I'd think its more likely that most people are now so clueless about basic household maintenance they can't even do basic tasks like clean out a toilet cistern.
Needing to clean out a toilet cistern is a failure of design. The downstairs toilet in the house I grew up in is over 30 years old and has never been cleaned.
Unless you are softening your water this is inevitable. That said your typical cistern can build up a lot of scale without affecting the performance of the toilet. It's one of those jobs you only have to do once every 10-20 years.
well the first thing that breaks is the little rubber from the swimmer. needed to replace a swimmer cause i could not get a good replacement rubber. was a no name swimmer. now the toilet refills way faster and flushes way nicer and also does not overfill caused by the broken rubber.
The UI can be quite confusing for these though as it’s not at all obvious that “flush and hold down” will yield different results or that the result will be less water used.
I think I had one cistern that was siphon based (guessing based on needing to push the button hard) but had two buttons for different sizes of flow. Then again, it would often fail in a way that made me think it wasn’t siphon based.
> The UI can be quite confusing for these though as it’s not at all obvious that “flush and hold down” will yield different results or that the result will be less water used.
It's also bad ux because you need to do more work for the most common operation.
Is this design more common on UK toilets? Seems like the dual flush toilets I have seen in the US are the same siphon design as the non-dual flush systems... I am no expert on toilets, though :)
Hmm, maybe I am wrong, looking at one popular home improvement site, most of the toilets, including single flush, are listed as gravity-fed rather than siphon. So if the problem really is non-siphon toilets in general, it would apply to single and dual flush ones, at least the ones sold by this popular US retailer. (Lowes)
Opposite experience here, I've never seen a siphon design in the US (single or dual flush). I would have thought approximately all our toilets (outside of high-pressure toilets in non-residential settings) had a rubber flap at the bottom of the cistern or the same hole with a dual-flush mechanism.
> Until 1 January 2001, the use of siphon-type cisterns was mandatory in the UK[12] to avoid the potential waste of water by millions of leaking toilets with flapper valves, but due to EU harmonisation the regulations have changed.
I couldn't understand why one type of cistern would waste more water than another.
This point from the article which comes further down in the page explains -
>> The majority of them use the drop valve system, which sits at the bottom of the cistern and opens to allow the water to flow out when the flush is pressed. Debris and other issues can cause the mechanism to fail to close, meaning water continually flows from the cistern and into the bowl.
>> Older cisterns tend to use a siphon system, which works by pushing water upwards until it reaches a point at which it can flow into the bowl. Because that point is above the waterline when the toilet is not being flushed, the system is less likely to develop the same sort of leak.
Every single toilet I've seen in the US over the past several decades, single or dual flush, has used the more leak-prone drop valve system anyway. So here in the US at least it doesn't sound like dual flush will be contributing to more leakage.
There is a bigger problem here though, which is that manufacturers seem to have no incentive to develop leakproof designs since they aren't paying for failures, and there isn't strict enough regulation on these products.
The reason for that problem is that no one really cares and it isn't as big of an issue as it seems. Toilet is running? Jiggling the handle is likely to free up the debris that is blocking the valve, since the debris obstructing the valve is the chain itself that controls the valve flap. Once in a blue moon the chain may slip off the handle, but that only requires fishing your hand in and reattaching the chain. No one is going to bother reinventing the wheel and finding 100 more problems in the process in order to fix what is probably 5 seconds of effort a few times a year.
It's not just the valve getting clogged. The design on all horizontal models of these that I've seen have very flimsy plastic rods connecting the buttons to the valve mechanism. When the rods inevitably break, the valve somehow fails open.
This is a personal rant, but here it goes. Living in a country with very hard water and after changing the plunger it takes a few months but inevitably it starts to leak. Doesn't matter whether it's single or dual flush. It's like the germans make these to leak so you have to replace the tank valve every so often. Of course, you have to buy one specific to your model and of course you can't just buy the small sealing gasket because that would actually save the environment. Sometimes cleaning the damn thing to remove dirt and limescale or rotating the gasket helps.
Siphon cisterns don't have this problem, because there's no valve - or rather, there is a valve in the form of a flap of plastic, but it's to lift the initial bit of water over the siphon and not block the rest when it follows.
I'm surprised these aren't standard. Most American gravity-tank-flush toilets use the same flush valve, and most of the remainder are the tray-tip kind that doesn't really have a flush valve in the traditional sense. There are exceptions and oddities, but it's really nice having singles. Also does mean you can buy just the single part you need. I have no idea how we of all places managed to get this right.
Also I do wonder if a scale preventer injector (they go online like a water filter) would be more or less expensive than the toilet parts?
I lived in one of the hardest water areas in Britain for a long while. Standard syphon flush mechanism was never a problem. May be worth a try. The newer replacements are vastly less durable.
I'd like to point out the California approved portable gas cans. They were intended to prevent spills, but they suck so bad, that spilling is more likely than ever before.
There's too many parts trying to do too much. The seals leak, the sliders bind, the whole thing is large and difficult to maneuver. It's better to remove the filler assembly and just pour out, maybe using a funnel if the target is small. Roads and good intentions I guess.
It's probably installed wrong. On my toilet the mechanism is the same for both, so if you happen to flip the button or the mechanism then they will work the opposite of how they are intended.
The smaller button is for a smaller amount of water, the larger button empties the whole tank. It's pretty simple to get used to them, once you use one.
That is not always the case. Some toilet have the big button for the smaller flush, I would assume because that’s the one you need most frequently or to assume if you just press blindly you’d use the least amount of water.
We have a least one leaking system like this in our house - and it's in a nice tiled wall so doing maintenance is like keyhole surgery. From what I've seen so far I'm pretty sure both buttons on our toilets do the same thing (mind you they are the same size).
> and it's in a nice tiled wall so doing maintenance is like keyhole surgery.
That is the main reason why I went with plain old toilet without embedding it in tiles. I've seen too many half-working embedded toilets at my friends' houses to have one too, I prefer to be able to easily repair it myself when required.
I've got two toilets in my apartment that have the mechanics hidden in a sort of half wall, that is maybe a meter or so high. It has a stone "lid" you can lift and reach all the piping and mechanics and what not from the top. This seems like a pretty decent compromise to me, and also the lid is really useful as a shelf for toiletries and what not.
> "...I'm pretty sure both buttons on our toilets do the same thing..."
from what i've seen, that's by design. you push both buttons at the same time to get the double flush.
to me, the water-saving option that makes the most sense is a vacuum toilet along with a greywater system and a biotank for recycling the waste locally (though it is more expensive of course).
I'm glad I'm not the only one with this confusion, my friends mock me relentlessly based on past discussions we've had.
Since on some designs the smaller button cannot be pressed separately and therefore corresponds to a big flush, since both parts of the button are depressed at once; it stands to reason small will always be bigger flush, which I rationalise as urination being the more common operation and therefore deserving the larger button in order for the user to press more easily. However it's actually the case that big is usually the larger flush, which suggests there's some magic button size ratio at which their meaning crosses over.
In California, 89% of the state's water usage is agricultural; only 11% is consumers. Thus, of course you would force consumers to use only low-flow shower heads, and... problem solved.
Low flow ends on things like hand washing sinks are almost a free win. The aerated water washes your hands just as well. Even if its not the biggest improvement, a free improvement is still welcome.
But it washes your hands just as well because you turn the faucet up to the point that you can wash your hands just as well. You use the same amount of water, only the position of the faucet and the amount of time changes. There is no magic.
i remember a study about how aeration introduced more room for bacteria growth; and subsequently a hospital had to revamp again to remove all the water saving faucets...
I've never had a complaint about those in bathrooms, but I hate them at laundry and kitchen sinks where I almost always actually want some quantity of water and these just make getting it slow. And my usage in such circumstances is a couple tens of gallons per month, whereas my neighbor waters a hobby vineyard and consumes 40x the water that my household (which also irrigates for landscaping) does.
How dare you not accept responsibility for changing your lifestyle for the environment despite the facts of who is actually doing most of the damage?!?! This doesn’t fit the narrative of personal responsibility and allow for the virtue signaling of personal environmentalism.
We moved into a home that had dual-flush toilets with different sized buttons. I assumed that the big button was for more water, but in reality it didn't make a difference. We were told these were high-end toilets, and they looked fancy, but the dual-flush thing seems to be more for show than anything else.
Huh, that could have been it! But each button depressed a different lever, so I assumed it was an either/or. We don't live there anymore, otherwise I would go try this right now!
I managed to tune my regular drop valve system so that a short press gives a small flush and a long press gives a full flush. It was a delicate matter of balancing the chain length so that the flapper doesn't get pulled high enough to stay open when you give a short press, but will stay open when pressed insistently.
Very convenient, except for having to explain to guests.
Does anyone else feel like the press button design on these modern dual flush toilets has to be wildly unsanitary?
Your hands are at their dirtiest when you go to flush the toilet. The button design seems very difficult to clean, particularly the wall of the button hole.
In most public restrooms, I kick the lever with my foot to flush the toilet. Not possible with the recessed button design.
Reminds me of a King of the Hill episode where Hank gets a lo-flow toilet to save water, only to find that it wasted water in practice as it required several flushes to get the job done.
It's really a kind of recurring issue, where something is superficially "solved" (sounds good on the surface), but actually ends up making things worse in practice.
I have the same gripe with auto-flush toilets. The ones where I work tend to be over-zealous meaning they flush to early and need to be flushed again when you are done.
So now you're wasting toilet paper instead of water, which might be better, but still is wasteful and wouldn't have been needed if the toilet were to be flushed manually.
How many people have have lived / are living with absolutely terrible light and usage ergonomics (and will do so for years more) because of that stillborn "technology" ?
The kicker is that after 20 years of bad lighting environment, you have a local mercury disposal issue, regardless of how much mercury might have been saved in total emissions over the bulbs lifetime.
Not to mention the CFLs never lasted anywhere near as long as advertised, which is annoying and exacerbates the mercury situation further. This is why the environmental impact of something should always be examined holistically instead of just zeroing in on one particular aspect.
