January 25, 2023

"When you ask Americans how they save energy at home, 'turn off the lights' has been at the top of the list since the 1980s."

"But when it comes to actual savings, it doesn’t even crack the top 10. Like most conventional wisdom about how to reduce household energy and emissions, much of what we believe about our homes and appliances is wrong."

Writes WaPo's climate advice columnist Michael J. Coren, in "We still use appliances like it’s 1970. There’s a better way."

I formed the habit, back in the 1970s, of turning off lights as I exited any room and only keeping lights on in rooms that were occupied. I grew up in the 50s and 60s, when it was the norm to have the lights on all over the house in the evening. We didn't think about the pros and cons of leaving them on, but I imagine that we'd have thought it would deprive us of a feeling of coziness and optimism if the house were not lit up at night. From the outside, our house and our neighbors' houses looked warm and happy and alive.

Then the environmentalist movement hit, the meaning of light changed, and I aligned myself morally. I have maximized interior darkness for half a century. Is the climate advisor going to tell me my efforts are misdirected?

Coren's #1 piece of energy-saving advice is not to rinse off your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Present-day dishwashers don't need that pre-rinse — just scrape — and they're so efficient that you should go ahead and run them even if they're only half full (or less!). It doesn't save energy to switch to washing them by hand.

The second piece of advice is to get rid of your old refrigerator. It's less efficient, so don't succumb to the American tradition of "second refrigerator" (i.e., the soda and beer refrigerator in the garage)(I've blogged the topic of second refrigerators twice, here and here).

Third, Coren recommends a "smart" thermostat, but oddly enough, he doesn't tell us to set it as low as possible in cold whether and as high as possible in hot weather. It seems to me, that's where you can get the biggest savings.

Finally, wash clothes in cold water and replace old appliances. The new appliances are more efficient, so Coren would have you throw out a 15-year-old washing machine. Personally, I'm attached to my 30-year-old washing machine. And my hot baths. Thanks for not telling me I should be taking cold showers instead.

ADDED: In the comments at WaPo, there is a lot of resistance to replacing appliances:

"What is not taken into account is the energy required to manufacture a new appliance and the cost of disposing the old one. Replacing an old working appliance is not as environmentally sound as you might think."

And:

"So my fridge is 25 years old. Never had a problem with it. I plan to replace it when the ice maker stops working. All I hear from friends with Samsungs and LGs is problems after 5 years. It’s the computer chips. Mine is a Maytag, it’s white, it has no computer chips. I’m keeping it."

My refrigerator — should I say "our refrigerator" (Meade has only lived here for 13 years)? — is 32 years old. It would cost over $10,000 to replace it with the same brand, so I'm incapable of thinking of replacing it unless it's irreparable or we redo the entire kitchen.

128 comments:

Mr Wibble said...

So they took away our incandescent bulbs for nothing?

Kate said...

My husband's post-Covid job is in appliance repair. Oh, the stories he tells. All the new appliances -- remember the Maytag ad of the lonely repairman? -- fail after a year or two. They're all in class action lawsuits for the flaw in their design, or they're built to last about 5 years and replacement parts are not to be found.

Yes, stick with the old workhorse appliances. He loves seeing them. They fix easy and trudge onward.

R C Belaire said...

I've run that dishwasher experiment -- rinse vs. just scraping the plates -- and could not see any difference in results. But, since there's just two of us at home, the thought of having dirty dishes sit in the machine for 2 or perhaps 3 days doesn't seem right -- or sanitary.

Dave Begley said...

1. Climate advice columnist? Is this a joke?

2. Omaha Public Power District is proposing to spend $28b by 2050 to achieve net carbon zero. At OPPD’s December 2022 meeting, I offered a resolution that all the Directors and top managers would reduce the temps in their homes to 67 and raise them to 75 in the summer. Same deal for all OPPD buildings. The hypocrites did nothing.

Dave Begley said...

If a home has a smart thermostat and the owner has signed up for demand management, the utility can turn off your power. It is already happening.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"Present-day dishwashers don't need that pre-rinse — just scrape"

Sure. Rub it in. Don't tell me which magical brand/model of dishwasher does this either. I'd kill not to have to do this, but I guess I'm some neanderthal because the last 3 dishwashers I've had in last 12 years I've always had to do this, even if the stupid thing was brand new.

Ann Althouse said...

"But, since there's just two of us at home, the thought of having dirty dishes sit in the machine for 2 or perhaps 3 days doesn't seem right -- or sanitary."

According to the article, you should go ahead and run the dishwasher partly full. Just run it every day no matter how full it is. The whole cycle uses as much energy as it would take to do one place setting by hand running water in the sink.

Ann Althouse said...

"So they took away our incandescent bulbs for nothing?"

No, that's WHY lights aren't an important place to save energy. It's assumed you've replaced the incandescent bulbs. It's not important to keep switching the new ones off.

Ann Althouse said...

@Kate

Thanks for the confirmation!

iowan2 said...

All the water saving stuff I grew up with in the 50's and 60's That's just farm living with a well. But with a ringer washer in the basement and line drying. With 3 boys and girl. Mom replaced that ringer washer with a new one in the 70's. Then built a new house on the other farm and took the 'new' wringer washer with her.

One thing not mentioned is led lights. Then put motion lights in areas with traffic but not long term use. Bathrooms, mud rooms, storage rooms, pantries. Motion on, then settable time to go off. You can buy switches that time out also. Something we use for bathroom exhaust fans. Set to turn off after no motion for 15 minutes.

No mention of geo-thermal and heatpumps with gas backup

Rocco said...

Ann Althouse said...
"[T]hat's WHY lights aren't an important place to save energy. It's assumed you've replaced the incandescent bulbs. It's not important to keep switching the new ones off."

It's important that you don't keep switching the new ones on and off. That's what causes them to wear out. When the first non-incandescent lights hit the market, these $7 bulbs touted with a 15 year+ lifespan were wearing out in as few as months in some cases. The electronics inside the bulb have gotten better, so this is less of a problem now. And, yes, there is a small chip inside every non-incandescent bulb.

Rory said...

I adopted my dog almost ten years ago. A couple weeks later, I came home and he was sitting alone in the dark, so since then I've left a light on in the kitchen day and night. Since he got old I add a second light at the other end of the house from dawn to dusk, so that he doesn't trip on something. And since he's a big guy with a thick coat, he also has a tower fan that stays on 24/7.

Rocco said...

"So my fridge is 25 years old. Never had a problem with it. I plan to replace it when the ice maker stops working. All I hear from friends with Samsungs and LGs is problems after 5 years. It’s the computer chips. Mine is a Maytag, it’s white, it has no computer chips. I’m keeping it."

Damn, white supremacy pops up everywhere.

Danno said...

Living in the northern (dark) climes in your dreary winter and keeping most of your lights off sounds like a prescription for developing seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

WK said...

I see they are starting to push heat pumps again. Had one in a home we bought 20 years ago. Replaced it after a couple years with a gas furnace as it was awful. When purchasing new appliances we usually look for simplest controls and avoid touch/programmable interfaces. And not giving up garage fridge….. or gas fireplace.

WK said...

Would be nice if energy companies actually focused on providing energy.

rastajenk said...

Two-person one-dishwasher household here, and we (I) rarely use the thing. I am the primary dishwasher, and doing it in the sink is quick and easy. The stuff air dries on a rack. I will not be convinced that that's wrong. And I turn off lights, unless here or there they add some ambience. So I don't need some climate advice columnist telling me how to save the world. I'm doing just fine. :-)

rastajenk said...

