solar water heater to see if I can make a hydronic clothes dryer. If it worked, and this link says it should...

 

[d.n.f.]

Yeah I wouldn't replace em unless you had to. However, if you do get a new one, a front loader is much easier on your clothes. You can wash all kinds of delicates in them. My wife does dry clean only stuff in the old Miele. Haven't installed the Bosch yet.

Notice that clothes dryers all suck and can't get an energy star rating.

 

[Gooserider]

I dunno on the fridge. The 18.7 cu ft I'm looking at as a replacement uses 407kwh/year, or 1.115kwh/day. The one the wife wants (larger) uses 448kwh/year, or 1.2kwh/day. My existing one uses like 2.5kwh/day, or 912kwh/year. We pay around 8 cents/KWH, meaning that this fridge would save me either 37 bucks a year for the wife's preference or 40.40 per year for my preference, but saving almost 1.5KWH in a day means saving the cost of two solar panels, maybe 4 solar panels, and the required batteries and other hardware.

It would not pay off for on grid, but would definitely pay off for an off-grid application, when looking at it as strictly money. Looking at the bigger picture though, if a million people made this switch, it would save 1.5 gigawatts per day. This is more energy than is needed to send Michael J Fox to some other time, since the flux capacitor only requires 1.21 gigawatts. :lol: If you combined it with a whole range of Energy Star appliances, paying close attention to the labels and not just the Energy Star sticker, I could see you cutting your non-hardwired electrical usage in half or better. And, also need to keep in mind that water usage counts in the savings, too. Not just heated water, but water in general. The front loader washers claim to use half to a third of the water of a top loader, but if you gotta have a top loader (broken link removed to http://www.staber.com/product/810024) makes a top load horizontal axis job that looks good (not used one directly) and if you really want to save you can even use wood fired hot water to (broken link removed to http://www.hardyfurnaceparts.com/new_page_8.htm) These options are pricey though, and I have no idea on the reliability of these guys or anything else. Just found them on internet searches. I was looking at experimenting with an old dryer, and a home made solar water heater to see if I can make a hydronic clothes dryer. If it worked, and this link says it should...

I agree on the off grid situation where every watt counts big-time, but even at our rate of 15.4 cents a kWh (including all the extra charges) that is still an awfully long payback if replacing a working appliance when on-grid. I've been thinking about grid-tied solar, but according to some preliminary numbers I've run using the SolarFinder website a grid tied solar system would run us about $63K for 700 sqft, and have an 11 year payback - IMHO that's excessive, though if Nano-solar or some of their competitors start to get the price down to a more reasonable level, we might reconsider. A hot water system might be a lot better, as that is only about $4k, with a 7 year payback.

As to what would happen if lots of people made the switch, there is the interesting question that few people raise about what the environmental impact would be of making all the extra appliances and disposing of the old ones, but I'm more interested in what it does for OUR finances... (IMHO the best way to get people to go green is to make it PROFITABLE, and get out of the way of the stampede - but if you can't, I know I'm going to be a really hard sale to make.)

If I had sizable amounts of money to spare, I would love to do a significant addition on the house, (2-3 rooms, and at least 2-3 more garage bays / workshop spaces) with a heavy emphasis on adding energy savings - I fantasize about getting a wood boiler with a couple thousand gallons of storage, and a large drainback solar aray, use that for all the heating, DHW, hydronic clothes dryer, etc, with a small gas boiler as ultimate backup - and use the solar setup to heat the swimming pool during the non-house heating season.

But our funds are much more limited, so we need to really make sure that any energy reduction spending we do makes economic sense, or it will have an adverse effect on our personal environment...

Gooserider

 

[Gooserider]

Yeah I wouldn't replace em unless you had to. However, if you do get a new one, a front loader is much easier on your clothes. You can wash all kinds of delicates in them. My wife does dry clean only stuff in the old Miele. Haven't installed the Bosch yet.

Notice that clothes dryers all suck and can't get an energy star rating.

I agree, and it's worth noting that nobody I've seen suggests swapping out the clothes dryer - closest it gets is some of the "hydronic dryer" suggestions. The energy audit guy that suggested the washer said flat out not to change the dryer. The Energy Star website isn't quite as explicit, but sort of says the same thing. I don't really see how it could be significantly different in any case - you have to heat the air and blow it through the clothes, you have to turn the drum, and that's about all a dryer does... There really aren't any places that one can pick up any savings without a really radical technology breakthrough.

Gooserider

 

[Redox]

Most washers only have a 1/2 Hp motor ant the typical cycle is less than 1/2 hr. It really can't use very much electricity. The savings comes in the energy to heat water. If you multiply out the 40 to 50 gallons of water per cycle, this adds up quickly. However, if you use a good detergent, you don't need to use hot water. Try cold water and some good detergent for a while and see if you notice a difference. I really haven't. If you have a real dirty load like greasy overalls, then warm water might be a good idea. The new high efficiency front loaders are Energy Star rated because they use a lot less water and spin faster, wringing more water out of the load. A clothes dryer still has to expend X BTU per load, and nobody has figures out how to do this any more efiiciently, YET!

