This is basically why I paid 100 EUR to have the 23 years old cheap Whirlpool stove that came with our apartment fixed. It has 4 plates and 4 turning knobs, and when I turn one of them, the corresponding plate gets hot.
When I was maybe 20 years old and naive as hell, I thought it was funny that the older neighbors were really enthusiastic about their older fully analog, non-computerized Toyota Land Cruiser. They did all their own repairs on it. Now I understand.
Sadly with a fridge or a washing machine the efficiency is quite different. Buying a 20+ old washing machine will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water.
Buying a new washing machine / dishwasher requires delicate skills - there are basically two things that drive the price down: simplicity, and low quality. You have to look for simple and well-build machines, and this usually means days of comparing prices and reviews. It also requires instinct. To make matters worse, over-engineered "smart" machines often have very good reviews because they offer a reasonable experience for the first few years, and most people are blinded by "cool" smart features.
A general rule of thumb: avoid machines with a large display.
I bought a new washing machine from Sharp that was supposed to be eco-friendly, with microplastic filters, low energy usage, quick drying... whatnot. Most of my clothes are damaged from too wide holes in the tub. During spinning stage wet fabric get pulled into the tiny holes it breaks. Took us months to understand how our clothes get damaged. https://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/images/articles/holes%20in%20...
How do you hope to solve this problem in general? It applies to every product with an opaque supply chain, which is pretty much every product.
The only reviews that matter are the long-term ones, which are rare, and by the time a long time has passed, the original model is no longer made (or worse, a cheaper process is used to make something under the same name).
The only approach I can see is to trust in a brand. But companies making commodified products like household appliances seem happy to have burned all their brand good will in exchange for short term profits, meaning I no longer trust any of them.
Well, you can buy industrial appliances. They are more expensive, because they are sturdier and not subsidized by ads and data harvesting. But they are not "smart", and will last for a long long time.
>You have to look for simple and well-build machines
I ended up buying an entry level 8 kg Miele - just washes with no smart features & extremely well built. FYI: the 7 kg entry level models now come with a plastic wash tub, you need to buy the 8 kg model for the traditional metal wash tub.
I stopped using the default "eco" program and switched to the faster "auto" program on my dishwasher since watching this video on how these programs actually work:
I am secretly convinced they have "eco" programs just to get the A+++ rating on energy efficiency, but that you're not really meant to use those modes.
That's not a secret, that's exactly why they do it.
I feel like I read that in the manual that comes with my dishwasher. It was worded a bit differently, but it essentially said to use auto mode to get cleaner dishes, not eco which saves money but doesn't clean as well.
That's going to depend on your dishwasher. Our dishwasher does a prewash even in eco mode. But the water won't get as hot (to save power) and it takes longer. On the other hand, the 30 minute mode only does the one main wash. Check your manual.
One reason is that it compensates lower temperature with longer wash time and uses airflow instead of heating to dry. Both are measures to reduce the environmental impact.
The same is true for energy efficient washing machines by the way, they often do not reach the temperature a program states and compensate with longer washing times. This may be problematic for hygienic reasons at times but has a noticeable impact on energy use.
I'm pretty sure your dishwasher has a fast program, I know mine does. Default is 3.5h, the fast program will only take 90 minutes, but of course use a fair amount more electricity since it has to heat the water to a higher temperature.
Which raises the question of whether using hot water from the water heater (at least as a starting point) would provide a net savings. It's not as if the dishwasher hoards very much water for a load.
_maybe_ but it's not a guarantee. You still need a heating element in the dishwasher as there's no guarantee that the hot water is actually at the correct temperature. If the supply is a hot water tank, the tank might not be full, and in an on demand system you might have cold water in the pipes.
> It's not as if the dishwasher hoards very much water for a load.
Apologies if I misread this but dishwashers absolutely _do_ hoard and reuse water. My dishwasher claims to use about 12l of water for a full wash, which really isn't much at all.