Two-person one-dishwasher household here, and we (I) rarely use the thing. I am the primary dishwasher, and doing it in the sink is quick and easy. The stuff air dries on a rack. I will not be convinced that that's wrong. And I turn off lights, unless here or there they add some ambience. So I don't need some climate advice columnist telling me how to save the world. I'm doing just fine. :-)

Duke Dan said...

Weird how the consider water use to be energy, it doesn’t affect my electric bill. I don’t rinse plates with hot water.

And new appliances suck. Your washer and dryer don’t need a computer. The old click knob type was 100% self repairable.

Shouting Thomas said...

Silly stuff.

Third generation nuclear power plants, and eventually fusion power, will provide people with a great surplus of energy.

Our goal shouldn’t be conservation. It should be the production of a massive surplus of energy. The Industrial Revolution was kick started by harnessing the power of fossil fuels and, not incidentally, ending the era of wind and solar power. The coming revival of nuclear on a huge scale will lead to another era of explosive growth and prosperity.

Climate change and green energy are Democratic Party bribery and kickback schemes. Deliberate economic sabotage by commies who aspire to be “allocation managers.”

Dr. Graphene said...

The difference between the Washington Post and the National Enquirer over the last 20 years is that the latter has occasionally been right. Everything in the Washington Post should not only be presumed to be inaccurate, but also that it was written with a demonstrably malicious intent.

ThatsGoingToLeaveA said...

My refrigerator — should I say "our refrigerator" (Meade has only lived here for 13 years)? — is 32 years old. It would cost over $10,000 to replace it with the same brand.


Is $10,000 a Michigan thing? That's a mighty nice refrigerator(chrome plated?) without fancy digital stuff.

richlb said...

My wife is annoyingly anal about turning off the lights, yet she will frequently leave her hair flat iron on. I try to explain to her how our LED lights barely use any electricity and her flat iron gobbles it up, but they turns it around like I'm accusing her of intentionally doing it. Which isn't the point.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Have you ever looked at one of those websites that looks tells you how to reduce your carbon footprint?
They usually look at three things: your home, your travel & vehicles, and your food consumption.
It turns out that the only way you can make your carbon footprint smaller is to be poorer.
You must reduce the size of your house, have fewer children, get rid of your pets, own fewer and smaller cars and drive them less, avoid plane travel, and eat less food.
A vote for green policies is literally a vote for privation.

Jamie said...

since there's just two of us at home, the thought of having dirty dishes sit in the machine for 2 or perhaps 3 days doesn't seem right -- or sanitary.

Only two of us, too, but we run out dishwasher every day because it is both more energy efficient and more sanitary. If you're feeling guilty about how small the load is, you may be able to find some other household items to wash - the globes of light fixtures, for example, or dog dishes (which I don't thoroughly wash often enough), certain knickknacks that get dusted but might could use (as they sometimes say in these parts) a more thorough cleaning?

I'm about to try to contact the maker of the hood over my (gas) cooktop to find out whether the "baffle" part of it, the part through which the air moves, is dishwasher safe; at present I hand wash it, but it's difficult to get into the narrow channels to get out the grease. I know that the screen type of hood filter can be put into the dishwasher.

OTOH we have FOUR refrigerators. Three are new and two of those are beverage fridges of small size, but still - apparently God forbid we have to walk more than ten paces to reach a cold beverage.

catter said...

My electric company sends me that list of energy-saving hints with each bill.

Gabriel said...

For decades now the environmental movement has promoted easy things to do that can be done by anyone, and not actually effective things to do, because those things are hard and inconvenient. The hard and inconvenient things they plan to use legislation or regulation to accomplish.

In my case, I can do math, so I know how much power my light bulbs draw and that my largest use of electricity by far is hot water (since I burn wood pellets for heat, and have no AC, which is common in my area). Leaving a 100W bulb on for ten hours would cost me about $0.12--and I no longer own any, having switched to LEDs about 8 years ago. But every extra minute I run the shower costs me $0.05.

In addition, I know that the energy that I consume in my state came from water running over a dam, and if I run the shower longer I'm not increasing carbon emissions. If I had a Tesla, I would not be running it on coal and natural gas like people in most states are.

Temujin said...

I quit buying bad newspapers. Saving trees with every WaPo I don't buy.

MartyH said...

Energy usage peaks when people get home from work, especially on a hot day. Solar power output starts to decline when people get home from work. Thus, there can be a load/supply mismatch and rolling blackouts are a possibility. The smart thermostat helps prevent that by possibly precooling your house when supply is higher or by turning off completely to reduce the risk of a blackout during peak use.

The smart thermostat is for the power company's benefit, not yours.

wendybar said...

When we redid our kitchen, we replaced all the appliances with the top of the line GE appliances. We don't have kids at home. Within the first month...the "PLASTIC" clip that closes the doors (french doors) broke on the refrigerator. In order to fix that, they had to replace the two doors. Within 6 months, the plastic (everything in this "premium" refrigerator is plastic) holding the deli drawer broke, so the drawer drooped. Within a year..both bottom drawers plastic broke, so now all the drawers have no support and just lie on the bottom. The dishwasher is already gone, and we replaced it with a Bosch, which is way better. Will NEVER buy GE again. I have written them, and complained. And I tell EVERYBODY I know NOT to buy GE because their products suck.

Luckily, my husband loves to cook, so we got a Viking Stove instead of a crappy GE model.

John Holland said...

20 year old dryer, 7 year old washer, 10 year old fridge, 45 year old stove. Had to get some work done on the dryer, but other than that they Just Work. I'm pretty sure the washer and fridge will outlive me. (The stove too, but it's so old no-one would want it for anything but a prop in a '70s movie set.)

The wife and I are pretty economical. My electric bill is about 60 bucks a month. Replacing these appliances would cost thousands, and save me what? 20 bucks a year? I would have to live to the third millennium to enjoy any cost savings. I am not persuaded an appliance upgrade benefits anyone other than the manufacturer. This article sounds like an advertorial.

Stay away from "Smart Thermostats". Our local utility is pushing these things hard, offering cash rebates and whatnot. What it means is, the utility can over-ride your choices and set your thermostat remotely. Sure, it might make your home uninhabitable for days but hey, you took the two free months of gas bills in exchange, suckah!

[tin_foil_hat]
The folks in charge would like to turn us all into zoo animals: caged, fat, drugged and trapped. And here in Canada, euthanized when we become inconvenient.
[/tin_foil_hat]

Carol said...

I have a 30 year old Kenmore washer that looks like hell but I'm afraid to replace it. The new stuff from China is terrible.

The GE dryer is even older and I bought it used lol.

I also have a new Bosch dishwasher but never use it.

tim maguire said...

Last year, my 5-year old washing machine broke--apparently the switch board wore out and it couldn't be fixed. After only 5 years of light use (average about 2 loads a week), it had an unrepairable breakdown. I'm sure that was super environmental.

Gabriel said...

@Duke Dan:Weird how the consider water use to be energy, it doesn’t affect my electric bill.

If you wash in room temperature water it took 0.05 kw-hr to warm each gallon in the winter. That heat came from your water heater, or the heat in your house, and when you send that water down the drain you send its heat with it. Unless you don't use electricity to heat or pump water, and you don't use electricity to heat your home, your water use is affecting your electric bill, and even if not your water use is consuming whatever energy you do use.

michaele said...

We're about 5+ years into having our "new" Whirlpool refrigerator and have just made our 3rd appt with a repair person to come out and fix the ice machine. Seems like some little wire at the bottom of the freezer door frays and must be resoddered after a certain number of times the door is fully opened. We can't decide on whether or not we're being foolish about going the repair route as opposed to buying a new fridge. But who knows what problems will develop with a new one and we'll be back to making appts with the repair guy...sigh.

Richard said...