I don't know anyone still using CFLs (edit: meaning, still buying) them. We use LEDs now, which are better than either CFLs or incandescents.
Anyone who says differently either uses weird light bulbs, which is a valid excuse, or has a closet full of hoarded tungsten bulbs they wish they could sell, which isn't.
Incandescents were banned, and CFLs were heavily promoted and subsidized to replace them.
Meanwhile, along came a superior technology, ten times as energy efficient, longer lasting, and with a broader range of light which is at least as good.
So all that heavy-handed regulation produced, was an era of inferior light, a mercury disposal problem, and the inability to acquire incandescents for applications such as heating, which they're excellent for. Sometimes a lot of heat and a bit of light is what you want, and most of those devices have an Edison socket.
To head off one objection: any technically competent person could have taken a look at the trajectory of LED technology and said "hold on, CFLs suck, how about we just hang back and wait five to ten years?". LED bulbs were hardly a black swan.
Actually, good-quality LED replacement bulbs were around for several years prior to the ban. They just cost an arm and a leg. The ban didn't force the technology to magically appear -- something that hardly ever happens due to legislation alone -- but it did drive competition and force an economy of scale that would otherwise have been much slower to develop.
So the subsidy backed the wrong horse, and the ban eliminated a useful technology, but it also accidentally supported buildout of LED bulbs, which we could have just accomplished by subsidizing LED tech and not banning incandescents?
Yeah, that seems about par for the course for this kind of regulation. Sometimes a blind cat catches a dead mouse.
Note that the ban didn't prescribe CFLs, it only proscribed incandescents. Yes, it was arguably premature, but it's going to be very hard to convince me that it was the wrong thing to do in retrospect.
It didn't eliminate any technologies, either. I can still buy incandescents if I insist... but why would I?
There are still a few places where I use incandescent bulbs. Inside of my oven for example. But I'm totally fine with them being relegated to specialist niches.
Yep, I've heard that story a few times, and haven't heard the contrasting "I needed a 125 watt incandescent for the EZ Bake oven I bought at a garage sale for my daughter, and purchased it, no problem" story, ever.
But that's just anecdote. This being HN, I look forward to the reply which will shortly set me straight on the subject.
Exactly how many anecdotes do you need? Notice that the anecdotes all point the same way, there's no opposite story to average.
Differently from taxes and subsides, prohibiting products is a really impactful action for a government to make, it's not something to be done lightly. And we have had a fashion of really frivolous environment legislation lately doing exactly that kind of thing.
Oh, it's better than the old one on nearly every way, but the energy consumption is about the same (both are electric heaters, just in different formats) and it's harder to see if it turned on.
A 40 watt oven bulb, yes, but a 125 watt like you'd use in an egg incubator, reptile cage, or EZ Bake?
What prescribed CFLs were heavy subsidies, not the ban. CFLs were being given away by a lot of state governments. It was a nice kickback to importers, but I'd have trouble being convinced it did much for LED manufacturers.
Eh, if I need to heat something, I'll use a heating element that's shaped and specified to do the job required, not something light-bulb shaped that only coincidentally gets hot.
Around here (Washington state), these 65W equivalent LED floods were subsidized to the tune of about $2 or $3 about five years ago: https://www.greenliteusa.com/DATA/DOCUMENTPDF/35_en.pdf At least I assume they're subsidized by the state; I don't see how they could be that cheap otherwise. They weren't giving them away, but I couldn't argue with the price.
I bought a couple dozen, and out of the half-dozen I installed at the time and another half-dozen I've installed since, none have failed. I can tell they aren't incandescent by aiming an IR camera at them, or by watching the phosphor decay after turning them off at night, but that's about it.
Incandescent is a bad technology compared to fluorescent lamps with rare earth phosphors.
Seriously come on, a 100 W Incandescent uses $25 worth of electricity over it's life. Where a fluorescent to LED unit uses $3 over 2000 hours. And lasts 5-10 times longer.
Early LED bulbs had a horrible color rendering index, too. They made things look weird.
Cheap LED bulbs have the same reliability problem as cheap CFLs, too. They both skimp on the heat dissipation. The life of semiconductiors (in the control circuitry, for CFLs) halves with each ten degree Celsius rise in temperature.
Cheap bulbs use cheap, low-spec components close to the edge of their ratings and treat them badly. Irrespective of the base light-producing technology.
The mercury-in-CFLs problem is as overhyped as the asbestos problem (there are hundreds of thousands of miles of asbestos water pipes carrying drinking water) and the idea that plastics are bad for the environment. (In most cases, they're far better than equivalently priced alternatives.)
Finally, I had CFLs in my house for over ten years before LED substitutes became available. Now that LEDs are cheap enough and good enough, I'm using them. But from the late '90s to about 2012, CFLs were it.
When we moved in, I replaced all of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs because we were in that brief period where they were legitimately the best option due to being good enough and cheap enough compared to incandescent. Good LED bulbs (Cree) were still expensive enough that I would have had to drop a few hundred dollars to outfit the whole house.
Good LED bulbs are now common and cheap, and I will replace dead CFLs with them today but for now the existing CFLs work fine and only use marginally more power than LEDs.
As for disposal, I crush the bulbs in a paper bag and then huff the mercury fumes for recreation.
When I was in that transition, I’d rotate the CFLs to the low-use locations as I rolled out the LEDs. Still have a few 100w équivalent CFL monsters in the laundry room.
I take exception to this. Bad LED bulbs are common and cheap. Your average $5 bulb from the big box has about 3 common failure modes, all of which are exacerbated by heat. I haven't been able to buy a decent LED bulb at any brick and mortar retailer in years.
Meanwhile my 20 year old sylvania LED bulbs which are basically giant heatsinks all still work great. Now you know why nobody makes those anymore.
Yup. LED bulbs were good until the market competition caught up. Now they're mostly shit.
At this point, I shop for LEDs at IKEA. Tad more expensive, but they don't break after couple of months because someone soldered them on their knee in the middle of a Shenzhen marketplace (been there, seen that), making them overheat and eventually pop something off the circuit board.
And then I know people who got so pissed at LED bulbs they switched back to incandescent. Because turns out that the ban on incandescent bulbs in my country worked for about a year or two, before the stores got flooded with boxes of these, each with a label telling you it's not suitable for use at home, but only in storage buildings, etc. Which got the sellers off the hook, and also got the manufacturers off the hook for quality issues. My mother had a brief moment of weakness, but after two of these "legal" incandescents literally exploded over our heads, shattered glass flying everywhere, I convinced her to go back to buying LEDs.
I don't know maybe I got lucky but i bought the store brand walmart leds and have used them for a long time without replacing them. the light quality is nice and it was extremely cheap... on the order of the incandescents that they replaced. I want to say it was around 5 or 10 bucks for a 4 pack
If your municipality uses a properly maintained landfill, you can just throw them into trash, after sealing them in a regular plastic bag. Such a trivial amount of mercury will not be significant in the big picture of a landfill. For what it's worth, you can also just trash regular alkaline batteries, there's nothing wrong with that either.
According to my county you can just throw CFLs right in the trash. The amount of mercury in them is so small that it basically isn't worth worrying about. I don't live in California however, so your trash service may have different rules.
Of the CFLs I installed over the years I've had mixed results. Some are 15 years old and still going strong. Others I have had to replace more than once, although usually with LEDs now. The LEDs have mixed results too, with them being far more susceptible to heat failure in enclosed fixtures. Annoyingly they're usually built around a number of LED elements wired in series, so if any one element goes bad the whole bulb goes dim or fails entirely.
I know people used to complain a lot about CFLs being flickery and having bad color balance, but I only ever had one pair of bulbs (from a two pack) that were really bad in that regard. The pack I bought from WalMart for reasons that are lost to time. They were truly atrocious, one was orangey and the other more blue, and if you looked out the side of your eye you could see the flicker. They also died within a year thankfully, even though both were in well ventilated fixtures. My final point is that I've had much worse luck with CFLs mounted upside down (with the base pointing up). Except for the Wal*Mart specials and one enclosed outdoor fixture I think all of the ones I have installed right side up are still working.
My experience with CFLs was that they were bad, blue and flickery when they came out. They also made a very annoying buzzing sound. They got a lot better over the years though, and became quite acceptable.
FWIW I don't remember much buzz from even the few bad ones I tried, but the early ones were notorious for taking a long time to come to full brightness. You would flip the switch on and it would pop on at like 25% of its rated brightness and then slowly creep up to full brightness after a minute or two.
> I crush the bulbs in a paper bag and then huff the mercury fumes for recreation.
You shouldn't do that. Mercury is very dangerous, and it takes so long to clear from your body that acute exposure often results in lifelong poisoning.
As an aside -- and I am not attempting to criticize you personally, because I can imagine all sorts of reasons it makes sense -- I find it hilarious to juxtapose going through two houses in four years with worrying about the energy efficiency of your light bulbs.
Huh? You make it sound like they wore out the first house and then disposed of it. Your comparison of moving to worrying about light bulbs seems totally misplaced.
Life changed much faster than we (my wife and I) anticipated and we moved out of our first house after three years.
Honestly, we thought we'd stay in our first house longer.
As far as house #2 goes: It was new construction, and wherever bulbs were provided, they were LED. We even have some LED fixtures where there's no bulb. (Meaning, it's assumed that the fixture will work so long that there is no "bulb" for me to change. When it stops working I need to replace the entire fixture instead of a bulb.)
That video is about dimethylmercury, which is chemically completely different than the mercury in fluorescent lights. That's like saying DNA is bad because is has carbon and nitrogen in it, which is what cyanide is made out of.
Well, obviously, but nearly all compounds containing mercury are toxic, and in many cases highly so, even if there are a (very) few consumer products where there is insufficient data as to relative toxicity. (Perhaps they should give you MSDS for your eye drops or amalgam dental fillings!)
Chubbyemu is a great Youtuber, but I can't force myself to indulge his goofy clickbait titles. My loss as well as his, because he does really nice work.
I agree, but I actually do appreciate the titles, since the videos actually deliver (unlike many Youtubers).