No problem. My point was that they don't hoard MUCH water; the small amount they do hoard saves water over continuous flow.
And also that using already-hot water gets it closer to the desired temperature at least, meaning less work for the heating element. If you're using a conventional water heater that's just pointlessly keeping your water hot all day, I figure you might as well use it. But of course, there's still a net loss of hot water that must be replaced using energy, so at best.... (you know what's coming)...
It's worth checking the manual - my IKEA dishwasher's fast program uses less energy and water, and 1/5 of the time (but is only good for lighter loads).
It takes longer because of environmental reasons and just because water is cheap doesn't mean we should waste it. We currently have a huge water shortage in Sweden.
The average dishwasher uses about the amount of water you'd use for 1-2 minutes of shower time. Newer models use around 9 liters per cycle, older ones and non-eco modes often 15 liters, and really old ones often 25 liters. A typical shower outputs 5-10 liters per minute.
The water savings with eco-programs compared to "normal" programs is in the range of 10 seconds to 1 minute worth of shower time, if I remember correctly. If you want to conserve water use, there are a lot better ways to do so than running a dishwasher in eco mode. (Washing dishes by hand uses more water on average than even an old dishwasher).
Then, the terminology of "waste" is a bit problematic I think. The dishwater will usually output the spent water into some kind of sewer system in most places, and at some point this water usually gets cleaned and put back into circulation pretty much straight away. If not, it usually reaches nature again eventually. It's not like it became so toxic it needs to be stored safely for millennia.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be mindful, of course, especially when there are current (regional) shortages.
Energy consumption (mainly to heat water) is a different matter. Energy consumption is the real environmental cost, not water consumption, as water is basically renewable, but energy is often produced from non-renewable sources and has secondary effects such as carbon emissions, which in turn effect climate change and in turn regional water availability. But even then again, reducing shower time by a minute, or water temperature, will have a greater impact on energy consumption than running a dishwasher in eco mode (on average).
You are probably looking at the wrong map. There is currently a shortage of water for small wells in parts of Sweden. On the other hand there is more water than usual for municipal water in most of Sweden. Plus some places like Stockholm use lake water which is always plentiful. This is bad news for people with their own wells but go for people who pay for their water.
I don't doubt you're right about the lake water. However, this morning they again warned about low groundwater levels on the local Stockholm news and that we might see an irrigation ban (as has become common practice last few years). They also urged people to use less water so it definitely seems to be a problem in Stockholm as well, even with the lake water.
Given how much water is needed to extract metals from the ground to create new appliances, the total amount of wasted water is subject to debate. It may be better overall to just keep using the old thing till it breaks.
> With the looming water crisis ahead, every drop of savings is a plus.
Agreed.
What's worrying though is the amount of water wasted in the delivery network. Really annoying when people trying to save a litre here or there and then millions are just going straight in to the ground.
https://www.thameswater.co.uk/about-us/performance/leakage-p...
> Every day we supply 2.6 billion litres of water, but not all of that gets to our customers. At the moment, we leak almost 24% of the water we supply.
The gist of the story is, because of the unmaintained leaky pipes of a decorative water installation, the city of Marburg wasted 20 million liters per year. A comedy show on state television is making fun of them.
> Arcelik/Beko group uses 1000LT fresh water per year. The rest is recycled in the plant. This is less than monthly consumption of a single household.
That is far less than I expected. But does it account for the water use in their supply chain? I think that should also be counted.
That said, fridges and washing machines use enormous amounts of power and water, so savings there count for a lot. Far more than in many other household appliances.
> Same with dishwashers. With the looming water crisis ahead, every drop of savings is a plus.
There's a lot to be said with focusing on the right outcomes. We should do everything we can to reduce unnecessary waste and inputs. But, we also need to embrace water reclamation, water recycling. We currently reclaim ~86% of the water in my country. It's not great - but it's a good place to start.