Used to be, you could get small space heaters, good for three or four feet, and spot them around the house. 90% efficient. On, off, warm up fast.
Waste energy emitted in the visual spectrum.
Called them incandescent bulbs.
So a two-for. Clever, huh?
Whatever happened?

Left Bank of the Charles said...

There’s a story going around these parts about a father who was raising his kids alone. He took them to dinner at his new and soon-to-be-ex girlfriend’s house. After dinner they politely cleared the table, but she was horrified to find they had thrown all the china and silverware in the garbage. The father had been rising his kids on paper plates and plastic utensils - they didn’t know dishes could be washed.

CHMCM said...

In reply to Wendybar, our GE refrigerator is 32 years old and we have never even had a service call. Our GE dishwasher is 28 years old, and we have had it serviced, but it still cleans the dishes. I would actually like some fancy new appliances, but I am afraid that this would mean I would have to plan on replacing them every five years or so, so I am resisting the urge. (My stove is some no name builders grade appliance, it is 28 years old, never been serviced and works perfectly).

Birches said...

@Wendybar

We had a GE washer and dryer at our first house. When the washer broke, we had a repair man come out to look at it. He said, "ahh GE, it stands for generally expensive to repair." He recommended a Hotpoint washer since there was no motherboard and could always be repaired easily. Finding appliances without tech has been a good rule of thumb for us since then.

James K said...

My refrigerator — should I say "our refrigerator" (Meade has only lived here for 13 years)? — is 32 years old. It would cost over $10,000 to replace it with the same brand.

The climate Karens want us to treat money spent on energy as somehow more costly than money spent on appliances. Of course it makes no sense to spend $10,000 to save a couple hundred dollars a year, unless you for some reason multiply those energy savings by ten.

Prices mainly reflect resource costs, whether energy, steel, copper, silicon, or labor. Telling someone to spend $10,000 to save a small amount on one particular resource (energy) is telling them to waste all those other resources and make themselves worse off.

Ann Althouse said...

Rocco claims: "It's important that you don't keep switching the new ones on and off. That's what causes them to wear out."

I researched that and found this at an electrical engineering website: "The LED... is the only type of light emitting device out of the list that doesn't use a tungsten element. It uses a PN junction instead. This means that the LEDs require much less voltage and current, meaning low power consumption compared to the lights with filaments. As such, LEDs won't be damaged at all by switching, since there is no filament to damage and the power going through the bulb is lower. In fact many applications switch them at high speeds using PWM which they handle with no problem."

If you have better information, please tell me. My personal experience is that my light bulbs last a very long time.

Yinzer said...

When they stopped making incandescent bulbs, I bought as many as I could for future use. I think I have a lifetime supply. Come and take them! I also can feel good about not adding hazardous chemicals, contained in every 'smart' bulb, to the landfills; remember the rules we are supposed to be following in disposing of these bulbs, which contain mercury and God knows what else? I'm sure people are just pitching them into the trash!

Jamie said...

I am the primary dishwasher, and doing it in the sink is quick and easy. The stuff air dries on a rack. I will not be convinced that that's wrong.

Though I do use our dishwasher every day, I tend to agree that it can't be the energy use that you're saving by machine washing dishes. You're using the hot water stored in your water heater's tank (assuming you don't have a tankless water heater), which then cycles on to refill the tank - maybe one extra, short time versus using the dishwasher instead. (I don't remember whether my dishwasher also uses already-heated water or has its own water heater. I don't use the heated dry cycle. My dishwasher also has a one-rack-only cycle that I have to look up how to use, as I don't even remember which rack it washes...)

What a dishwasher saves is water, indubitably. I finally convinced my mother-in-law, in SoCal, to use her dishwasher for herself and my father-in-law, as they definitely need to conserve water there.

Another issue with washing dishes is that not everything is dishwasher safe, and not everything will come off in the dishwasher. I do have dishwasher safe cookware now, but when I must soak a pan because what was cooked in it left stuck-on residue, taking an entire extra day to get that pan clean (soak overnight, run in dishwasher the next evening) seems silly.

We have a friend with some cleaning OCD issues who literally scrubs their household dishes with dishwashing liquid and rinses them clean before putting them into the - new - dishwasher. In vain have I tried to influence his behavior.

MikeR said...

Useful article, I think.

Curious George said...

"MartyH said...
Energy usage peaks when people get home from work, especially on a hot day."

Nope. Peak energy use in the summer is more like noon or 1 to 6 or 7PM, when homes and businesses run AC. Evenings are cooler so less AC use at home, and buildings are empty.

Ann Althouse said...

"Living in the northern (dark) climes in your dreary winter and keeping most of your lights off sounds like a prescription for developing seasonal affective disorder (SAD)."

Really? Would lights left on in a room you're not in help? I thought SAD was about the light actually going into your eyes. It's supposed to be very bright and the equivalent of daylight and experienced early in the morning.

I recommend going outside in the morning. When the days are short, you tend to notice when the daylight is happening, and it may actually motivate you to get out there and be in it.

Shouting Thomas said...

The moral urge to limit our appetites should be addressed via religion, and I mean real orthodox Christianity or Judaism.

Decline of religious observance is the underlying cause of crackpot green energy hysteria. Humans were designed by God to be ashamed of gluttony. The place to deal with this is in religious observance, not in forcing your neighbor to live in the cold.

Deal with your guilt over your sins of indulgence at church or temple.

Jamie said...

It's my understanding that it was the compact fluorescent bulbs that wore out super fast from being turned on and off. Man, there was nothing good about those things.

I am slowly replacing every bulb in the house with LEDs, tunable to different light "temperatures" in certain places. I have a bunch that are wifi controlled (yes, I will be the first victim when the robots rebel, I know it) and those will come with me when we move.

Ann Althouse said...

"Is $10,000 a Michigan thing?"

Huh?

It's a SubZero. I think it was about $2,000 (not counting the wood paneling) when I did the kitchen in 1991.

Harsh Pencil said...

Are we doing the accounting right? There is a thing called conservation of energy. So if an appliance such as an old fridge or incandescent light bulb uses more electricity, that energy goes somewhere. . And the answer is usually heat. So what is the waste in the winter then of an inefficient appliance? You are just heating your home (and doing so with electricity is good now right? No horrible gas.). In the summer, lights aren't on much anyway. Maybe an inefficient fridge in the summer is bad, but in Madison, how many days a year is the air conditioning on?

BIII Zhang said...

You know what ... my old refrigerator isn't narc-ing me out to the NSA.

I'm not putting any of their Chinese spy tools in my home.

Ann Althouse said...

"If you're feeling guilty about how small the load is, you may be able to find some other household items to wash - the globes of light fixtures, for example, or dog dishes...."

Cue the "You can't eat at everybody's house" song.

Shouting Thomas said...

I’ve followed Bjorn Lomborg, a “sensible” environmentalist, for years.

One day, I decided to read his CV. His education is in political science. Political science isn’t a scientific discipline. It’s a liberal arts opinion field. In the U.S., poly sci departments are Democratic Party propaganda mills.

Lomborg has no real hands on experience of actually doing science. Since I discovered that, I’ve had to completely re-evaluate his work.

You’ll find this is true of almost all the leading pundits and commenters on environmental issues. They are almost uniformly educated in poly sci. They are fibbing when they tell you that they know or do science.

Rusty said...

We got a new LG dishwasher. The main reason was the KitchenAide dishwasher took too long to do a load of dishes and not very well at that. The LG uses less water. It gets the dishes cleaner in less time with the added benefit of a steam cycle. The steam cycle is good for canning jars and lids.
Energy saving tip. The frozen stuff in your freezer helps to keep your freezer from running all the time. When you take something out put a water bottle in to replace it.

Chris said...

