I am about to prove to the court that from the view of saving money and resources, dishwashers will reduce your water bill and save time and dish washing detergent. According to the Spanish Ministry of the Environment, if you wash up under running water, tens of litres will gush out of your taps and down the drain to overwork the local treatment plant, yet simply by plugging the sink or using a modest bucket you’ll reduce water by 50%.
Machines at work!!.
A modern dishwasher will save on consumption a further 10 litres. Assuming you use 15 litres each time you wash up by hand "with a plugged sink" and if we assume that you do that three times a day, every day, then you will reduce your water consumption by as much as 80% if instead dishes are stored away and just fully load the dishwasher once a day. How much water you save over the course of one year?
These are quite conservative figures: Bosch researched the area recently and found that for 13 place settings (a large family indeed) its units used 6 litres of water to wash compared to between 40 and 60 litres doing hand washing.
How much are you worth by the hour?
I am not contemplating here the price of your valuable time my Lord. How long does it take you to hand wash dishes from three meals a day? Shall we say 15 minutes a time multiply by 3 we have 45 minutes a day, six times a week? (One day we a week we eat out). We have four and a half hours a week, more than half a day of labours, every week.
Every way you look at it my Lord; energy consumption, water, time, the overuse of dish washing liquid, there are clear savings using the machine over the hand washing routine.
And..?
So what else does a dishwasher do better than you my Lord or a subjugated teenager? Clean better, that is what!!
The higher temperatures used inside the machine kill far higher number of bacteria than using water you can put your hand into (even wearing a pair of rubber gloves). And after they have killed 99% of all germs, they are better at drying the dishes too. Modern stainless steel chambered dishwashers (rather than the older plastic ones) retain heat longer and so this dries dishes faster. Innovative technologies in this area continue to reduce energy consumption. Some models have fans internally to assist in the drying cycle. Others automatically trip the door open at the end of the cycle, allowing the dryer, ambient air to circulate around the dishes, again speeding the drying time.
One other clever idea from Siemens in selected appliances is using Zeolith®; a naturally occurring Zeolite mineral that generates heat as it absorbs water. Siemens says that the use of Zeolith in its dishwashers reduces the drying time without needing additional energy to heat the dishwasher chamber. Now my Lord that you are convinced of the benefit of a dishwasher, we should be analysing the right machine for you and your family.
Does size matters?
Yes my Lord, I am afraid that size matters. That factor alone is very important for any household. Choose an appliance that will hold 120 to150 items for the larger family, or you can accommodate a dish washer even in the smallest of kitchens these days with counter top models holding 40 to 60 items.
Clever eh!
There are options where the control panel is visible at the top. With technology adapted from the military ’Heads Up Displays’ Siemens offers an interesting variation for fully integrated dishwashers with its ’Heads Down’ time light and info light display. This is a tiny, high powered LED projector that focuses display information such as the running time and a light onto any coloured floor surface, showing at a glance if the unit is running and how long before the cycle stops. Clever eh!
You may be forgiven for thinking that apart from cleaning the dishes better, that there’s not a great deal more to be done with dishwasher technology, but actually, the age of the internet means there are many more enhancements and product variations coming along. For example there are appliances on the way to market with sensors that detect how dirty the dishes are and pick the most appropriate cycle for them. Interested in other innovations? Touch controls, better noise insulation, adjustable or flexible racking systems; all these new functions and features are here now, or just around the corner.
Whirlpool already has a model that connects to your wifi network and can send diagnostic info to your mobile phone via an app. It may be too late to get your teenager interested in stacking the dishwasher, but at least the technology is coming to make it less of a chore for you....case proved my Lord?
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