That one did cover the changes in her brain and behavior until the point of death, and the intensity of the delivery adds a lot of drama to what is otherwise a clinically dry recitation of symptoms and effects.
You don't forget it too quickly, and you take extra precautions with all forms of toxic compounds (even if you hopefully are not dealing with dimethylmercury!)
Yeah, I don't think anyone who's heard Wetterhahn's story will ever forget it. It's somehow one of the scariest things I've ever seen in print, despite the lack of a huge body count.
I haven't stopped using incandescents myself, they.re getting hard to find. I went through them all, CFLs are awful, halogens die as fast as incandescents, if not faster, i've had a bunch of those where the glass just separates from the metal leaving the filament exposed and personally I can't stand the light from LEDs. It hurts my eyes and gives me a headache and honestly, I haven't noticed much difference in lifespan with LED bulbs i've tried, they still end up needing to be replaced in about a year or so.
I remember when we switched my old workplace from fluorescents to LEDs everybody at complained for weeks about headaches and sore eyes.
I realize for people on HN, who live in magic rich people land where money is no concern spending a bunch of money on expensive light bulbs is no issue, but for those of us without large six-seven figure salaries, i'm not spending more that a few dollars per bulb. I've got better things to put my money towards.
That can turn out to be false economy. I had some cheap LED bulbs, and six failed in the first year. With some Amazon Basics bulbs, that were only 10-20% more expensive, none have failed in the first year (in the same light fitting and with the same supply).
I can go to the grocery store, pick up incandescent bulbs for a few dollars each, they last 8 months to a year, my hydro bill is really not impacted by them, I get 40W bulbs for most of my lamps and 60W ones where I need light, the power drain's not horrendous. I get clear bulbs so there's no hazardous chemicals or waste. The light's not too bright or glaring.
What incentive do I really have to use other bulbs?
What incentive do I really have to use other bulbs?
It depends on where you live.
If you're next door to the Three Gorges Dam or the Itaipu Dam, perhaps your hydro power cost is insignificant. But for most of the world the cost of electricity (over the life of a bulb) to power a 40W incandescent bulb compared to a 10W LED bulb far exceeds the price difference between them.
The cost of electricity dominates bulb costs. Here's some quick approximate math.
40W incandescent, $1 cost, 1,000 hours life.
10W LED, $5 cost, 10,000 hours life.
Electricity $0.12 per kWh, my cost is about USA average.
In 10,000 hours of use, incandescent cost is $10 for bulbs, $48 for electricity. Total $58.
In 10,000 hours of use, LED cost is $5 for bulb, $12 for electricity, Total $17.
$17 is much less than $58.
In reality a 40W equivalent LED would use closer to 8W than 10W, and would last longer than 10,000 hours, and costs less than $5, so the comparison result would be skewed even more toward LED.
Now what happens if you live in Germany. Electricity is €0.31. Which is 3x what I'm paying. So now the electricity comparison is €124 for incandescent, €31 for LED.
Ya know, i mentioned above, I don't like the light LED's produce. I notice the difference and for me the difference in price in the end is negligible
I really don't understand this incessant need to convince people they should switch to different lightbulbs, when my choice in lightbulbs in no way impacts anyone else. I live in a place with 100% renewable power. As far as i'm concerned, the simplicity and lack of chemicals in the bulbs I choose, outweighs the potential energy savings as far as that goes.
My choices come down to what I prefer and what I feel my impacts are based on those choices. I've thought it out and this is what I choose and I shall keep on doing so until I no longer can and the lobbying has forced incandescents entirely off the market.
The price difference between a poor quality LED light and a higher quality light is not that significant. It's actually lower when you factor in the lifetime cost.
Not looking down on you, but that is wrongthink only applicable in acute emergencies.
Besides that, they are under 10 dollar now, and as stated elsewhere lasting longer, using much less energy, and depending on the model/brand give acceptable light. Though there is trash on the market also.
You know? I have about 2 dozen 100w E27 superspecial contraband Osrams stowed away somewhere, and don't wish to sell them :)
OTOH I indeed don't really need them anymore (maybe as a temporary spare) because meanwhile I also upgraded everything to warmwhite(2700k) retrofit filaments, which saves much energy and doesn't flicker at all.
They are Osram(by name only, meanwhile chinese owned) "PARATHOM Retrofit CLASSIC A" and "B". No smarts, no frills, no dimming. Just the right light. I'm using the clear ones from 2.5W to 8W. Compared to anything I've tried before they are excellent, and the first ones meanwhile about 3 years old? None of them broke so far.
CFLs have all of their components in the base. They try to use the screw portion of the bulb as a heatsink, but it doesn't really work. If the base can't get decent airflow, they burn out.
In my experience the CFLs weren't bright enough, at least not instantly, were more expensive and failed faster. Without exception none made it to 6 months of use. My incandescents lasted several years. Maybe it depends on the quality of the power company and/or the internal cabling?
Regarding the environmental disaster, why would you think that, given that the same technology was in use in much larger volumes since the 70ies or even earlier in commercial settings, offices and even homes? Lacking only the compactness, requiring external "ballast" and starters.
When I was young we had a large ring, maybe 40 to 50cm diameter under the ceiling in the kitchen, and I disliked it even then for looking "fugly" somehow. Oh, and the ring never lasted more than about half a year also :)
Mine actually worked well enough. Or at least they would have if they hadn't had such shitty power supplies. Every one of mine that burned out died because of an overheating power supply rather than because the actual bulb burnt out. This is a problem with a lot of LED bulbs too. Great light source that lasts 30,000 hours; shitty power supply that lasts 800 hours.
I personally like CFL. They are more efficient, don't get as hot as incandescent bulbs, and unlike incandescent bulbs, you can actually get light that approaches white. Also they're much less bulky and easier to handle than traditional (lightsaber-shaped) fluorescent lamps. What's not to like?
Also, each bulb contains only a few mg of mercury. Tuna has ~0.3 ppm of mercury, so if you eat two pounds of tuna then you'll ingest about 0.3 mg of mercury. I don't think you'll ingest more than 10% of mercury even if you break a CFL, so roughly speaking, "breaking a CFL" is the same order of magnitude as "two pounds of tuna" - doesn't sound that dangerous to me.
I have a lo-flow toilet that usually clears the bowl on a flush but doesn't always clean the sides of the pan if excreta misses the water. Often takes two or more flushes and some bleach to clean the sides as well.
But if I recall the episode correctly (and it's possible I don't since I probably saw it when it originally aired ~20 years ago), he was looking for a regular toilet and couldn't buy one because of local regulations.
and the reduced water flow increases the likelihood of clogs in your sewer pipe - clogs which might be cleared with high pressure water jets (if normal snaking is not sufficient)! EVEN MORE WATER USAGE! (and also expense and frustration)
For decades in the US efficiency standards for fluorescent lamps required the use of high efficiency blue phosphors. Which results in terrible CRI especially under low light conditions. The result; use of fluorescent lighting in residential was delayed for decades.
Don't get me started with 'high efficiency' dishwashers.
Oh I already posted about this higher up. Struggling right now at home with it. Maybe someone will make a non-stick coating one day that'll help, but the water doesn't dislodge anything that hits the porcelain, and sometimes the paper just spins around without going down.
can confirm - my apartment came with in-wall dual flush, and has a little leak into the bowl... given the infrequency of use (<1/day per toilet), the leak uses far more water than the extra flush, especially vs 1.6 gpf low flow toilets (which btw, work great, e.g. Toto).
I added logging so I could discover and fix errors, but then my logs filled up and crashed my service. - A software development parable that happened to 'a friend'.
The more surface area your app has, the more opportunity for problems.
---
Edit: another one - I wanted to ensure that I lost no data, so I added a retry function, but it went wild and caused a self denial of service, leading to lost data. (Again, happened to 'a friend')
Somewhat related, does embodied energy of a bidet save or waste water? I've dramatically cut down on toilet paper use since getting one. I imagine ecologically, the plastic and manufacturing of the bidet would not offset renewable paper products? Definitely a QoL upgrade though.
Our toilet is a very practical design where you depress the lever briefly for a short flush, and hold it down for a long one. Seems like a simple solution.
I see this a lot lately, where a product is "improved" by adding more complexity, but the additional maintenance cost is hidden from the user. It's the same with cars getting more and more software, home automation etc.
A wrapped cucumber is actually better for the environment than it's unwrapped counterpart [0] as they last longer leading to fewer deliveries and less waste
Do you like eating wax? Rutabagas are commonly coated in paraffin wax to prevent them drying out, but no one eats raw, unpeeled rutabagas. On the other hand, cucumbers are usually eaten raw with the skin intact.
In some places maybe. In Greece, where I'm from, they're normally peeled.
It's a funny old world, isn't it, when you can't make a simple statement of fact without someone popping up and saying "not in my neck of the woods"? And their neck of the woods is half a world away probably. Joys of the internets...
That depends on what type of cucumber you have. A lot of garden varieties seem to have tougher skins that are less pleasant to eat, but the cucumbers that are sold in grocery stores in North America have tender skins. I prefer cucumbers sith tender skins, myself.
You might very well be right, but I think there's also a force of habbit behind it. Cucumber skins aren't tougher than zucchini skins (in Greece that is) and we never peel zucchinis, so we could leave the cucumber skins on, too. We just somehow... always take them off. Or almost always. I've had Greek salad with unpeeled cucumbers once or twice. But it looked a bit weird.
I am worried that in most cases, the "maintenance cost" is not a cost but a ticking time bomb.
Since so much complicated software is being rammed into devices and the consumer is ever accustomed to increased ease of use and lack of mental engagement with the technology, they won't ever invest time to maintain the technology that they have in front of them, since understanding it will involve aeons of time due to the systems' complexity and/or lack of documentation. You're then at the mercy of the provider of the technology, who may or may not decide to maintain it at a whim.
I think this is particularly true in cars, where great strides have been made in engine management and "smart" sensors etc. but where the infotainment systems and general car "features" are reliant on activation by the manufacturer, or an on-going service that the manufacturer provides. If they ever decide to stop the service, a feature of the car is unusable. It's like BMW's horrible idea to "activate" features of the car based on a subscription service.