Retiring old appliances for newer and more efficient appliances strictly for energy savings is probably not a good idea unless the machine is over 10 years old or so. To buy a $1000 refrigerator that may save $50 a year will never pay back before the thing dies, at today's electric rates. If you are off the grid, you have to realize that you really ARE paying a lot for electricity, as you have to amortize that solar array. Most people living off the grid don't have 25 CF side by side self defrosting refrigerators. A manual defrost chest freezer in the basement and a small refrigerator in the kitchen is probably the most energy efficient way to go, unless you want to store your beer in a cave...

Chris

 

[reguy]

Don't forget the power required to pump the water.

 

[Gooserider]

Most washers only have a 1/2 Hp motor ant the typical cycle is less than 1/2 hr. It really can't use very much electricity. The savings comes in the energy to heat water. If you multiply out the 40 to 50 gallons of water per cycle, this adds up quickly. However, if you use a good detergent, you don't need to use hot water. Try cold water and some good detergent for a while and see if you notice a difference. I really haven't. If you have a real dirty load like greasy overalls, then warm water might be a good idea. The new high efficiency front loaders are Energy Star rated because they use a lot less water and spin faster, wringing more water out of the load. A clothes dryer still has to expend X BTU per load, and nobody has figures out how to do this any more efiiciently, YET!

Retiring old appliances for newer and more efficient appliances strictly for energy savings is probably not a good idea unless the machine is over 10 years old or so. To buy a $1000 refrigerator that may save $50 a year will never pay back before the thing dies, at today's electric rates. If you are off the grid, you have to realize that you really ARE paying a lot for electricity, as you have to amortize that solar array. Most people living off the grid don't have 25 CF side by side self defrosting refrigerators. A manual defrost chest freezer in the basement and a small refrigerator in the kitchen is probably the most energy efficient way to go, unless you want to store your beer in a cave...

Chris

I see claims that RUNNING THE WASHER will cost less energy per load. I want to know how much energy it takes to RUN THE WASHER. I am NOT asking about running the water meter, that's a SEPERATE, albeit related question. I'm NOT asking about running the dryer, again that's a SEPERATE, albeit related question.

We don't run many loads with hot water. I think the GF might run a small load of her unmentionables in hot wash / cold rinse once in a while, but mostly she does cold wash, cold rinse. All my clothes I do in warm wash, cold rinse. (the machine only does cold rinse...) Our DHW and dryer are natural gas, and we aren't getting hit with big bills for that as it is - avg is about 25 ccf's / month. Not sure what the water bill is, but that isn't big either, so I want to see what the impact will be on the ELECTRIC bill...

Even if it's a small impact, that will tell us something, and give us a better handle on how to figure the payback based on OUR useage, not some hypothetical gov't number with the same sort of relation to reality as an EPA mileage sticker...

The rest of the discussion is interesting, but off the topic of what I'm asking. No intention of flaming anyone, but I'm trying to find the answer to a question, and am wanting to keep dragging the discussion back onto the topic until I can find some sort of answer.

What I'm hoping is that someone has a Kill-A-Watt and an energy star washer, and would be willing to plug the washer into it and tell me what the power draw was for one normal load... Assuming someone has both items, I would think this would be an easy thing to do...

Gooserider

 

[Telco]

Heh heh, well, considering a non-Energy Star model draws 20 watts per load, it can't save that much on actual electrical usage. In fact, since it spins the drum faster, it might even use more actual electricity. The savings is going to be in less water used, and less dryer time due to the clothes having more water spun out of them. The dryer is going to be the major energy sucker, in my house we have to run the dryer about 160 minutes per load to gt the clothes dry. If they came out drier from the washer, that time might be cut to 80 minutes, 60 minutes, and that will chop my electric bill way down since I have an electric dryer. My times are longer than they should be because the idiots that built my house put the laundry room in the middle, then ran the exhaust vent up, then over, then up at an angle, then straight up, where it ultimately empties onto the roof. I had to install a booster in the middle of it just to get the air out, before I added the booster it was taking as much as 300 minutes per load to get the clothes dry. And, our HOA specifically bans drying clothes outside.

I'm also interested in knowing its actual use, but view it as academic based on what a regular washer uses.

 

[Gooserider]

Heh heh, well, considering a non-Energy Star model draws 20 watts per load, it can't save that much on actual electrical usage. In fact, since it spins the drum faster, it might even use more actual electricity. The savings is going to be in less water used, and less dryer time due to the clothes having more water spun out of them. The dryer is going to be the major energy sucker, in my house we have to run the dryer about 160 minutes per load to gt the clothes dry. If they came out drier from the washer, that time might be cut to 80 minutes, 60 minutes, and that will chop my electric bill way down since I have an electric dryer. My times are longer than they should be because the idiots that built my house put the laundry room in the middle, then ran the exhaust vent up, then over, then up at an angle, then straight up, where it ultimately empties onto the roof. I had to install a booster in the middle of it just to get the air out, before I added the booster it was taking as much as 300 minutes per load to get the clothes dry. And, our HOA specifically bans drying clothes outside.

