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Thursday, July 05, 2007

Easy Energy Saver: No-Heat Dry Dishwashing

I read some residential energy expert say that the average middle-class American family could cut their CO2 emissions without breaking a sweat. From an anecdotal perspective, I'm inclined to agree. I'm assuming he means just with short-term changes, not medium-term changes such as ditching the big SUV for something more economical.

The most recent example I stumbled on myself is the no-heat dry option in the dishwasher. I'm not sure, but I think only more recent dishwashers even have this option. Anyway, I have been using it, and it works very well. Glass and ceramics dry almost instantly. Plastics are slightly slower to dry, but only slightly. I would say that no-heat dry works 95% as well as heated drying. Ergo, the wastefulness of heated drying seems about as extraordinarily wasteful as "warming up" a car to run the defroster in order to get rid of some slight condensation!

3 comments:

  1. The heat dry option in dishwashers is silly, in my opinion. I haven't used it in decades, more for fear of melting plastic than for energy conservation purposes.

    Overall, I find that the dishes are dry enough when I remove them--although, as you say, plastics tend to attract more moisture.

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  3. Also, one additional thing--once you turn off the heater, the concept of "dishwasher safe" can be ignored. Most anything that doesn't have some weird hole in it that might collect water can be washed in the dishwasher. Those items with holes in them (usually insulated plastic cups) fill with water which is very annoying to get out.

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