I have a 1972 Beetle that will carry on running for decades due to its simplicity; I also have a 2016 new Beetle that I suspect will have a far shorter lifespan. There are buttons on the steering wheel that won't do anything without paying VW for the privilege; Android Auto is also not enabled here in the UK without paying £200 for the privilege, and the VW garages I have been to in order to enable haven't succeeded in doing it, or believe it isn't available on the car....
It's like cloud computing for cars, which is short-sighted in future usability. This mentality has affected everything, from music and film availability, to apps and all technology, which is increasingly in every part of life.
It's insane. Everything is far far more complicated than it has ever been in human history, yet is presented as a simple service to attain, so the adoption of short-term usability grows. It isn't an improvement at all.
This reminds me of a trend I've seen in home appliances in recent years. Appliances that have "energy saving" features that save energy by not actually doing their job.
For example, we had a window air conditioning unit in our previous house that had an efficiency feature. Instead of recirculating the air, it would cool to the temperature you asked for, then set itself a few degrees higher. So it cooled down to the right temperature, and then just changed the temperature so it wouldn't remain as cool as you wanted. THat's not more efficient — that's just not doing its damn job.
Likewise, our dryer has settings that amount to "almost dry," "not actually dry," and "can't even tell you put it in the dryer." Who are these settings for? When I dry my clothes, I need them to be completely dry every time. I can't hang a shirt that's still damp in the closet or it will get all musty. WTF?
These are actually useful if you're ironing your clothes, which, admittedly, is not very popular these days. But yes, there should be "completely dry" option too.
Dishwashers are my pet peeve. Visiting family, they all have these dish rinsers that can't actually clean dirty dishes so we hand wash everything then put them in? I have a dishwasher from the 80s that actually washes dishes. I don't think I will replace it when it dies with a new one. Granted, it may never die since they used to make them last too.
It's that there's a lot of variation in dishwasher quality.
I used to live in an apartment with a landlord-installed $200 cheapie dishwashers that never worked.
Then I moved to an apartment without a dishwasher, so I bought a $500 one that I could plug into the sink. Worked much better.
After that apartment, I moved into one that had the same dishwasher that I bought, but installed. Worked great! Then I moved into another apartment with a cheapie dishwasher that was so loud I'd only run it when I left.
Anyway, the lesson is that you need to be a savvy consumer... And skip the cheapest models!
The expensive ones don't work that well either. My kitchenaid cost $1k and it sucks. Maybe a Miele or Bosch will work better.. they are more but honestly I just want one that cleans reliably.
Just purchased a 30 year old house... with older plumbing. Ugly color, but compared to the newer ones we put into our former house - they work incredibly well when sinking the Bismarck.
I got the 500 version based on this article from Wirecutter. Works well, but does require that we leave the door open for a while to let the plastic dry. Silent though. Most of the time, I can only tell it is running by the light on the ground.
I _just_ ordered a Bosch 500 series because my (barely 4 year old) GE model died over the weekend. I was told by a friend who owns the same Bosch model that they go through a lot of Jet Dry, though... But if it actually cleans well and doesn't break in a few years I'll be happy.
Whatever Bosch you get, avoid the ones with membrane buttons for the controls. I have one and it is horrible. The lettering is completely worn off, the buttons are not sensitive, and you have to keep pressure on them for more than a second to register your touch.
They have otherwise nearly identical models with physical buttons. If I were buying it over again, I would definitely get one of those.
My Bosch dishwashers were less than $1k and work great. I put one in my old house, and liked it so much that, when I moved and had to pick out another, I just bought the same one!
a cheapie dishwasher that was so loud I'd only run it when I left
I'm not sure that's a good idea.
I had a dishwasher that had the failure described in the article linked below. The electronics circuitry (top of door) caught fire. Opening the door didn't stop the smoke, and also caused water to spew uncontrollably into the kitchen.
Fortunately I made a quick dash out to the garage and turned off the breaker so there was no damage to the kitchen.
But if I wasn't home .... what would have happened? If we were all sleeping upstairs while the fire was downstairs .... what would have happened?
Are you in the USA? Here in the UK I don't think I have ever seen a dish rinser! We have dishwashers aplenty. The one issue is that if you think the dishwasher is a food disposal unit, you'll likely clog it up. Some people put dishes in with lumps of food on them, or don't put salt in the dishwasher (depends on the tablets you use) and the lifespan of the dishwasher will be impacted.
When my old one failed to drain and filled up, I was amazed at how much water came out of it when I shimmy'd it to the back door and released the kraken over the back garden. It was like a tsunami.
Commercial dishwashers are better described are just sterilizers and would be called dish risers if you don't put clean dishes in. They work fast to get dishes ready for safe reuse.
I'd need to see some estimates for handwashing, but it looks like a modern dishwasher uses 4-6gal (15-23l) of water[1]. That's about 1/10th of a bath (sure, if you're conserving water and energy you take showers instead, so it's about 1/3 of a shower).
The Miele dishwasher I used to have in my old flat used around 7 litres per wash. My current, not quite as fancy one, uses around 9 litres.
That's like just over a minute of the tap being on full blast for an aerated tap.
I am sure you could compete with that if you really tried, but from what I've seen a lot of people simply leave the tap on for the majority of the time they are washing the dishes.
Yeah, I had to break myself of the habit of leaving the water running. When I was younger and less patient, I would soap and rinse each item in sequence, so that I got the sense that I was making progress. But as I got older, I switched to batching the soaping and rinsing as it is more efficient that way.
Also, an additional difference between handwashing and using a dishwasher is the environmental impact of the manufacturing of the dishwasher, if the main concern is the environment. If the main reason is reducing work, then the dishwasher comes out ahead.
Or do it like a normal human: fill the sink with hot water and a tiny bit of detergent, wash glasses and less greasy things first and for later dirty items (e.g. frying pan) rinse them off at the end. If you're doing a big load and the water is already cold/dirty just drain and fill the sink a second time. Saves time, saves water and detergent, no splashing, ...
I actually don't recall ever seeing a human do dishes that way except on TV. I'm also not sure that it saves water if you are filling the sink and then still using water to rinse the dishes, at least as compared with my method.
Finally, there has been very few times where it has been necessary for me to use hot water instead of cold. Unless I had burned the food, almost everything will come off after a good soak and scrub, even in cold water.
> I actually don't recall ever seeing a human do dishes that way except on TV.
I have an unusual interest in this topic. I grew up in the UK, and that's just how people do the dishes. Or at least, the people in my orbit. So when I see that on TV, it's completely normal.
But, I now live in Mexico and everybody uses some variation of your method (again, everybody with a "people I've observed washing the dishes" qualifier). I find it completely bizarre.
I got a miele recently and it uses 1.2kwhr and 12L of water if it's completely packed or down to 6L of water if it's relatively clean dishes. over time I think it uses way less energy and water than manual washing would ever achieve.
On the other hand, I've had a dryer that didn't have a sensor and the timed dry was hard to get right. You could destroy clothes because they would go past dry to 400 degree annihilate.
What you really want is "sensor dry + 10 minutes" or some other offset.
we really need open appliances (with some safety features)
When I bought my house it came with a dryer and indeed the sensory dry never seemed to work.
A year later, I decided to look into it. It occurred to me that there should be an exhaust somewhere on the exterior of the house where the dryer is blowing air out of. I went looking for it, and couldn't find it! This was crazy.
After a lot of searching, I finally found it - the previous owner(s) had blocked the vents - they were covered. I removed the block, and air could flow freely again.
Woah! That sounds really dangerous! I've had to get properly ventilated dryer vents cleaned out a few times. I've been told they can cause fires if they get too clogged.
I have a bosch one and yeah when it stops most clothes are damp feeling. If you trust it and hang it up it's actually quite ok. I just set it to go for 90mins and everything's dry. I do really like it though, the filters are so good I mix all my clothes in one wash and i don't see any lint.
When the measure becomes the goal, it ceases to be a good measure.
The energy saving has become goal, not an efficient outcome.
Dryers can absolutely be made to be more energy efficient! They just need to use reverse-cycle airconditioners to efficiently heat the air and dehumidify it instead of simply using a resistive heater. These are much more complex to make and are expensive.
Blowing lots of cool air through clothes will also dry them eventually, which is cheap and "energy efficient". Of course, this doesn't work well in humid climates and damages clothes. It's probably overall a net loss for the environment, as making new clothes takes a lot more resources than drying them.
> They just need to use reverse-cycle airconditioners to efficiently heat the air and dehumidify it instead of simply using a resistive heater. These are much more complex to make and are expensive.
I've seen these in apartments in Europe; I presume this is because it's a PITA to route a dryer exhaust vent to the outside in a 400-year-old building with 2-foot thick stone walls. Such dryers work well; you just have to dump the accumulated water out of them every so often. But I've never seen one for sale in the US.
Even more impressive are the combination washing machine and drier machines that dry and then drain the accumulated water via the washing machine plumbing without you having to ever empty it.
At least that's what I think my Hotpoint does.... it does get mighty hot and release a rubbery sort of smell when it's drying; my wife can't smell it but to me it stinks.
I have a set in my California home made by Miele. I think they're becoming more common. Bosch also makes them, but I found the Miele's to be more efficient - so much so that they run on a standard 110v outlet instead of 220. Highly recommended.
There are "Condenser" dryers that pump the water into a drain hose or water tub (that you need to empty) instead of into the air - that are still otherwise resistive.
Then there are "Heat Pump" dryers that operate with a compressor the same as a reverse-cycle air conditioner. "Heat Pump" dryers are always "Condenser" dryers.
Tumble drying, just like any normal use, contributes to wear and tear on fabrics and seams. If it takes 45 minutes to get a load of laundry dry with heat, but three hours to get it dry without heat, the wear from tumbling would occur four times as quickly.
Heat may confound this, suggesting an equilibrium that minimizes both wear from excessive heat and from excessive tumbling.