My wife leaves lights on everywhere she goes. I turn them off as soon as I leave the room. My dad instilled that in us when we were children. So, often I find myself turning off lights that my wife leaves on.

Ann Althouse said...

"We're about 5+ years into having our "new" Whirlpool refrigerator and have just made our 3rd appt with a repair person to come out and fix the ice machine. Seems like some little wire at the bottom of the freezer door frays and must be resoddered after a certain number of times the door is fully opened...."

That would (perhaps) finally break me of the lifelong habit of opening the refrigerator and gazing what's inside even when I'm not going to end up eating anything.

Lurker21 said...

As your climate advice columnists, I'll simply say that the world is going to end in 12 years, and there's nothing you can do to change that.


I grew up in the 50s and 60s, when it was the norm to have the lights on all over the house in the evening.

I'm trying to think back to those long-ago days. A lot of the time, kids were in their rooms in the evening doing homework, dad was in his room, and mom was in the kitchen, but when we got together to watch television in the living room, we probably turned off the lights in our rooms. The kitchen light may have stayed on, and there was always that light in the garage or the basement or the back of the house that somebody forgot to turn off. I think it was less that we were great energy hogs, and more that Carter made turning off the lights "top of mind" for people.

Leland said...

In 1980, most every light socket had a 60 to 100 watt light bulb in it. Today, most homes have LED bulbs using 7w or less. Already, energy consumption from using light bulbs has dropped 90% before we factor in that the generate less heat. Turning them off and on isn’t a problem, but even being very diligent won’t produce the savings that switching to LED did.

When you really study this stuff, you’ll arrive at the place Konstantin Kisin came to and noted to the Oxford Union. You could completely remove all emissions from the UK and only improve the total GHG emissions by 2%. The US is much larger and thus emits more, but our emission efficiency is much better than the UK. The individual purchase of a new fridge, dishwasher, or turning off lights in the US is so insignificant to global emissions as to be an exercise in hubris. As many noted here and at WaPo, those decisions would be better made on personal need than on some notion of “saving the planet”, because it won’t save the planet.

However, I don’t expect the WaPo to criticize India and China energy production.

Marcus Bressler said...

I've never felt guilty about "small loads".

I've moved to a place with no dishwasher appliance. I absolutely hate to hand wash dishes. Maybe its my arthritis or that I've had a dishwasher that washes, rinses and sanitizes my plates, bowls, silverware, pots and pans with little effort on my part.

I turn off all electric except the water heater when not needed and my 1/1 apartment electric bill is usually under $60 a month. I can still hear my dad making cash register sounds if I kept the refrigerator door open too long.

MarcusB. THEOLDMAN

Chris said...

We bought our current house built in 1988, it came with all 1988 appliances (except the fridge and microwave). The washer and dryer are Maytag, and they work great. I will NEVER replace them as they will probably never wear out, and if they break down, I'll repair them. The dishwasher is the same. Good old fashioned quality and inefficient wash that will never break down, and if it does, is easily repairable. Our fridge is a newer Samsung, and I have to sponge out the condensate that build up in the bottom of the fridge about once a month. It spills over into the freezer when we open the door. I've cleaned out the drain, there are no leaks in the water system but for some reason water collects in the bottom. In my barn I have a 1960's fridge that is still going like brand new.

The biggest efficiency changes we made were to the furnace - replaced a 60% efficiency Janitrol the cheapest piece of junk money could buy in 1988 that was still in use because the previous owners never used it - instead heating the house with the fireplace and heatalater. The other change was to replace the original 1988 70 gallon water heater that had started to spring a leak. Replaced that with an on demand unit and our summer gas bill went from around 35.00 to less than 20.00 after not having to keep 70 gallons of water constantly hot.

0_0 said...

My new dishwasher takes forever and puts out a LOT of heat. I doubt is is as efficient as claimed.

Jamie said...

Cue the "You can't eat at everybody's house" song.

Hahaha, so washing items that are sullied with household dust or a kind of food that humans can but don't typically eat render a dishwasher unsanitary, hmm? Or is it that dogs lick their butts and then eat their food with that mouth? We don't let our dogs lick us, but I have reasonable faith that my dishwasher renders their kibble dishes, like our dinner dishes, sanitary.

I'm from Wisconsin. I feel morally certain that flies have been known to land on some dishes at Meadehouse, if we want to talk sh*t.

Yancey Ward said...

One way to save energy and money is to not buy the Washington Post- that newsprint takes a lot of energy to make. Also, don't read it online- it takes energy to run their website.

For what it is worth, This graph is a graph of a civilization already 3 decades into senescence and decline. We can lie to ourselves that we are doing more with less, but that is all that it is- a lie. With the seemingly unstoppable push for windmills and solar panels, energy consumption in the US is probably to start declining in a significant way that 20 years from now, you will be planning your life around the 8 hours/day the power is actually on.

Jamie said...

The steam cycle is good for canning jars and lids.

I use it for sanitizing bottles when we're making beer, too, and for the other beer-making equipment.

But I admit to being grossed out by the advice to put your sponge into the dishwasher to clean it, and actually by sponges generally. Dishwashers are great at cleaning hard, non-porous surfaces. How on earth do they get the inside of a sponge clean? I haven't used a sponge in decades; I use a stack of white (supremacy) dish cloths, which get replaced nightly and washed weekly on the "sanitize" cycle in my washing machine. With bleach. (Hence the "white.")

rhhardin said...

Modern lights use so little energy that it hardly does anything to turn them off.

Keep old appliances though. The new ones don't last long, being smart appliances and chip-driven.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I have a tabletop hydroponic herb garden. It has a full spectrum LED lamp, 32 Watts, bright enough to make me squint. I live in NW Wisconsin, and in this dark time of year I feel physical pleasure when I get that light into my eyes.

rhhardin said...

In the winter, leaving even old incandescent lights on just relieves an equal load on the furnace, so is a wash energy-wise.

Leland said...

If LEDs armed damaged from switching on and off, then LED TV’s wouldn’t be a thing. WTH, Rocco? Don’t blame the microchip, because it is designed to handle on (1] and off (0) much faster and more often than the LED. If you mean ballast type CFL bulbs, then yeah, don’t turn them on and off often.

gilbar said...

So, the WaPoo is running ads for appliance companies now? Because, guess what? THAT was an ad

Bob Boyd said...

When you ask Americans how they show their devotion to God at home, saying grace at the dinner table has been at the top of the list since the 1950s.
But according to this expert professional Christian, when it comes to actual devotion, grace doesn’t even crack the top 10.

Looky here, believers, lemme me hep you get morally aligned...
Buy all new appliances, people. Buy a new plug-in hybrid. Get yourself properly aligned morally. For the planet. Remember when Obama got elected, they started Cash for Clunkers while they were trying to bail out Chrysler and GM? But it was for the environment. Buying a new car was a moral alignment issue. That's how you sell shit nowadays.

The industrial revolution was one of the biggest economic transformations in history. Tremendous fortunes were made. The climate change narrative, green energy, electric cars, "efficiency", it's all about creating a 2nd, artificial industrial revolution. So get with the program, folks. Demonstrate your proper moral alignment. You want that stuff anyway, right? Sure you do. Don't be coy. You want it as bad as I do. Just lie back and think of your credit score.

Bob Boyd said...

Carter made turning off the lights "top of mind" for people.

Until that rabbit attacked him. He slept with the lights on after that.

Anthony said...

Man fears Time. But Time fears avocado green refrigerators. . . . .

Actually, they got rid of incandescents because GE and the like weren't making any money off of them, but they could make boatloads of cash importing fluorescents and now LEDs from China. In my family growing up we turned out the lights because of the bill, not the environment.

And you'll have to pry my garage-based beer fridge from my cold, dead, hands.

William50 said...

