Laundry underclocking

[pozorvlak]

Apparently, great strides have been made in energy- and water- efficiency for many household appliances - boilers, washing machines, dishwashers, etc. This is of course a Good Thing. The problem is that taking advantage of this new technology requires you to buy a completely new appliance, with all the environmental impact and cost associated with

Comments

[firefliesinjune]

If they're not recyclable or upgradeable, they should at least be taken somewhere where underprivileged families can have them for little or no cost, so they're used until they are completely worn out. It really annoys me when someone tosses a large appliance because the color is no longer in fashion.

[pozorvlak]

Indeed. Or they could be freecycled.

[half_of_monty]

Depends on whether you're prioritising social justice or cutting-down-carbon-emissions. If the underprivileged family were doing okay without, and if the carbon-cost of making-as-well-as-running the new machine is indeed lower than continuing to run the old one, then you can argue that scrapping is the correct way to go.

At least, that's what the-book-I-read-in-Blackwells-when-I-was-waiting-for-someone said. `Replace your old car with a new efficient one, and scrap the old one, for if you sell it on second-hand then you're not reducing the emissions from the road at all, just making someone else directly responsible'. Or words to that effect.

Oh look some work. Going now.

[pozorvlak]

Unless the carbon cost of running the old one is lower than that of running the even older one and less efficient one that the underprivileged family is using. Or they're equal, but social justice considerations apply (eg, they currently do all their laundry at a laundrette, spending vast wodges of cash to do so). As usual, it's all in the numbers. Which is why I like the idea of upgrades, because all this difficult arithmetic gets a lot easier...

[pozorvlak]

I was thinking more on the lines of a guy who travelled around upgrading people's washing machines for a fee by appointment. Or better, a mini-industry of same.

[half_of_monty]

On boilers: I believe it's vastly (for some definition of vast) more efficient to heat the water to the temperature you actually want it at (no more than 40 degrees) than to make it hotter and then dilute with cold water. But many people do not know this and think `using less, hotter water is more efficient innit?'. So just going around telling people that would help.

Similarly, washing clothes on the `short wash' at a cooler temp gets them perfectly clean, unless they were minging. And a cooler temp is better for your clothes.

So much inefficiency is daftness. And don't mention boiling a kettleful of water; you have to wait longer for tea.

[pozorvlak]

Makes sense: rate of heat loss to the outside is proportional to the difference in the two temperatures, so hotter water will cool faster (or require more energy to maintain its temperature). I don't think people even think about that - they've just always done it by mixing hot and cold water, so they don't stop to question it. I must say that for eg washing up, I just use hot water.