| CEC
Energy Newsletter
May
2006
How
Economical is Your Dishwasher? By
John Krigger
 Most of the energy used by dishwashers is actually the energy
required for heating the water they consume. So the most efficient
dishwashers use less water to do the job.
Most dishwashers
available today use booster heaters to add heat to the water that is
supplied by the water heater. This helps get your dishes cleaner,
and it may kill more germs. But it also allows you to lower the
temperature setting on your water heater. With this type of booster,
you can lower your current water-heater water temperature to about
120° F and still have clean and sanitary dishes.
Newer
dishwashers also use significantly less water than hand washing – as
much as one-half less. Like clothes washers, dishwashers conserve
energy and water when using their low and medium cycles. Water usage
varies from a low of 7 gallons, for the light wash, to a high of 14
gallons for the heavy-duty cycle.
Many of the most efficient
dishwashers incorporate soil-sensors to adjust water use depending
on how dirty the dishes are in each load washed. An improved
dishwasher test procedure, used to provide the information on the
EnergyGuide labels, gives a more realistic estimate of the energy
consumption of soil-sensing dishwasher models. Be sure to read the
EnergyGuide labels whenever you buy a new dishwasher or other
appliance.
Recent studies have shown that most new
dishwashers do a great job cleaning even the dirtiest dishes without
pre-rinsing. In a recent study, dishwashers were compared to doing
the job by hand. The dishwasher was more efficient and got the
dishes cleaner than its human counterparts.
John Krigger is a nationally recognized author of numerous
energy efficiency books, including Surviving the Seasons, and
Residential Energy: Cost Savings and Comfort for Existing Buildings.
For more info, visit the Saturn Resource Management Website:
Dry Your
Clothes For Free Line Drying Clothes
 One of the best ways to control your utility bills is to dry
your clothes the old-fashioned way: on a clothesline. And there are
advantages to line drying besides just saving energy.
Your
electric clothes dryer uses power to both produce heat and turn the
drum. Most electric dryers consume between 800 to 1400
kilowatt-hours per year. Line drying can eliminate much of this
usage and expense.
If you are fortunate enough to have an
outdoor clothesline, you already know that clothes dried outdoors
smell fresher, and they carry less residual odor from detergents and
bleach. And you can often do without bleach when line drying since
the sun will tend to lighten most fabrics. Sunlight has a natural
sanitizing effect, too.
Line-dried clothes tend to be stiffer
than clothes that come out of the dryer. If you’d like some articles
such as your towels to be softer, send them through the dryer after
you take them off the line. Just five minutes on the air-only cycle
will do the job.
You can also use an indoor drying rack
instead of a clothesline. This will save you the trouble of carrying
your clothes outside, and you can still dry your laundry during
rainy weather. However, indoor drying may take longer than outside
drying, and you won’t receive the sanitizing benefits of drying in
the sun.
You may find it hard to believe, but you can line
dry clothes up North in the dead of winter, too. Your wet clothes
will freeze when you hang them out at temperatures below freezing.
But in dry northern weather, that ice will turn into vapor and the
clothes will dry almost as quickly as in summer.
Source: John Krigger, Saturn Resource Management
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