That would (perhaps) finally break me of the lifelong habit of opening the refrigerator and gazing what's inside even when I'm not going to end up eating anything.

You could always take a picture of the inside and then just look at that?

First Tenor said...

On somewhat of a tangent, in my town we're told to rinse the glass and plastic recyclables before putting them out for the truck to pick up. Unrinsed recyclables won't be picked up. Our water comes from an aquifer and the supply is limited. We know that there is no market for plastic recycling, yet the charade goes on. This seems like a lot of energy and water wasted for "green" purposes.

James K said...

I'm not putting any of their Chinese spy tools in my home.

Yes, it seems that every new appliance is "smart"--which means your privacy is threatened. I try to figure out how to deactivate it, or at least make sure not to use it. Even my A/C window units have it now.

MOfarmer said...

Wouldn't your orange juice and milk freeze in a sub-zero refrigerator?

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

According to the article, you should go ahead and run the dishwasher partly full. Just run it every day no matter how full it is. The whole cycle uses as much energy as it would take to do one place setting by hand running water in the sink.

Not with my super-efficient gas water heater it doesn't. The incremental cost associated with pulling a couple gallons out of my water heater vs. running my dishwasher for a minimum of two hours (and that's the "light cycle") cannot be in the electric appliance's favor. If they were that efficient why would SCE keep advising me to wait until after 9 p.m. to run the dishwasher?

While I'm calling bullshit on that little factoid I'll agree with Space Mountain and Wibble above: we got rid of good light bulbs for no good reason if their impact is so small, and those "no need to scrape" people must not have cats because NO dishwasher cleans a used cat food plate without accumulating a weird scum on the drainage area, and that goes for the brand new LG model and the 20-year old Maytag as well.

Based on so much being wrong in the excerpt Althouse presented, I don't believe anything this guy is writing.

Glenn Howes said...

As a software developer who was trained as a scientist, my advice is not to haphazardly replace working appliances, but to measure their energy usage. Buy a Kill-a-Watt and see what your refrigerator uses over the course of a few days over multiple cycles. If it uses a lot of energy look at cleaning out decades of lint, maybe the seals can be replaced.

I have an Emporia Vue energy monitor in my circuit breaker boxes and I know where my energy is going: my heat pump in winter, followed by the water heater, dryer, network equipment. The dish washer is almost nothing compared to these.

Water heat had been part of the oil boiler system, which I didn’t want to run during summer, so I replaced it with a hybrid electric heat pump model, which uses ⅓ or less energy than electric resistive when in heat pump mode and keeps the basement delightfully cool and dry during summer. It also keeps the basement cold and dry in winter, and is noisy all year long. But, I can put it in resistive mode when I want the space habitable. Will pay for itself over oil in 3 years or so.

I guess I could replace the dryer with a heat pump model, but I’d have to run the numbers. And they aren’t common yet.

I can understand hating to give up incandescents for compact fluorescents but modern LEDs are great. I’ve gone with quality Philips Warm Glows that make good use of my Lutron Caseta smart dimmers. Rated at 35 years of normal usage.

Gusty Winds said...

I had the Honeywell dual zone dampers installed. I own a ranch with an exposed basement and the basement is all finished. Cost $2000. With upstairs and downstairs thermostats, they can independently call for heat or air conditioning.

In the winter you set the basement or downstairs on or two degrees higher than the upstairs and let the heat rise, and in the summer, you only run air-conditioning to the upstairs as the basement is cool anyway, and the cold air falls.

I had it put in last summer when I had to replace my furnace. Got a Lennox 90% efficient furnace. I was amazed how small the new furnaces are now.

Gusty Winds said...

I'm and LED light bulb fan. They never burn out. Replaced all bulbs in the house over the course of like 6 months.

And with Amazon Alexa smart LED Bulbs are pretty cool and the control you have vocally with lighting in rooms. Fun to screw with the colors too when you're having a party or just drinking at home alone....

planetgeo said...

It used to be that government at both the local and federal government felt it was their job to provide more energy and water sources than were needed, even at max usage levels. Life was good. Even cheap for everyone. And America thrived and prospered.

Now government is determined to stay at redline levels of energy capacity and water availability, and instead scold everyone or impose punitive use costs in order to keep the grid from crashing or water distribution from going completely dry. And they do this in spite of the fact that technological advances make such impositions completely unnecessary.

There is really no virtue and almost no benefit to these ridiculous measures being discussed in the article and in these comments. Why is everyone going along with this crap? We have all the technological knowledge and financial resources we need to supply our needs. We only need to vote in leaders who are willing and committed to providing for our needs, just as leaders of BOTH parties did decades ago with much fewer resources.

Michael K said...

"Climate activist" acts like a switch to turn off any interest in what he has to say.

Once written, twice... said...

Ann, I remember you were anti-LED back when there was a push to switch over to them. I believe you were one of those people who were stocking up on incandescent. Did you finally run out?

Once written, twice... said...

Can we all now acknowledge that the federal government requiring lightbulbs to be more efficient quickly created a market for better-designed ones? This was a great regulatory success story. There was market failure (incandescent bulbs were like 2% efficient, but because they were so cheap consumers were resistant to switching from them) and the government solved it.

JEP said...

Our monthly bill indicates that "Instant On" is the largest single electrical draw. The oldest commenters will remember when a radio took a while to come in, a television to actually glow you a picture. All those units around the house with a small greenish glow are ready, before you are. They are constantly draining the grid to make sure I never have to waste even a perceptible fraction of a second for my unit to be ON. This strikes me as a very irritating monthly bill inflator, and I don't see a way out, since appliances so old they lack the feature are now domiciled in dumps.

Mark said...

and they're so efficient that you should...

All of these appliances are very efficient at saving water and electricity. They use much less of both than older appliances. They also do a crappy job of what they are supposed to do - clean dishes, clean clothes, heat food, flush human waste.

You know what's even more efficient than any of these high-efficiency products? Unplugging the machine and disconnecting it from the water pipes. Just let your things sit inside for an hour or two and take them out. You'll get them just as clean as if you had run the machine.

Charlotte Allen said...

When we moved into our current (town)house in 2002, the fridge that came with it, a Frigidaire, was already vintage--probably 1970s or possibly early 1980s. The little compartment on the door for butter said "Spreads"--because that was back when the experts said real butter was bad for you, so use (ugh!) margarine instead. We still have that fridge 21 years later. Whole sections of the white paint have rusted off the outside, and nearly all the shelves inside the doors are held together with duct tape.

But you know what? That sucker works like crazy! It chugs away day and night. The thermometer in the freezer always says zero or, at the highest, ten degrees, even on summer's hottest days, and even when (which is most of the time) the freezer is packed tight with the 50 percent-off meat we buy from the bargain bin at our neighborhood Safeway. And we don't even set the thermostat higher than 5 or (in the summer) 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. That fridge has never needed a single repair, either, in all the time we've owned it. And our electrical bill runs us from $50 to $75 a month, so we're not spending much on electricity, either.

In 2005, our electric stove, also a relic that came with the house but had a ceramic top that must have been novel in the 1970s, broke down, so we bought a new ceramic-top, from Frigidaire, since the Frigidaire fridge was such a marvel. What a piece of junk! Five years in, the convection feature in the oven stopped working, and a repairman told us it couldn't be fixed. Ten years in, the broiler coil went woosh! and died. By this time Frigidaire wasn't bothering with replacement parts for that model. A talented repairman jerry-built a new coil that works fine if you give the broiler a half-hour head start if you want to broil chicken. Sorry, but a stove should last forever. I once lived in an apartment with a stove so old it stood on legs--but it worked fine.

