The Sustainability Review:Dishwashers
The Sustainability Review: |
| The yurt kitchen serves as a testing grounds for new appliances like dishwashers. |
Back to appliances for a brief bit. The dishwasher is an appliance that by many gets the rap that it is a water wasting energy hog, which for many dishwashers it is. Things are changing slowly with the advent of many newer models originating in northern Europe (where most of all appliance energy efficiency technologies arise). The dishwasher that uses 10-20 gallons of water per load and consumes 500-750 kWh of electricity per year does not have to be the one that you put in your house. Most of the energy used by a dishwasher is to heat the water. Some of the new efficient models use the motor that cycles the water around to assist in heating. There are models that in tests at our home use far less water per load than you reasonably use washing dishes by hand.
We use to live in an old farmhouse that had no dishwasher. I installed a Bosch dishwasher that performed well at the time using approximately 300 kWh in electricity and about 5 gal of water per load. I thought this was good considering our sink held about 2 gallons of water to do dishes and we could put several washings worth of dishes in 1 dishwasher load. We purchased all of our appliances early for our house and installed them in the yurt. Research showed that Asko dishwashers are the best out there. I was able to find an Asko on the internet for less than $400 shipped to our door (it was a showroom floor model). They generally uses 3-1/2 – 5 gallons of water per load and 190-240 kWh/year of electricity, much less than any other. If you look at the AEEE’s (see website listed below) guide to efficient appliances the Asko models fill the list with a few other brands making appearances (Bosch, Eurotech, Fisher & Paykel – beware: some of the models listed are not conventional units but small apartment style and that is how they make the list, apples and oranges appear together.)
I tested the dishwasher when we first got it to see if it really did what it claimed. The water consumption is hard to measure since it varies the quantity of water based on how dirty the dishes are. I tested it with no dishes and it used about 3 gallons during that load. Our drain froze in the yurt this winter so we drained our sink/dishwasher into 5 gallon buckets for a period of time. We have been running the dishwasher on the Pots/Pans selection and it would use approximately 5 gallons of water per load. Our method is to not rinse dishes and let the dishwasher clean them off. On the normal cycle with this approach some nested dishes don’t come clean but on Pots/Pans they’ll all come clean. We have 2 “top of the line” fancy residential dishwashers at work (Kenmore stainless) and they are the worst dishwashers I’ve ever seen. Many guys at work regularly inspect the silverware before using it for food bits and about 10-20 percent of the dishes (no kidding) need re-washing after running on the Pots/Pans cycle with harsh soap. Our dishwasher runs circles around this and uses a fraction of the water/electricity.
What you should look for:
To buy an Asko you can find them at University Appliance or Fred’s Appliance in Spokane or you do like we did and buy it on Ebay. After I bought ours, the store in Spokane had a big clearance/demo sale where they had many older Asko washers for <$300. Even though they retail for over $1000 you can definitely find them for much less.
Resources:
http://www.aceee.org/consumerguide/dishwashers.pdf
http://www.askousa.com/dishwashers/index.html
Mike and his family are really close to moving into their new house....
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