That could be tested rather simple, I think. Clean every (fluff) filter until it shines like new. Then wash 10 brand new t-shirts and dry them, repeat a few times. Check the filters, the more fluff, less shirt. Change procedure according to your needs/results.
"Heat Pump Dryers" which you describe have come way down in price in the last few years. Under $1000 AUD / $715 USD now.
Note for the other commentators that there are also "Condenser" dryers that pump the water into a hose or water tub instead of into the air - that are still otherwise resistive and not "Heat Pump" dryers though "Heat Pump" dryers are always "Condenser" dryers.
If you can hang your clothing in a somewhat ventilated space, it is usually nicer to not completely dry your clothing, but hang it up slightly damp. This saves not only some energy, but gives you less wrinkles.
Also, if you want to iron something, it better be not completly dry or you have to wet it a little bit for ironing.
These are good tips but are likely dependent on the humidity of where you live. Here in the UK, since the air can be so damp, it's difficult to dry clothes without leaving it in direct sunlight for the 3-4 days per year that we get it, particularly the further north you go...
Here in Germany it can be quite wet too, but in a heated room, even clothes directly out of the washer, without running the dryer, would dry over night.
But yes, hanging up damp clothing assumes it would dry reasonably quick :)
This gives me a great idea for an energy-saving air conditioner. It's just a white noise generator chip, a power amp, and a speaker. It'll be super lightweight to boot!
There's a practical reason for this. If you're accustomed to quickly lifting a hefty handset to your ear, then the first time you lift one that's significantly lighter you might bash yourself in the temple with the handset.
(Assuming you are talking about a corded desk phone.)
This is not the reason for the weights. Remove them from the base, and the phone ceases to stay put when you pick up the receiver (which is attached by a springy cord). Remove them from the receiver, and it is not heavy enough to keep the buttons on the hook depressed when hung up.
(Source: I did exactly this in college, with exactly these results.)
The EU actually attempted to do the right thing when regulating dishwashers, and it actually made rules that it has to not just be efficient, but also get the dishes to a certain cleanliness standard.
Either their standard was too lenient or their testing procedure unrealistic though, because my dishwasher has the "EU mode" (which has to be selected by default by law), and then 4 other modes that will actually clean the dishes.
I'm surprised that the manufacturers didn't label the EU mode as such to make clear to customers who they have to thank for that.
Such experiences sour consumers for future eco initiatives (compare e.g. early CFLs and LEDs leading to people hoarding incandescent bulbs and refusing to touch the technology to this day).
> Either their standard was too lenient or their testing procedure unrealistic though, because my dishwasher has the "EU mode" (which has to be selected by default by law), and then 4 other modes that will actually clean the dishes.
In the US these newish dishwashers drive me crazy. They don’t have a heating element on the bottom (efficient!) and anything plastic is absolutely dripping wet, even after it’s been drying overnight (or rather, actively drying for a couple hours and then just sitting there). You’re supposed to top them up CONSTANTLY with Jet Dry (drying agent), but it barely does anything. Parent was spot on in describing the efficiency gains as being a result of not doing the damn job.
It is a surfactant (breaks surface tension). I am not an American and I had to Google it a few months ago to figure out what it was. I think it is avaliable here in New Zealand but I have never ever seen anyone use it.
Yeah, it's called rinse aid elsewhere - I'm surprised anyone still uses it, as multitabs have replaced all the separate detergents used(remember having to add salt to your dishwasher?). In fact my dishwasher has a separate setting that you need to enable if you aren't using multitabs, then it will start consuming rinse aid from a separate container. By default it doesn't use any.
I think this depends on the model as we just had to replace our dish washer and we got one without the heating element and it does a better job drying than our previous one with the heating element.
Also they still make both and the models with the heating element aren't hard to find.
> anything plastic is absolutely dripping wet, even after it’s been drying overnight (or rather, actively drying for a couple hours and then just sitting there)
How is that possible? Even when I hand wash plastic items they'll usually dry within a few hours, at worst overnight.
Because the water stays on these items, the inside of the dishwasher stays very humid, and basically none of the moisture can actually dissipate. So unless you leave the dishwasher cracked half-open after its done, all your plastic items end up still wet the next day. And even if you do leave it half-open, without active circulation, it can still take a very long time to dry items.
This is why I will never ever again have another Bosch dishwasher. I don’t care what Consumer Reports says about it being the quietest dishwasher and therefore the best, it doesn’t fucking get the dishes clean and then properly dry.
I have the exact opposite experience. Got the Bosch Series 6 dishwasher few months ago and it's the best dishwasher I've ever had. Everything is always perfectly clean no matter which program I pick, and if you select "Extra Dry" then everything is actually dry - apparently it's the moisture absorbing zeolite that they are using.
This is more or less what I do -- I leave the door cracked open for an hour or two, and then put away all the actually dry dishes. Everything else goes into the drying rack for a finishing dry.
The biggest problem with this is some of the not dry items have so much water on them they end up getting everything wet again when you even so much as slide out the dishwasher racks.
But mine is a cheap samsung dishwasher provided by the landlord, so I don't expect it to be terribly effective. Mainly I use the dishwasher when I forgot to do the dishes and need to start cooking and need the sink. It's basically an overflow sink for me.
Ahhh, yeah, I do crack the dishwasher open a bit after it's done to let the steam out and get some drier air in there. I -- perhaps incorrectly -- assumed this was a normal thing to do!
I've read this is bad for the seals. Use citric acid (the main component of jetdry) dissolved in water instead. Haven't tested this effect but it's plausible, given that acetic acid is itself a solvent and can diffuse into some rubbers.
I mean, you can legislate/regulate whatever you want, but if that's not realistically (physically and economically) attainable then you'll get wink-wink-nudge-nudge "compliance". See the VW cheating scandal.
They certainly are going the right direction but manufacturers will always find a way to cheat. E.g. my Samsung washer (never again!) has an eco mode that runs 4 1/2h. No idea what it's doing during that time, but I guess it maximises on some criteria that are regulated. It would be absurd to prohibit other modes, so they exist and we use them fairly often as we just want to get laundry done...
On vacuum cleaners - i would hazard a guess that you are in the UK where this has been a major talking point e.g. during the brexit referendum. Truth is that there are plenty of studies showing that new vacuums are as good as old ones and just use less energy. Regulating vacuums was a huge success in that sense. Of course if you get a 40£ tesco vacuum they fared better before they were obliged to try and be efficient, but by a proper brand and you shouldn't notice any difference (except where the brand maybe decided to reduce cost e.g. Dyson has gone downhill for years and recently decided to move HQ to Singapore...).
I know it's anecdata, but in my brand new Bosch dishwasher the "EU" mode is clearly the selected by default ECO mode - and yeah, it takes 3.5 hours, but it uses about 1kWh of energy and only 9 litres of water. And I have never, not even once, had it not clean something perfectly. And I've been using it on burnt oven trays and dishes stained with egg or cheese based meals - it's perfect every time. If I do need dishes back quickly, then I just press "VarioSpeed" and the same program is done in an hour - with the same results.
It must be a quality thing I guess? Cheaper/worse dishwasher will never clean dishes as well as a better one without using least efficient programs.
And what's wrong with vacuums? I got the good old Henry hoover(if you're in UK you might know the brand) just a year ago and it's as good as ever.
I've talk to people who said sometimes the benchmarks/tests are the problem.
For example, I recall there was some computer EPA energy saver test - you ran the test and compared energy used to energy used at idle. Thing is the computer was so efficient that running the test was done mostly in hardware and took very little energy. So the ratio of benchmark energy to idle energy was pretty much 1:1.
We got new toilets at home last year. Without fail, I have to full flush at least twice for solids. They simply aren't strong enough to do the job in one go like the old ones were. Such a waste of water.
Exact opposite experience for me. The traditional toilets in my childhood home (mid-90s) were (still are) slow, took several flushes for solids, and clogged constantly. The modern low-flow toilet in my current home flushes quickly, never needs more than one flush and never clogs.
Anecdata is anecdata. It's most likely that some toilets are just bad and some are good, regardless of flow amount.
Water saving toilets came out (or just were mandated) in the 90s and quickly earned a bad reputation. Over time manufacturers have learned to make good toilets that use less water. Note that water savings in the 90s was a major savings over the toilets of before then, but is more than twice as much water as toilets today, even though good toilets today work better than the best of the 90s.
The modern ones are slightly asymmetrical, and give the water a spiral/swirl. Probably less bend internally also. And maybe teflon-like "anti-stick" coating.
> For example, we had a window air conditioning unit in our previous house that had an efficiency feature. Instead of recirculating the air, it would cool to the temperature you asked for, then set itself a few degrees higher.
Because of humidity that actually might be the right behaviour in some cases-- drop the temp lower then let it go back up a bit to lower the humidity level... but not in others. :)
Yeah we noticed an interesting change in the hybrid Toyota's.
I've had two in my life so far, the Prius and the hybrid Camry. In both of those, the display that shows the battery charge can go from no bars to full bars.
In the NEW versions of the hybrids, they never go to no bars or full bars, and a toyota rep told us they made that software change because new owners were ringing up and asking if they need to do something to stop the car over charging (because it was showing full bars).
This sort of "presumptive tail wagging the dog" bullshit needs to stop. Manufacturers need to show us real data not the Fischer Price data.
Yes real data, but also real controls. Day to day it should do a partial charge, like 90-95% of most cells. There should also be a 'road trip' or similar charge mode that intentionally goes to 100% full charge on everything in concurrence with planning to actually drive for a long distance that might need the full capacity. It should be made more clear that this road trip mode spends battery life.
I mean.. in a hybrid I dont care. I want the car to control it, but I want to know that it's being controlled.
If the car fuel economy is getting worse I will use the data feedback to collate anecdotal evidence to deliver to my mechanic.
I might pay a visit to my mechanic sooner if I see strange behavior. I t might save me money, it might save a life.... but with a fake ass dashboard feeding me bullshit readings It's not in the slightest bit useful.
It is much more efficient for the air conditioner to allow a gap between the target temperature and the trigger temperature. Without that, it just has to run constantly to make sure that it isn't 0.01 degrees warmer than requested.