We bought a cheap Kenmore washer and drier ($375 apiece) from Sears (back when there was a Sears and it made Kenmores) when we moved in in 2002. The washer lasted 20 years with exactly one repair before it needed to be replaced. (We upgraded to a Speed Queen, which is roomy and wonderful--although it takes an hour to do a load of laundry.) But that old Kenmore drier is still going strong. I think we've had maybe three repairs on it in total over the years.

I always turn out lights in rooms I'm not using. It's the influence of my father, who would always grumble "This place is lit up like a Christmas tree!" when driving us home and noticing that someone had left all the lights on upstairs. Old habits die hard.

stlcdr said...

Even if we still had incandescents, it would be a smaller portion of our consumption, today, than it was many moons ago.

JK Brown said...

"Third, Coren recommends a "smart" thermostat, but oddly enough, he doesn't tell us to set it as low as possible in cold whether and as high as possible in hot weather. It seems to me, that's where you can get the biggest savings."

Yeah, that's an old misconception for two reasons. New "efficient" heating systems run at a lower temperature so take a long time to recover after being turned down by the "Smart". This leads people to take other actions to get warm and cozy as they used to be. The cold mass of the house has to be heated before you really feel comfort and that take a long time when the supply temp is low due to "efficient" design.

Even on the cooling side, it takes more energy to cool a hot house at 5 pm after the AC was turned down for the empty house work day than it would to keep the house cool as the heat load increased all day. The high stress is from the hot exterior and when the sun load through the windows increases, both after 5 pm.

james said...

WRT turning light bulbs off and on frequently: It isn't just the LEDs in the bulb that turn off and on--you also have the circuit that transforms AC into the appropriate DC. I don't know enough about the boards to know whether they're the weak point or not.

JK Brown said...

No one's done the study, and incandescent bulbs were an energy loss in the cooling months, but having incandescent bulbs on in heating months provided a constant low heat supply that muted the sensing of the heating system cycling. So people turn up the furnace to compensate.

I've recommended to several elderly people who tend to end up running their houses hot in winter due to dry thin skin, to put an incandescent bulb in the lamp next to where they sit in winter. Barring the light bulb, a reptile hating bulb (they have them that don't emit light) and a brooding fixture is good. Then you have comfort when sitting, but don't have to heat the whole house to a high temp.

Those incandescents in winter provided the cozy feeling by providing a low base load of heating and keeping the mass of furniture and walls warmer.

Rit said...

LED bulbs are great in most applications. One where they are not is traffic lights. Most of the traffic lights in my neck of the woods have transitioned to LED bulbs and when a wintry mix of sleet and snow comes along they typically don't generate enough heat to melt the snow. I guess no one thought of that until it was to late. I wonder how many people have been killed or maimed by LED bulbs?

Leora said...

Blogger Marcus Bressler said..no dishwasher

I highly recommend the SPT countertop dishwasher if you have countertop space and the right kind of sink faucet. I have one and it's great.

Bruce Hayden said...

“I researched that and found this at an electrical engineering website: "The LED... is the only type of light emitting device out of the list that doesn't use a tungsten element. It uses a PN junction instead. This means that the LEDs require much less voltage and current, meaning low power consumption compared to the lights with filaments. As such, LEDs won't be damaged at all by switching, since there is no filament to damage and the power going through the bulb is lower. In fact many applications switch them at high speeds using PWM which they handle with no problem."”

Sometimes you want the heat of an incandescent bulb. Sometimes around the house. But the big one that is starting to be recognized is in vehicles. IF you read sales material for new cars, they very often tout their LED headlights and taillights. Never have to replace them (maybe). Better light. Etc. Except that the heat from incandescent bulbs perform needed functions, esp in northern, colder climates. It helps dry out the lenses, and helps remove ice and snow from the lights. Let’s say that you start from a heated garage, where the lenses are clear (or dutifully clear them off before you start out), and drive out into a blizzard. What is going to keep them clear as you drive along, and snow and ice pack in as you drive along, with LED lights? Incandescent bulbs do a decent job at that. LEDs do diddly squat.

I am just waiting for the first class action lawsuits. The basic technology to address this has been available for a couple decades. The modern technology is even better. It’s patented, which is why I know about it, and the big car companies know about it, because it was demoed at the big consumer electronics show in Vegas a couple years ago, where the company demoing it won best in show. It just doesn’t fit into their production model that has pushed basically all their R&D to their suppliers. People in places like MI, are screaming for it. And it will come. Some day. But in the meantime, the automotive and truck manufacturers are pushing a feature that they know is dangerous, because fogged up, or snow and ice occluded, front and tail lights are dangerous. Imagine hitting the back of a snow plow because you didn’t see its tail lights, and your headlights were occluded by the snow and ice buildup on them, or one of them hitting your car, because your taillights weren’t visible to the plow driver.

JK Brown said...

If you have a 32 yr old refrigerator you want to keep running, you might consider looking into picking up spare parts, which may be the cheap, jellybean parts of old. Those parts may be come scarcer as things change in China.

Mechanical defrost timers
Mechanical thermostats
the evap and condenser fans
Might be cheap to buy now and have the parts for an older appliance repair guy.

The sealed system (refrigerant circuit) is likely okay, your risk is a leak and being unable to get the refrigerant.

Bruce Hayden said...

The thing about modern low energy dishwashers is that they typically don’t work as well. This was, no surprise, the consequence, of an Obama era rule, waived by Trump, and reimposed by Biden. We rinse by hand, before putting stuff in our 3 year old dishwasher (that broke just after it went off the 1 year warranty). That’s the only way to get it clean. Of course, our 20 year old dishwasher in MT has always done its job, and has never broken.

I have talked my partner into replacing the 20 year old refrigerator in Montana, with a larger, modern, one, like we have in AZ, allowing me to move the old one to my mega garage next door. Now I am a bit worried.

Bitter Clinger said...

Responses to above comments:

1. Geothermal is insanely expensive. It's been 10 years since I ran the numbers but it was going to require 50 years for me to break even if I replaced my gas furnace with geothermal.

2. On-demand water heaters are also quite expensive. Last time around replacing my hot water heater, on-demand that could meet the same surge demand as our 74 gallon tank would've cost an additional $1000.

3. If you really don't like instant-on drawing power, plug them into a switched outlet. If you don't want to spend money on installing switches in the wall, you can buy switchable outlets that simply plug into your existing outlet.

4. Bjorn Lomborg may be a political scientist and at times may be wrong, but his approach is the correct one overall. He asks the questions "Do the benefits outweigh the costs?" and "Is the this the best way to achieve a goal?" Most environmentalists simply push the agenda of privation as a commenter above put it.

5. Given that most environmentalists and climate warriors reject the only reliable, zero-carbon power source, nuclear, they clearly have some agenda other than reducing carbon. It is likely the opportunity for grift, votes, replacement for religion, or control of the people (or some combination of the above) depending on the individual.

Leland said...

JEP at 10:59 makes a good point, but the “Instant On” isn’t quite right.

Warming of vacuum tubes doesn’t save energy over an integrated circuit that can be instantly turned on. However, trickle charge of devices such that they are always on is a problem. Like Gusty Winds, I like LED bulbs, and particularly Smart bulbs that I can turn on and off with multiple devices including and perhaps most preferred by Alexa (or Google for others). To do this, everyone of those bulbs require constant power to operate their onboard network device to communicate with your always on WiFi, so that you then remotely control them.

Personally, I’ll pay the price for the luxury it provides me. However, I find it interesting this argument doesn’t come up when people either complain about energy usage or internet of things devices. Perhaps it is because of stuff like IOT thermostats, that always need to be on and connected to the Internet, not just for your convenience but also so the energy company on some cases can muck with them. Really, to operate well, thermostats are always on anyway, but the WiFi doesn’t need to be nor all those other devices. Then again, we could all eliminate these modern conveniences in the US yet not make up for the emissions of one WEF conference in Davos.