It might even be worth fixing it, depending on the build quality and the actual consumption. Use a kill-a-watt or something similar to figure out what the device actually costs. Be prepared for surprises, both in the positive and the negative direction! Do this before something breaks.
> Buying a 20+ old washing machine will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water.
Does the cost of the electricity and water an old machine uses equal or exceed the cost of the electricity and water involved in having to make a brand new appliance instead of using an already-made one?
At some point, yes. Washing machines use a lot of power and water, and any savings on those will eventually earn themselves back.
Where exactly that point is, I don't know. I'm generally in favour of repairing old devices, but from what I understand, washing machines have a limited lifespan, and a lot has been improved about their efficiency in the past 20 years.
I don't know, I'm not convinced that the savings achieved by newer laundry machines outweigh the savings of using older machines when the environmental/energy/etc costs of running modern factories to create these new machines are factored into the equation. If you compare old laundry machine A to newer laundry machine B, sure, you'd see the savings. But if you factor in the fact that to make B you also need to have an operational factory, then I'm not sure the costs are in the newer machine's favor.
It's interesting how indoctrinated we've become to think of "energy and water" as waste instead of as a feature of an advanced, high-technology high-energy civilisation.
If we had good sources of energy (nuclear, or solar+batteries) we wouldn't even need to worry about that. Water as well, water simply cannot get "wasted", you just need to clean it, which requires energy.
The fact is, these "modern" "green" appliances are simply worse, sure they use less energy but waste much more time (because colder water -> longer wash cycle). You can get more (useful) energy, but you can never get more time.
How feasible is it to buy a new refrigerator, and connect the nice efficient hardware to a thermostat and motor relay from an old fridge model? Those components are available inexpensively from repair shops.
Living on tank, you have free water unless you run out, when it is hideously expensive to truck it in.
But as long as you have your consumption under control, you are your own water company and you may choose not to bother with appliances that focus on water efficiency.
The place I rent has a fancy button microwave installed. It's built-in and all the knobs makes it look really cool and scientific. I never use it though, because I brought my own Samsung microwave. It's got two knobs. One for the amount of time you need to fry things, and one for the power you wanna fry it on.
That's it. That's literally all you need.
The most difficult thing about it, is that it doesn't have a start button. It just starts automatically a second after you've set the timer.
This small "smart" feature is actually a problem for visitors who doesn't know the machine, because they'll try to jam in the two knobs in order to "start" the thing. But otherwise I love it, and I use it all the time over the fancy schmansy pre-installed one. Because when I use the fancy one, I'm afraid that if I push the wrong button I'll start a nuclear war...
Yeah, I've got an old school turn to start timer style microwave. One dial for wattage, and a mechanical dial for the timer. It's also tiny. Why are microwaves so big now? What are people cooking in a half cubic meter of microwave space?
It's for melting butter and warming up leftovers.
Every microwave I've owned has also had a convection and grill/crisp function making them far more versitle than a simple microwave oven. That is probably what you are looking at.
Single-use gadgets can be blessings for the disabled and differently abled. The author of this article is sneering at the disabled for having different tool needs than herself.
My 80-something grandmother uses a garlic press and several sizes of vegetable holders for slicing veggies. I guess she's just so uncool.
I'd say single-use kitchen items are worth it if you use them every week. If you use them only once a year and the function can also be performed by something else, it's just clutter.
We've got several knives and several pans, because different versions of the same thing are useful for slightly different purposes. We've got separate pans for pancakes and that works very well for us, because they're lighter and you can actually flip them.
Current IH stoves aren't much more complicated nor need your wi-fi password, if that was your point.
The only significant addition I see in somewhat recent models is auto-turning off, and I'm pretty sure it will help save the house from burning down at some point, so I'm all for it.
> The only significant addition I see in somewhat recent models is auto-turning off, and I'm pretty sure it will help save the house from burning down at some point, so I'm all for it.