And that may be what you want it to do, but it's an incredibly pointless waste of energy.
or the vacuum cleaners in the EU...limited to 800 watts, so now I have to spend 2-3 the time it used to take, when a single pass was enough. Why not just allow me to buy a 2-3000W machine and do a single pass? Better for the environment and better for my time
Higher power consumption does not necessarily imply higher suction. Cheap brands did just decrease the motor power and their vacuum cleaners are terrible as a result.
Higher-quality brands like Miele still suck as good as ever, they just use less power thanks to improved designs.
This is a common misunderstanding of dual flush toilets. I don't know if you missed it, but the article was concerned with them leaking as opposed to their designed operation, which in fact does save water.
They "work" because the most common form of evacuation for humans is urination. And that is easily cleared with a lower volume of water. The math is that even if you have to flush three times after you poop to get everything gone, you've saved water because most of the time you only peed and that took less water than it did before. The math checks out.
That said, washing is a different story. That is because washing is a chemical process, not a mechanical one. Regulation has simultaneously cut phosphates[1] (EDIT: per wikipedia the phosphates chelates the water which allows the detergent to be more effective) and reduced water (which is required for chemical action) and as a result the effectiveness of washing units (dishwashers and clothes washers) has in some cases stopped being effective.
Regulation itself has become less effective (in my opinion) because it continues to attack the symptom and not the problem. For example, it would have been just as effective to upgrade waste water treatment plants to remove all phosphates rather than ban them from detergents, however that solution creates a tax burden which can be resisted by a population whereas restricting the sale of products the consumer wants cannot be countered by the consumers directly.
Good points, it makes you wonder how many day to day things could have vastly improved user experience if government efforts were targeted at underlying problems instead of symptoms (borrowing your definitions of those two things).
But plastics recycling comes to mind as a bit of a counter example, where all the effort has been put on dealing with the end problem, when perhaps they should be targeting the symptom (regulating unnecessary plastics and packaging, and taxing the producers instead of the consumers). Currently plastic producers have incentive to generate more plastics, and consumers are left trying to deal with the waste.
Absolutely agree. If the actual cost to use plastic packaging was related to the externalized costs of plastic disposal it would immediately cause change and innovation in packaging.
I've read somewhere that it can create problems for the canalization because more buildups of "fat-balls" because of less water. OTOH, that shouldn't be the case when it leaks, so "shrug"?
I wonder about this with dishwashers. Mine, in the manual, recommends running the hot water in the sink to pre-heat the water in the pipes "for best results." How much worse would its energy & water efficiency ratings be if that were included?
The last two dryers I had ignored what you set and used their "dryness detection." It works ok for most things, but larger things like towels and sheets are still damp. Run the dryer a second time and it auto shuts off within literally a few minutes. Now the towels are mildewy I haven't found a lot of options.
Likewise, most of the plastic bag alternatives are worse because they would have to be reused a ridiculous number of times to be better, and are often actually harder to reuse than the large plastic grocery bags (e.g. https://dontthinktheworst.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/aldi.j..., not to be confused with the truly single-use bags common in the US) that they replaced.
The point of reusable bags is not to save the miniscule amount of energy it takes to make a plastic bag. It's to keep plastic bags out of the waste stream where they end up clogging rivers and take thousands of years to decompose.
It's the law of unintended consequences. I used cloth bags thinking I was doing awesome. Then I found an article saying I had to use them 1000 times to equal the same carbon footprint of a plastic bag. (Not the article I'm linking below, can't find it.)
I've also been to countries where these bags make it into the ocean and become micro plastics. As with all things there are pros and cons. Most of our civilization has cons for the environment, but from what I can tell the best situation for most people who's garbage makes it to a landfill is to use mult-reuse recycled plastic bags.
Being as I've already made the commitment to the cloth bags I just have to keep using them until they hit their 131st use, then keep going.
The carbon footprint of making a cloth or plastic bag is so insignificant. Just walk instead of driving once and you have offset a lifetime of bags.
Since Australia banned single use plastic bags at supermarkets I have not seen a single bag floating around the street which used to be a common sight.
I couldn't care less about the footprint. Every time you see a pile of trash on the side of the road, in a river, on a branch, it will 9/10 times involve a ripped up plastic bag caught on something sharp. These things are tumble weeds in urban areas. It's a serious source of litter that is nonexistent if you have a bag you need to use next time.
One of the cloth shopping bags I use was inherited from my grandpa, 24 years ago. I'm not joking, it's a sturdy cotton canvas bag that has lasted perhaps 30 years of shopping at this point. Another bag I've had since 2009, which I know because I got it from a nutrition experiment I participated in.
They get washed once in a while when they inevitably get dirty and I can repair them quite easily if a stitch finally fails or they get tears, which hasn't happened yet.
People need to keep and use what they already have instead of lazily buying more new stuff all the time.
I don't know, but even if they end up in a landfill, they still take a long time to break down. If they take longer to decompose than their life cycle, there's going to be an ever-increasing number of plastic bags in the waste. That's clearly not sustainable.
Say it takes 1 year (probably less) from when a bag is created to when it gets thrown away. After it gets thrown away, it takes 100-1000 years to completely decompose. That means bags are entering the landfill faster than they are "leaving" via decomposition. That's going to be a problem. After enough time we'd just be like a malicious or poorly-designed AI that covered the Earth in plastic bags rather than paper clips.
In general Europe isn't big on land fills. Space isn't nearly as plentiful as in the US, which makes just burning any unrecycled waste a much more attractive alternative.
> Say it takes 1 year (probably less) from when a bag is created to when it gets thrown away. After it gets thrown away, it takes 100-1000 years to completely decompose. That means bags are entering the landfill faster than they are "leaving" via decomposition.
Supposing for the sake of the argument you're right, that means we need enough landfill space for 500 years' worth of plastic bags. Is that really so much space that it's a problem?
Up until 2018 most trash was exported to China. They stopped importing trash. Germany for example is exporting ~750.000t of plastic waste a year to Asia. And the rate is increasing.
Instead of banning plastic bags, there should be a 5 cent returnable deposit on them. This works wonders for getting aluminum cans into the proper waste stream.
We’ll design our way through this. It reminds me of the introduction of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). The first batches didn’t reach their efficiency goals and burned out faster than expected, which really sucked because of the mercury content. Now 10 years later? Go to Home Depot and the cheapest options are LEDs, they last forever, and they’re free of heavy metals. (Source: someone tried to dissuade me from entering the energy industry by telling the story of the CFL in 2010).
I have a similar experience. LEDs bulbs have a problem getting enough heat dissipation in the space afforded by legacy form factors, and to make matters worse they have to fit a power supply board into the bulb (which usually fails before the LEDs fail)
They should, but I'm not sure they do - unless the bathtub curve is extremely shallow. It's not like I have a 100 bulbs in my house such that 3-5 failures is acceptable.
I'm of the opinion all bulbs say 10 years because no one remembers when they put them in so can't claim on that claim. Definitely think I've had some fail sooner, while others do go the distance. Maybe I need to keep a log.
This is purely anecdotal, but for me every toilet I use in the UK feels like the result of the local plumber trying to invent the toilet for the first time. So many varieties, so many weird ways of getting it to work, most of them failing to do their simple job. Mechanisms plastered behind the wall, using pumps instead of gravity fed tanks, little waterfalls in the bowl that circulate water instead of flush it down. Square bowls, unreachable toilet paper, even pumps to get the waste water out! I don't understand.
Feels like a solved problem in the USA, where a $100 toilet will use 1.3 gallons (~5L) of water to flush away whatever will fit down the tube. And do it through a gravity fed system that works without power and has about two moving parts that are easily accessible and repairable by any dummy that is using the toilet at the time.[1]
Is this a regulatory thing or a cultural thing? I've had so many issues with UK toilets. Why is this a problem.
I think you've just been unlucky. I was born and raised in the UK and have never seen such 'pump' systems, except where the toilet is in a basement and a pump is required to move the water up to the sewage line.
The in-wall cisterns may look like a maintenance nightmare, but on Grohe products (I assume other manufacturers are the same but don't have experience) you can open the flush plate and easily take out every single part through the 20x30cm hole. It's actually easier to repair than a traditional toilet as you don't require any tools, other than a flat screwdriver to turn off the water valve.
I could rant all day about poor habits of the construction industry in the UK, but toilets aren't even in my top 10.
Interesting, also UK here, never really noticed problems with our toilets on the scale you are describing. There are some that annoy me because you need to push the flush a couple times (pump action), but fairly rare.
Whereas with US toilets, I just don’t get them. The low flat bowl is weird, discourages peeing standing up, and then the design of most public and business toilets with those massive gaps on the doors, giving you no privacy... what’s with that?
Haha, yes the difference in the bathroom stalls is real. I've had a few hilarious conversations about these issues over beers in a pub. Personally, I think the stalls in the US are as they are to discourage problematic behavior inside the bathroom stalls (vandalism, drugs, and worse), and it's just good etiquette to not look through the cracks. Having an actual little room to yourself with a full door in a public toilet in the UK is nice.
I just installed a dual flush toilet and the first thing it does is start tricking water down the bowl. The instructions called to cut two rods inside the cistern if this happens. I'm too scared to do this with a new toilet, and i don't get charged for water where i live, so i left it trickling.
It replaced a 100 year old pull chain toilet with that with a copper cistern. it sadly was at the end of its life. there's no way the fiddly plastic parts in the new toilet will last 100 years, let alone 20.
Plastic will often last longer than copper in water. Often water is mildly corrosive to copper and so copper will wear out in 100 year while plastic will still be fine.
What will wear out in your new toilet is the rubber seals. Same as the old one.
> Older cisterns tend to use a siphon system, which works by pushing water upwards until it reaches a point at which it can flow into the bowl. Because that point is above the waterline when the toilet is not being flushed, the system is less likely to develop the same sort of leak.
That does not sound like the typical American home toilet. I don't think I've ever seen a toilet using that kind of siphon system, I'm having trouble imagining how it works.