Bruce Hayden said...

“ That would (perhaps) finally break me of the lifelong habit of opening the refrigerator and gazing what's inside even when I'm not going to end up eating anything.”

Ah! I tried to talk my partner into one of the refrigerators that have cameras inside, and are connected to the Internet. You could gaze at the interior of your refrigerator from your laptop or tablet. My partner, with her photographic memory declared it stupid. She claims to know exactly what is in there at all times. She is, of course, wrong, and I take advantage of that. And this was reinforced when our DIL got that feature in her new refrigerator. In any case, for maybe a mere $500 or so, you can get that feature in your next refrigerator.

JK Brown said...

Once written, twice... said...
Can we all now acknowledge that the federal government requiring lightbulbs to be more efficient quickly created a market for better-designed ones?

Yes, thankfully the Chinese manufacturers put in some work. The GE and other old brands sold LEDs but overdrove them an they didn't last or really change things. The Taiwanese or Chinese chip maker developed chips to make LEDs cheaper and less susceptible to the heat. Others used the technology for formats other than the old bulb format, which had been driven by the incandescent design.

If we had been dependent on GE or other US companies, we'd still be screwed.

n.n said...

The problem with CFLs is low output and switching causes fluorescent decay. The problem with LEDs is narrow bandwidth produces an unnatural light distasteful to quality of life. The problem with environmentalism is collusion with politics and industry, first, and environment and people, second.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Yeah if switching diodes on and off hurt them your LED TV would be useless. The first gen LED bulbs sucked because they were very low quality trying to get close to incandescent market price.

Gospace said...

Every bulb in my house is now LED. The newest bulbs I just bought from Home Depot have what looks like 4 COB elements. are daylght spectrum, and according to the package put 1680 lumens for 13 watts. Way over the 100 watt per lumen barrier. So turning off the lights save, well, almost nothing. Still do it. Not to save energy, but because there's no need to light a room with no one in it. I've used the term COB for LEDs for a while, and know what they are when I see a COB LED, Just looked up what it's shrt for- chip on board. Advantage of using them- they're rated for use in enclosed fixtures. The older ones, even though most of us routinely put them in enclosed fixtures since that's the normal fixtures in modern houses, weren't. Possibly one of the reasons they haven't lasted as long as advertised- heat buildup.

Just for comparison two other 100 watt daylight bulbs at HD
1600 lumens 14 watts
1575 lumens 13 watts
and I have a box of GE Reveal LED left over from when I bought a bunch that were on clearance at Dollare general: 1140 lumens 16 watts. They put out a really nice light spectrum, but they're stick shaped, not A19 bulb shaped, so there's a limited number of fixtures I could use them in. Hence, they're left over. For now. Only 2 in the box.

LEDs have gotten much better. In every way possible.For now we're stuck with the A19 bulb shape since that's what everything is designed for. Years ago I replaced upstairs hallway lights with LED fictures designed to be flat to the ceiling instead of protruding down. Better light, less energy. Until they burn out, they'll be there. A similar COB fixture would use less energy.

Our biggest energy savings is we're down to just us in the house. Used a lot more energy with 5 children at home. Even one at home doubles our energy use.

I don't use the drying cycle on the dishwaher. Doesn't make any discernible difference on plastics, and everything else is dry by the time we get to emptying the dishwaher. Load every other day now.

Our boiler heats our domestic water. And despite all the claims- a high efficiency on demand water heater will not reduce your energy use. Especially in northern climes. It'll simply irritate you as it doesn't heat the incoming 40°F degree water up enough for a long HOT shower. A good boiler with a storage tank as a heating zone is a lot better.

And I see a lot of dishwasher complaints. Solution- order a package of Sodium Tripolyphosphate and Trisodium phosphate, the real stuff, not TSP substitute, and add ¼ teaspoon each to the soap for each load. I mix them togther in a marked container, shake thoroughly, and use ½ tsp each load.

Best way to save energy- put another 6" of unfaced insulation in your attic space. Preferably during weather when it's bearable to get in there to do it.

The "instant on" mentioned above is a phantom draw. If you go around the house, and turn off EVERYTHING, you'll still see the meter spinning. That's your electric clock, the microwave clock, the flat screen TV, and a whole bunch of other things invisibly drawing power. Can't have a modern house without phantom draw.

Sheridan said...

My mom and dad were children of the Depression born in 1918 and 1917 respectively. Dad was the third of five children and his father decided that he was the one who would go down to the soup kitchen (in Long Beach, CA) and pick-up the foodstuffs for the rest of the family. Dad did that every day until he got a job at the age of 13. The lesson that Dad learned and that he passed on to me and my two siblings was that everything costs money. So for the most part me and my siblings grew-up with few if any lights, restrictions on water usage (no flushing toilets at night), no pening and closing the fridge and no food "treats" like a bottle of coca-cola. Mom helped us skirt some of the food restrictions but she couldn't do anything about the lights and water. To this day I'm torn between turning off the lights or turning them all on in spite of my early indoctrinations.

Gospace said...

Once written, twice... said...
Can we all now acknowledge that the federal government requiring lightbulbs to be more efficient quickly created a market for better-designed ones? This was a great regulatory success story.


Believe that fairytale if you want to. I was buying halogen bulbs for the better light and energy savings before the government mandated anything. So were many others. Government regs led to the intering period of spiral flourescents before LEDs. Had a class from Phillips on light bulbs where I learned a lot. Phillips spiral bulbs cost quirre a bit more then the cheap import competitors. When you looked at the parts hidden inside, you could see why. The early Phillips bulbs actually lasted as long as advertised, before they fianlly started using the cheaper parts to compete on price.

The switch to LEDs was inevitable. Controlling the spectrum and increasing the efficiency were both needed to make bulbs. Red, green, blue, and other single color LED bulbs were being used in multiple areas before white LED lighting came about. Single color LEDs are much easier to make. If you have a console with a few hundred tiny red and green status bulbs- the LEDs use less power, are more visible since the bulbs are producing that color, not shining through colored glass, and produce less waste heat.

Whiskeybum said...

It's funny to see one commenter condemn a brand like their new GE appliances, while another commenter says their GE refrigerator has been running for 32 years without a single issue. There are a couple of underlying reasons for the big disparity of experiences:

1) GE isn't GE isn't GE (or Westinghouse or fill-in-the-blank). GE began outsourcing appliances - especially low end appliances - decades ago (by the way, to the person whose serviceman said avoid GE and get Hotpoint: Hotpoint was just a 'brand' of GE). Then about 8 years ago, GE sold their entire appliance business to the Haier Group from China, who retained the rights to the GE name. So, if you bought 'GE' appliances in the past 8 years (and longer ago, if it was a lower-end appliance), it wasn't really made by GE. This was/is an industry-wide trend, not just GE.

2) Appliances have migrated from being relatively simple mechanical-electric devices to high tech electronic devices over time, the latter of which are less reliable. There are also other considerations, such as regulatory impacts of material used, energy efficiency, etc., all driving design tradeoffs that may impact reliability.

That said, the person who stated that appliances today are designed for looks, features, low cost, etc., and NOT for reliability is largely correct - reliability is low on priority; replacement is the assumption.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said...
"Is $10,000 a Michigan thing?"

Huh?

It's a SubZero. I think it was about $2,000 (not counting the wood paneling) when I did the kitchen in 1991



Oh that's a nice brand; that's what Nancy Pelosi had stuffed with Jenni's ice cream in her infamous lockdown video--hers retails for about $13k today!
SubZero 36" Glass OU

If everyone had Pelosi's stock returns we could all afford new ones!

Sub-Zero Wins!