I'm also interested in knowing its actual use, but view it as academic based on what a regular washer uses.

I'm thinking you may be off on your number for a non-ES washer - you certainly seem to have the unit wrong. "Watt" is a unit for measuring the amount of power being drawn at any single instant, however it's not a unit of power CONSUMPTION... It's sort of like looking at your car speedo and saying I'm driving 30 miles, instead of driving 30 miles PER HOUR.

Power consumption is measured in Watt-HOURS or power consumed over time, normally expressed in KiloWattHours to get rid of some spare zeroes. One KiloWattHour is the equivalent of consuming 1,000 Watts for ONE hour - whether you actuall did it that way or as 100 watts for 10 hours, or 1,000 watts for 1/10 hour (or 6 minutes).

When I measure our washer, I'm getting 0.2 KiloWattHOURS per cycle, which takes between 20-30 minutes, or the equivalent of running a 100 Watt light bulb for 2 hours, or an average of 4-500 watts at any given time during the cycle - since the machine is doing different things at different times the amount it's drawing at any given instant will vary from near zero (while soaking the clothes, and running only the timer) to probably close to 1,000 watts (when spinning or agitating).

I could actually see a potential for a fair bit of difference in that power draw - how does turning a drum and gently tumbling clothes compare to the energy draw of driving an agitator through the transmission? Even the question of spinning the clothes might take less energy depending on how the motor was geared and the friction of the drum turning mechanisms... I'd be surprised to see a HUGE difference, but could easily see the number going down to say 0.15 or maybe even 0.1 kWH per load...

I agree it's a somewhat academic, question but it's still important to me..

Gooserider

 

[Telco]

Could be, could be, there wasn't a whole lot of documentation with my meter. I'll have to do another check on it.

 

[Gooserider]

If your meter is a model P4400 Kill A Watt, by "P3", there are 4 grey buttons, and one pink one. From the left, the buttons and their functions are:

1. Volt - instant voltage reading, should be around 110-120, and pretty stable, if it changes much you have a wiring problem, but will vary from outlet to outlet, house to house by a couple volts depending on the length of your power lines.

2. Amp - instant current draw reading - will vary as the load turns on / off, or changes what it's doing

3. Watt / VA - dual function button, cycles between the instant wattage draw, and the "Volt-Amp" draw. On a pure resistance load, the two numbers should be the same, however if you have a load with a high inductance (i.e. motors or transformers) or capacitance, then there will be a difference due to the way the phases of voltage and current are shifted - the difference can be calculated and is known as the "Power Factor" or PF. Both numbers are useful as they indicate the power draw at a particular instant, which is what you need to know if sizing a generator or solar array, or even figuring out if you are overloading a circuit...

4. Hz / PF - dual function button, cycles between the AC frequency in Hz, and the Power Factor. The AC frequency should ALWAYS be at or near 60 on a grid tied system, and not change (in North America, other parts of the world use 50, and some marine, aviation and military gear uses other frequencies.) If you have DIY power, it should still be at 60, if you see something different you need to fix your system. The PF or Power Factor is the ratio between the Watts and VA draws, as shown by button #3

5. KWH / Hours - (Pink button) - Dual function button, cycles between Total KiloWattHours consumed by the load, and the total elapsed hours since the meter was plugged in last... These are the critical numbers which says how the load impacts your power bill, the other info is academically interesting but not of immediate value other than possibly for diagnostics.

If you have a different meter, the buttons may be different, but the above is what I'd expect the different functions to do.

In the case of a washer or something like that where the consumption is cyclic, and presumably irregular, you don't care that much about elapsed time - plug the meter in between the load and the outlet, run a cycle and see what it reads, which will give the consumption per cycle, and your bill impact is the per cycle consumption times the number of cycles per billing period. OTOH if you have something like a fridge, or another "always on" appliance, then the elapsed time is useful - connect as always, and leave the unit for a few days of normal use. Then read the elapsed time and the KWH consumed, and divide to get an average KWH consumption per hour (or day), and your bill impact will be that average times the length of a cycle...

Does that help?

Gooserider

 

[Gooserider]

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

 

[Highbeam]

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.

 

[Redox]

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.

Going back into the shadows, now...

Chris

 

[Gooserider]

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? :roll: ) 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.

Gooserider

 

[Redox]

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?

Eagerly waiting on HB's findings..

Chris

 

[Gooserider]

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.

Gooserider

 

[Highbeam]

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.

 

[smangold]

When the time comes , check out Staber washers, made in USA and home serviceable.

 

[Gooserider]

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
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.

Gooserider

 

[Redox]

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.

Chris