Why don't we use that kind in the USA?
I'd guess ordinary toilets in the USA are the worst of both worlds then, no water-saving small-flush, plus leak-prone design.
Steve Mould recently published a video[1] that actually shows a cross-section of one of these siphon mechanisms. I hadn't seen it before either but apparently it's quite common.
What I misunderstands is that Steve Mould video siphon support dual flush... thus the issue isn't whether it's dual flush or not but how it was made, which apply to both dual flush and single flush system.
The problem with resource efficiency is diminishing returns and serviceability. We’ve reached a point now where the life expectancy of every appliance is now lower, but we say it’s a good thing because people upgrade to more efficient appliances. I refuse to believe throwing hundreds of pounds of metal in the scrap heap (not to mention the production and shipping costs) is better than being a few percent less efficient.
We need laws around serviceability and warranty just as much as resource usage. How about every device should work for 10 years, no exceptions.
I refuse to believe we can make cars with 10 year, 100k warranties but not toilets or refrigerators. Ever try to get an appliance fixed? You’re basically paying a guy to come out and tell you a circuit board needs replaced for 300 dollars or to just buy a new device, btw that estimate costs 100 dollars.
It’s ridiculous, especially since it hurts regular people way more than the profits help anyone.
Practically every leased unit I've occupied over multiple decades has had a leaky toilet at some point during my occupancy, and none of them were dual-flush models. Had I not corrected them myself or notified the landlord, they would continuously waste water, no big surprise.
This is a simple maintenance issue affecting every western flush toilet design I've encountered.
I don't understand why a negligent owner/tenant problem is being portrayed as a failure of water-saving flush toilet designs. Are we now expecting plumbing fixtures to disable themselves when in need of simple servicing? Is that the world we want?
How about we stop wasting potable fresh water on flushing toilets instead.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadDidn't look like anyone cleaned them, ever. But they worked perfectly heh
Seems this cluelessness is increasing in all areas of life though - car maintenance, household maintenance, any sort of maintenance really!!
Good job there's YouTube to educate me on all things.
https://www.vivasanitary.co.uk/news/how-a-dual-flush-syphon-...
I think I had one cistern that was siphon based (guessing based on needing to push the button hard) but had two buttons for different sizes of flow. Then again, it would often fail in a way that made me think it wasn’t siphon based.
It's also bad ux because you need to do more work for the most common operation.
> Until 1 January 2001, the use of siphon-type cisterns was mandatory in the UK[12] to avoid the potential waste of water by millions of leaking toilets with flapper valves, but due to EU harmonisation the regulations have changed.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet#Siphon-flush_me...
This point from the article which comes further down in the page explains -
>> The majority of them use the drop valve system, which sits at the bottom of the cistern and opens to allow the water to flow out when the flush is pressed. Debris and other issues can cause the mechanism to fail to close, meaning water continually flows from the cistern and into the bowl.
>> Older cisterns tend to use a siphon system, which works by pushing water upwards until it reaches a point at which it can flow into the bowl. Because that point is above the waterline when the toilet is not being flushed, the system is less likely to develop the same sort of leak.
There is a bigger problem here though, which is that manufacturers seem to have no incentive to develop leakproof designs since they aren't paying for failures, and there isn't strict enough regulation on these products.
Also I do wonder if a scale preventer injector (they go online like a water filter) would be more or less expensive than the toilet parts?
The US sensibly learning from the UK just produced an improved version.
I am about to try siphoning.
https://www.amazon.com/VP-Racing-Fuels-3512-Motorsport/dp/B0...
Honest confusion:
Does the big button correspond to a big amount of water? Or is it for a little water, with a big button because this is the most commonly used button?
I had one where the big button was for more water. Now I have one that the little button is for less frequent use.
We have a least one leaking system like this in our house - and it's in a nice tiled wall so doing maintenance is like keyhole surgery. From what I've seen so far I'm pretty sure both buttons on our toilets do the same thing (mind you they are the same size).
That is the main reason why I went with plain old toilet without embedding it in tiles. I've seen too many half-working embedded toilets at my friends' houses to have one too, I prefer to be able to easily repair it myself when required.
from what i've seen, that's by design. you push both buttons at the same time to get the double flush.
to me, the water-saving option that makes the most sense is a vacuum toilet along with a greywater system and a biotank for recycling the waste locally (though it is more expensive of course).
How much fuel alone is used checking the biotank? They have to be checked quarterly once you get the bureaucrats involved.
Expense is a good approximation for resources.
The point of the post is also simplicity over moving parts.
Since on some designs the smaller button cannot be pressed separately and therefore corresponds to a big flush, since both parts of the button are depressed at once; it stands to reason small will always be bigger flush, which I rationalise as urination being the more common operation and therefore deserving the larger button in order for the user to press more easily. However it's actually the case that big is usually the larger flush, which suggests there's some magic button size ratio at which their meaning crosses over.
I think this goes to show how difficult UX is.
- Complexity is bad, especially in plumbing. I also refuse electronics between me and waste removal.
- It's confusing.
- I don't think the difference in water usage matters _at all_. Talk to me about irrigation (both urban and agricultural) instead.
When going out and using such horrible devices I'm quite certain I pick wrong more than half the time.
Yes. And the insane amounts of water leaked from our ancient pipes
https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/hospital-water-ta...
I guess you could read the manual, print out the method of operation and put it on the wall/door/wherever.
I assumed that you were supposed to push both buttons down if you wanted more water.
I don't really understand them though, so who knows.
Very convenient, except for having to explain to guests.
Your hands are at their dirtiest when you go to flush the toilet. The button design seems very difficult to clean, particularly the wall of the button hole.
In most public restrooms, I kick the lever with my foot to flush the toilet. Not possible with the recessed button design.
It's really a kind of recurring issue, where something is superficially "solved" (sounds good on the surface), but actually ends up making things worse in practice.
How many people have have lived / are living with absolutely terrible light and usage ergonomics (and will do so for years more) because of that stillborn "technology" ?
The kicker is that after 20 years of bad lighting environment, you have a local mercury disposal issue, regardless of how much mercury might have been saved in total emissions over the bulbs lifetime.
Anyone who says differently either uses weird light bulbs, which is a valid excuse, or has a closet full of hoarded tungsten bulbs they wish they could sell, which isn't.
Incandescents were banned, and CFLs were heavily promoted and subsidized to replace them.
Meanwhile, along came a superior technology, ten times as energy efficient, longer lasting, and with a broader range of light which is at least as good.
So all that heavy-handed regulation produced, was an era of inferior light, a mercury disposal problem, and the inability to acquire incandescents for applications such as heating, which they're excellent for. Sometimes a lot of heat and a bit of light is what you want, and most of those devices have an Edison socket.
To head off one objection: any technically competent person could have taken a look at the trajectory of LED technology and said "hold on, CFLs suck, how about we just hang back and wait five to ten years?". LED bulbs were hardly a black swan.
Yeah, that seems about par for the course for this kind of regulation. Sometimes a blind cat catches a dead mouse.
It didn't eliminate any technologies, either. I can still buy incandescents if I insist... but why would I?
My father had a really hard time getting them for an egg incubator a while ago. A problem that was solved by replacing the incubator (more trash).
But that's just anecdote. This being HN, I look forward to the reply which will shortly set me straight on the subject.
Differently from taxes and subsides, prohibiting products is a really impactful action for a government to make, it's not something to be done lightly. And we have had a fashion of really frivolous environment legislation lately doing exactly that kind of thing.
A 40 watt oven bulb, yes, but a 125 watt like you'd use in an egg incubator, reptile cage, or EZ Bake?
What prescribed CFLs were heavy subsidies, not the ban. CFLs were being given away by a lot of state governments. It was a nice kickback to importers, but I'd have trouble being convinced it did much for LED manufacturers.
Around here (Washington state), these 65W equivalent LED floods were subsidized to the tune of about $2 or $3 about five years ago: https://www.greenliteusa.com/DATA/DOCUMENTPDF/35_en.pdf At least I assume they're subsidized by the state; I don't see how they could be that cheap otherwise. They weren't giving them away, but I couldn't argue with the price.
I bought a couple dozen, and out of the half-dozen I installed at the time and another half-dozen I've installed since, none have failed. I can tell they aren't incandescent by aiming an IR camera at them, or by watching the phosphor decay after turning them off at night, but that's about it.
Seriously come on, a 100 W Incandescent uses $25 worth of electricity over it's life. Where a fluorescent to LED unit uses $3 over 2000 hours. And lasts 5-10 times longer.
As CFLs? Nowhere near.
Early LED bulbs had a horrible color rendering index, too. They made things look weird.
Cheap LED bulbs have the same reliability problem as cheap CFLs, too. They both skimp on the heat dissipation. The life of semiconductiors (in the control circuitry, for CFLs) halves with each ten degree Celsius rise in temperature.
Cheap bulbs use cheap, low-spec components close to the edge of their ratings and treat them badly. Irrespective of the base light-producing technology.
The mercury-in-CFLs problem is as overhyped as the asbestos problem (there are hundreds of thousands of miles of asbestos water pipes carrying drinking water) and the idea that plastics are bad for the environment. (In most cases, they're far better than equivalently priced alternatives.)
Finally, I had CFLs in my house for over ten years before LED substitutes became available. Now that LEDs are cheap enough and good enough, I'm using them. But from the late '90s to about 2012, CFLs were it.
When we moved in, I replaced all of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs because we were in that brief period where they were legitimately the best option due to being good enough and cheap enough compared to incandescent. Good LED bulbs (Cree) were still expensive enough that I would have had to drop a few hundred dollars to outfit the whole house.
Good LED bulbs are now common and cheap, and I will replace dead CFLs with them today but for now the existing CFLs work fine and only use marginally more power than LEDs.
As for disposal, I crush the bulbs in a paper bag and then huff the mercury fumes for recreation.
I take exception to this. Bad LED bulbs are common and cheap. Your average $5 bulb from the big box has about 3 common failure modes, all of which are exacerbated by heat. I haven't been able to buy a decent LED bulb at any brick and mortar retailer in years.
