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 the construction of the new appliance and the disposal of the old one. I wonder if it's possible to upgrade older models in-place to be more efficient?

Comments

[firefliesinjune.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Or they could be freecycled (http://www.freecycle.org/).

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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...

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Indeed, the principal should be: for each efficient x added to the system, a less efficient x should be removed from the system (the rubbish old one our underprivileged family were using), and it's best to remove the x which is least efficient in the whole system.

Mind you, what's wrong with the laundrette? I don't see a problem with a network of good local laundrettes, with up-to-date quality machines. Then you would get a lot more use out of a machine and replace it when broken more frequently, leading to more frequent upgrades to the most efficient available. Doing things in the community is generally a better idea. And higher quality durable regularly serviced machines in a community laundrette which charges a little over cost price would probably be cheaper for our underprivileged family, anyway. And it would bring the community together in random bumping-into-each-other and chatting, like with a corner shop. Yes, it's like buses being better than cars in fact.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Depends if washing machines are like shoes, which wear out much faster if they're in constant use. Anyway, while it mostly sounds fine in theory, my experience of laundrettes is that they're a horrible rip-off. This may not be universal.

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

I don't know how laundrettes work out overall in terms of value for money; it's hard to calculate, because you don't just need to allow for the cost of buying a machine, you also need to factor in things like the cost of a bigger flat (to store the thing). The last time I used one was when I lived in a studio flat (i.e. a 1-room bedsit), so it wouldn't have been practical to stick a washing machine in that room.

On the whole, I think that the system worked well. There were three main snags:

a) The machines only accepted particular coins: as I recall, it was 20p for the washers and 50p for the dryers. That meant that I'd spend the rest of the week being very careful with my change in shops so that I could save up enough coins of the right type to handle my wash. (Also, my electric meter only took £1 coins.)

b) When I do my laundry now, I only have a washing machine (not a tumble dryer), so I hang up my clothes to dry. That's less practical at a laundrette (if you have to carry a bag of wet clothes home), particularly in a situation like the one I mentioned where I had limited space to start out with. So, I was paying extra for the tumble dryer there and being less eco-friendly.

c) If I do my laundry at home, I can leave the machine running in the background while I do something else. At a laundrette, I have to stay there the whole time (even longer if I'm using the dryers too), so it takes a chunk out of the day. Also, laundrettes tend to have fixed hours, whereas I can use my washing machine at midnight if I want to (as long as the neighbours don't mind).

[neoanjou.livejournal.com]

I ponder where when one accounts for energy costs of developing upgrades for a large numbers of machines, installing the upgrades (which would presumably require an engineer to visit a number of number of homes which would be widely scattered) and the ever present ghost of 'administration' costs would outweigh any benefits derived.

I think the current EU 'it should work like this (but might not yet)' plan of when you buy a new device the company selling it being required to recycle the old one is a reasonable solution for our times.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.