Many recent stoves (induction or regular) have figured that, when interacting with them, no one will have wet hands nor need to adjust them repeatedly, they could go ahead and save a few pennies by using shared tactile controls.
My stove need me to press a button corresponding to the plate I want to change, then press a common +/- button to turn it up or down. If my finger is wet, it will have a hard time registering and reach a timeout, whereupon I have to again select the plate. This is hands down the worst UX for an appliance I've had in my life.
The worst UX I experienced was the gas stove at an appartment where you'd turn the knob all the way to get some sparks, while it blasts gas from the stove, to then turn it down to the level you want.
The fun part was when you try to light it up but for whatever reasons it doesn't catch, so you're filling the room with propane and the second it might actually light up you're toast. Then if you turned it down too much it would die out, but you'd have to look below the pan to realize there's no flame anymore.
Oh, and the toxicity of course.
My IH plate also has common + and - buttons, but compared to the above I'm pretty happy with it. It also has a timer, and I'm ok giving up having 4 knobs for buttons that actually work and can be cleaned in one swoop, and having a single place where I can see the status of all the heating elements.
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Better oven ergonomics leads to less cooking fatigue, which leads to less accidents and therefore less downtime. Sometimes it actually pays off to have a higher maintenance workload, especially since most of it is planned downtime, or features that don't have fixed urgently. And sometimes this idea of radical simplicity only shifts maintenance workload from one component to another. One example that gets a lot of pushback in US cooking is gas connections.
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I’m having a similar debate about a diesel car. A battery-electric replacement would have lower environmental opex but at a huge environmental capex compared to just keeping my already-manufactured diesel.
That argument only holds if you stop driving your diesel altogether, as otherwise it's environmental cost will keep growing with no bounds while an acquired battery-electric would be busy amortizing it's one-time(-ish) cost.
What OP said was about repairing stuff to avoid smart appliances. From an environmental perspective using old stuff is often much worse than getting new (fridge, car, ...).
This is only true if the power to run the electric car is environmentally less damaging than the diesel's emissions. With Germany's obsession with using diesel vehicles to mine brown coal to burn for power, I'm not convinced it is.
I think this is going to be very country specific. The UK for example has barely used any coal (relatively) for the main grid with a considerable amount of coal-free days in the past couple of years. (currently coal provides 0.0% of the UK's fossil fuel electricity production and nearly 14% is renewable[0] though it was up to nearly 3% in February[1]) So while there is still a majority of the electricity coming from fossil sources (namely gas) it is on the decline and I'd certainly posit that a somewhat modern power station can generate electricity more efficiently than a car's diesel engine can... (happy to be proven wrong on this as I can't find any direct studies)
It’s not an easy calculation though. The environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle really is very high. The total environmental cost of ownership depends on how much you drive it. For some level of use, it will be better for the environment to keep an old diesel than to build a new electric.
The solution to this one is the one I am planning. Remove the terribly polluting diesel engine and replace the heavy engine/clutch (dual mass flywheel in this case) and fuel system and replace with only a nominally heavier BEV system. what you gain from the engine and fuel tank (if you assume a full 60 litre tank) from a majorly lighter electric motor, you then lose on the weight of the batteries. With open source modules like the open-inverter project, you can have the benefit of keeping control of your vehicle and it not becoming an iPad on wheels while also prolonging of the useful life and keeping most of the invested production environmental costs. My example vehicle is nearing 20 years old (it's a late 2003 model) and it still drives great and only generally needs typical consumable/wear and tear items to get through annual inspections. It's generally powertrain elements that are starting to be of concern, but an electric conversion would simplify that no end, and actually bring more of the maintenance into my own personal knowledge domain (Power Electrics, Electronics and software/firmware) and by re-using salvaged EV powertrains, not actually having a further impact on the environmental CAPEX. Granted the DIY-EV route isn't for everyone but it definitely is for some people
Simplicity lasts longer.