Once written, twice... said...

You might think that the switch to LED was inevitable, but the reality is that it happened soon after government regulatory intervention.

gspencer said...

Here's how we save energy. We basically turn off the heat during the day and learn to live with the cold. It's neither easy nor comfortable but we do it for the money and it's actual do-able. In the evenings we'll put on the heat for our basement family room; and we have room heaters for our bedroom which are only used until we are ready to actually sleep. The cost of everything is almost beyond our means. Why people don't connect the cost of living with Democrats is beyond me. In this regard the MSM and its constant propaganda for Democrats and their socialism explains some of it.

Mea Sententia said...

"Then the environmentalist movement hit, the meaning of light changed, and I aligned myself morally."

What a striking sentence. It's such a power move to be able to change the meanings of ordinary words and then tell people they have to align themselves morally. And it's happening everywhere I look.

Kenmore fridge, washer, and drier. Less than ten years old. Happy with all of them. I always turn out the lights. Maximize darkness!

Steven said...

In any case, for maybe a mere $500 or so, you can get that feature in your next refrigerator.

Or you can pay $130 today to add a FridgeCam to your current refrigerator.

typingtalker said...

Just try to buy a bulb at Lowe's or Home Depot that is not an LED. Very hard.

If you need a replacement -- which is almost never -- take the old bulb with you or you'll be there all day looking for the right one.

In the very early very expensive days of LEDs I used them first in outside lights that were typically on all night and were a pain to replace. Downside is they don't generate enough waste heat to melt snow that settles on the fixture.

Jim at said...

My electric company sends me that list of energy-saving hints with each bill.

That's nothing. Our power company includes how we compare with other houses of similar size in our neighborhood and tries to shame us if we're consuming more than the others.

I try to conserve as much as possible because I like to spend my money on other things. But as long as I'm paying the bill without delay? They can take their shaming and shove it.

Jim at said...

Can we all now acknowledge that the federal government requiring lightbulbs to be more efficient quickly created a market for better-designed ones?

No. Because incentives work far better than mandates. But I wouldn't expect a totalitarian like you to acknowledge that.

n.n said...

Compare and contrast: a dollar without a penny is not a dollar theory of conservation, with a dollar is a penny theory of environmentalism. Don't be green, go green, not Green.

n.n said...

Can we all now acknowledge that the federal government requiring lightbulbs to be more efficient quickly created a market for better-designed ones?

CFLs were less efficient, and more toxic. LEDs were propelled through labor and environmental arbitrage by way of federal government sanction.

n.n said...

I always turn out the lights. Maximize darkness!

Privacy, too. Not to mention a visual relief for the cortex.

Ralph L said...

The whole cycle uses as much energy as it would take to do one place setting by hand running water in the sink

Not if the dishwater has to heat up the water electrically, which will happen if you don't run hot water to the sink first. Assuming your main water heater isn't electric, too.

We had a portable dishwater in the early 60s and then a fixed one from the late 50s, so we were trained to remove all food before loading as they weren't good at cleaning. Fifty years later, I just can't put a dirty dish or utensil in the machine. My neighbors do, and the food impellers keep failing on them.

RigelDog said...

Just put those dishes right in the dishwasher---sure. I've been reading this utter bullshit for twenty years at least. And yet we've had several dishwashers, all at least medium or higher grade, rated well, and NONE of them will clean dishes that haven't been well rinsed. It's not even close.

And none of them will clean dishes at all unless we run the power cycle which will super-heat the water. Then the appliance runs for HOURS. How is all of this less energy than me quick-washing our few dishes right after we use them?

I am ecstatic that our plain-Jane washing machine is over twenty-years old and doing just fine. The idea of throwing it away just to potentially save a little electricity is obscene.

RigelDog said...

We do our part for Mother Gaia by turning the heat down to 55 at night during the winter, and keep daytime temps at 65.

I do need a cold bedroom to sleep, but during the warm weather we basically turn off the air conditioning in the rest of the house at night and use a window unit for our bedroom instead of cooling down the entire house.

MadisonMan said...

I'll only say that my stove is so old it doesn't even have a pilot light. You need a match (or a lighter, which is what we use). I'll be very sad if it ever goes kaput. I doubt there's anyone in town around still who could service it.

Original Mike said...

"Coren's #1 piece of energy-saving advice is not to rinse off your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Present-day dishwashers don't need that pre-rinse — just scrape — and they're so efficient that you should go ahead and run them even if they're only half full (or less!). It doesn't save energy to switch to washing them by hand."

I don't believe it. We hand wash them then run them through a 10 minute dishwasher cycle. The mode this guy would have you use runs for hours.

Bunkypotatohead said...

I save energy by not flying my private jet to Davos for photo-ops with Greta von Thunberg.

iowan2 said...

Interesting thread.
My belief the best and smartest commenters on the internet, frequents this blog, is validated again.

Smart people are already maxing out all the easy energy saving habits.

So, help me out.
I switched to making coldbrew coffee. Got a burr mill grinder to get the coursest grind. Let brew one to two days. About a quarter cup of cold brew topped off with boiling water.
That means a tea kettle on the range top for two to four hours a day.
Christmas delivered an undersink hot water tap. 190F water from a dedicated sink tap. No more tea kettle.

Better or worse environmental impact than MR. Coffee?

Tina Trent said...

Having bought all new appliances in recent years, it is true they are energy efficient, but they have ALL broken at least once, requiring expensive computer panel repairs. They're Chinese junk.

Spend less than twenty bucks and insulate all your electric plugs and switches behind the plates. Caulk your windows every other year. Use foam spray to fill any bigger holes where plumbing comes in beneath or inside vanities and sinks. If you're going to buy any upgrade, make it an electric water heater or heat pump. American made.

In winter, put clear insulating plastic on your windows. Foam insulate your water pipes (I guess people up North know this)

Sneakily greypipe your kitchen sink and washing machine and dishwasher and maybe showers and tubs and other sinks. Not toilets. Your gardens will thank you. Plants love soapy water. Read up on how to keep critters out. Work on weekends and bury the drilled pipes in shallow gravel beds with plants on top so the city doesn't fine you.






Rocco said...

Ann Althouse said...
Rocco claims: "It's important that you don't keep switching the new ones on and off. That's what causes them to wear out."

Anne responded:
I researched that and found this at an electrical engineering website: "The LED...
"

Yes, I meant CFLs, not all incandescent replacement types. Major brain cramp on my part. And if you scroll down further on that page, you will see their advice about not switching CFLs on and off.

LEDs are great, but there are still a lot of people using other types of bulbs. As a residential landlord, I would say my tenants use CFLs the most, followed closely by incandescents. LEDs are distant third. That will change as both CFLs and incandescents will no longer be available and the current bulbs wear out.

Ann Althouse said...
My personal experience is that my light bulbs last a very long time.
Mine, too! That includes all the types that I use: incandescent, CFL, halogen, and LED.

Rocco said...

Leland said...
WTH, Rocco? Don’t blame the microchip, because it is designed to handle on (1] and off (0) much faster and more often than the LED. If you mean ballast type CFL bulbs, then yeah, don’t turn them on and off often.

God, no. My poorly worded comment was meant as just the opposite: The early CFLs had a well-deserved reputation for early failure; switching to he microchip was one of the necessary steps needed to raise the expected service life.

Rocco said...

Leland said...
WTH, Rocco? Don’t blame the microchip, because it is designed to handle on (1] and off (0) much faster and more often than the LED. If you mean ballast type CFL bulbs, then yeah, don’t turn them on and off often.

God, no. My poorly worded comment was meant as just the opposite: The early CFLs had a well-deserved reputation for early failure; switching to he microchip was one of the necessary steps needed to raise the expected service life.