Meanwhile my 20 year old sylvania LED bulbs which are basically giant heatsinks all still work great. Now you know why nobody makes those anymore.
At this point, I shop for LEDs at IKEA. Tad more expensive, but they don't break after couple of months because someone soldered them on their knee in the middle of a Shenzhen marketplace (been there, seen that), making them overheat and eventually pop something off the circuit board.
And then I know people who got so pissed at LED bulbs they switched back to incandescent. Because turns out that the ban on incandescent bulbs in my country worked for about a year or two, before the stores got flooded with boxes of these, each with a label telling you it's not suitable for use at home, but only in storage buildings, etc. Which got the sellers off the hook, and also got the manufacturers off the hook for quality issues. My mother had a brief moment of weakness, but after two of these "legal" incandescents literally exploded over our heads, shattered glass flying everywhere, I convinced her to go back to buying LEDs.
Seriously though, how do you dispose of them? Save the mercury forever? Is there even a noticeable amount of mercury in them?
Of the CFLs I installed over the years I've had mixed results. Some are 15 years old and still going strong. Others I have had to replace more than once, although usually with LEDs now. The LEDs have mixed results too, with them being far more susceptible to heat failure in enclosed fixtures. Annoyingly they're usually built around a number of LED elements wired in series, so if any one element goes bad the whole bulb goes dim or fails entirely.
I know people used to complain a lot about CFLs being flickery and having bad color balance, but I only ever had one pair of bulbs (from a two pack) that were really bad in that regard. The pack I bought from WalMart for reasons that are lost to time. They were truly atrocious, one was orangey and the other more blue, and if you looked out the side of your eye you could see the flicker. They also died within a year thankfully, even though both were in well ventilated fixtures. My final point is that I've had much worse luck with CFLs mounted upside down (with the base pointing up). Except for the Wal*Mart specials and one enclosed outdoor fixture I think all of the ones I have installed right side up are still working.
You shouldn't do that. Mercury is very dangerous, and it takes so long to clear from your body that acute exposure often results in lifelong poisoning.
Though cremation is an option as long if the family agrees to huff the fumes. That's recycling!
> When we moved in, I replaced all of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs
I did that when I bought a house in 2014. Then when I built a house in 2018, I did all LEDs.
Huh? You make it sound like they wore out the first house and then disposed of it. Your comparison of moving to worrying about light bulbs seems totally misplaced.
Honestly, we thought we'd stay in our first house longer.
As far as house #2 goes: It was new construction, and wherever bulbs were provided, they were LED. We even have some LED fixtures where there's no bulb. (Meaning, it's assumed that the fixture will work so long that there is no "bulb" for me to change. When it stops working I need to replace the entire fixture instead of a bulb.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ7M01jV058
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury
That one did cover the changes in her brain and behavior until the point of death, and the intensity of the delivery adds a lot of drama to what is otherwise a clinically dry recitation of symptoms and effects.
You don't forget it too quickly, and you take extra precautions with all forms of toxic compounds (even if you hopefully are not dealing with dimethylmercury!)
I remember when we switched my old workplace from fluorescents to LEDs everybody at complained for weeks about headaches and sore eyes.
What incentive do I really have to use other bulbs?
It depends on where you live.
If you're next door to the Three Gorges Dam or the Itaipu Dam, perhaps your hydro power cost is insignificant. But for most of the world the cost of electricity (over the life of a bulb) to power a 40W incandescent bulb compared to a 10W LED bulb far exceeds the price difference between them.
https://www.hydropower.org/maps/worldhydropowerstatistics
https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy
https://www.kfw.de/stories/environment/climate-change/intera...
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/09/these-3-maps-show-wha...
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Price_co...
40W incandescent, $1 cost, 1,000 hours life. 10W LED, $5 cost, 10,000 hours life. Electricity $0.12 per kWh, my cost is about USA average.
In 10,000 hours of use, incandescent cost is $10 for bulbs, $48 for electricity. Total $58.
In 10,000 hours of use, LED cost is $5 for bulb, $12 for electricity, Total $17.
$17 is much less than $58.
In reality a 40W equivalent LED would use closer to 8W than 10W, and would last longer than 10,000 hours, and costs less than $5, so the comparison result would be skewed even more toward LED.
Now what happens if you live in Germany. Electricity is €0.31. Which is 3x what I'm paying. So now the electricity comparison is €124 for incandescent, €31 for LED.
I really don't understand this incessant need to convince people they should switch to different lightbulbs, when my choice in lightbulbs in no way impacts anyone else. I live in a place with 100% renewable power. As far as i'm concerned, the simplicity and lack of chemicals in the bulbs I choose, outweighs the potential energy savings as far as that goes.
My choices come down to what I prefer and what I feel my impacts are based on those choices. I've thought it out and this is what I choose and I shall keep on doing so until I no longer can and the lobbying has forced incandescents entirely off the market.
Besides that, they are under 10 dollar now, and as stated elsewhere lasting longer, using much less energy, and depending on the model/brand give acceptable light. Though there is trash on the market also.
Have you ever heard of the story of Sam Vimes boots? https://moneywise.com/a/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfair...
Or much older "Wer billig kauft, kauft zweimal!"(Who buys cheap, buys two times!), you get what you pay for, and so on.
Maybe it doesn't impact you so much because energy is cheap where you live, so you don't (need to) care/think about it(for now).
OTOH I indeed don't really need them anymore (maybe as a temporary spare) because meanwhile I also upgraded everything to warmwhite(2700k) retrofit filaments, which saves much energy and doesn't flicker at all.
They are Osram(by name only, meanwhile chinese owned) "PARATHOM Retrofit CLASSIC A" and "B". No smarts, no frills, no dimming. Just the right light. I'm using the clear ones from 2.5W to 8W. Compared to anything I've tried before they are excellent, and the first ones meanwhile about 3 years old? None of them broke so far.
[1] https://www.ledvance.com/professional/products/lamps/led-lam...
How about "good enough" technology, and by "good enough", I mean something that's better than incandescent.
Everyone has their metric, mine is how often I need to replace a bulb. I am a lazy person, I don't want to think about things if I can avoid it, see.
In my experience, CFL bulbs were bright enough, and lasted much longer than incandescent ones.
Plus, they are way less of a fire hazard, and I don't have to worry about scorching my hand on a desk lamp.
Environmentally, they are a disaster though.
Regarding the environmental disaster, why would you think that, given that the same technology was in use in much larger volumes since the 70ies or even earlier in commercial settings, offices and even homes? Lacking only the compactness, requiring external "ballast" and starters.
When I was young we had a large ring, maybe 40 to 50cm diameter under the ceiling in the kitchen, and I disliked it even then for looking "fugly" somehow. Oh, and the ring never lasted more than about half a year also :)
Also, each bulb contains only a few mg of mercury. Tuna has ~0.3 ppm of mercury, so if you eat two pounds of tuna then you'll ingest about 0.3 mg of mercury. I don't think you'll ingest more than 10% of mercury even if you break a CFL, so roughly speaking, "breaking a CFL" is the same order of magnitude as "two pounds of tuna" - doesn't sound that dangerous to me.
They're measuring flush volume, when they care about water used over time.
Those toilets were for people who bought toilets.
Don't get me started with 'high efficiency' dishwashers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
(Ignore the politics at the end)
The more surface area your app has, the more opportunity for problems.
---
Edit: another one - I wanted to ensure that I lost no data, so I added a retry function, but it went wild and caused a self denial of service, leading to lost data. (Again, happened to 'a friend')
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/feat...
It's a funny old world, isn't it, when you can't make a simple statement of fact without someone popping up and saying "not in my neck of the woods"? And their neck of the woods is half a world away probably. Joys of the internets...
Since so much complicated software is being rammed into devices and the consumer is ever accustomed to increased ease of use and lack of mental engagement with the technology, they won't ever invest time to maintain the technology that they have in front of them, since understanding it will involve aeons of time due to the systems' complexity and/or lack of documentation. You're then at the mercy of the provider of the technology, who may or may not decide to maintain it at a whim.
I think this is particularly true in cars, where great strides have been made in engine management and "smart" sensors etc. but where the infotainment systems and general car "features" are reliant on activation by the manufacturer, or an on-going service that the manufacturer provides. If they ever decide to stop the service, a feature of the car is unusable. It's like BMW's horrible idea to "activate" features of the car based on a subscription service.
I have a 1972 Beetle that will carry on running for decades due to its simplicity; I also have a 2016 new Beetle that I suspect will have a far shorter lifespan. There are buttons on the steering wheel that won't do anything without paying VW for the privilege; Android Auto is also not enabled here in the UK without paying £200 for the privilege, and the VW garages I have been to in order to enable haven't succeeded in doing it, or believe it isn't available on the car....
It's like cloud computing for cars, which is short-sighted in future usability. This mentality has affected everything, from music and film availability, to apps and all technology, which is increasingly in every part of life.
It's insane. Everything is far far more complicated than it has ever been in human history, yet is presented as a simple service to attain, so the adoption of short-term usability grows. It isn't an improvement at all.
For example, we had a window air conditioning unit in our previous house that had an efficiency feature. Instead of recirculating the air, it would cool to the temperature you asked for, then set itself a few degrees higher. So it cooled down to the right temperature, and then just changed the temperature so it wouldn't remain as cool as you wanted. THat's not more efficient — that's just not doing its damn job.
Likewise, our dryer has settings that amount to "almost dry," "not actually dry," and "can't even tell you put it in the dryer." Who are these settings for? When I dry my clothes, I need them to be completely dry every time. I can't hang a shirt that's still damp in the closet or it will get all musty. WTF?
These are actually useful if you're ironing your clothes, which, admittedly, is not very popular these days. But yes, there should be "completely dry" option too.
I used to live in an apartment with a landlord-installed $200 cheapie dishwashers that never worked.
Then I moved to an apartment without a dishwasher, so I bought a $500 one that I could plug into the sink. Worked much better.
After that apartment, I moved into one that had the same dishwasher that I bought, but installed. Worked great! Then I moved into another apartment with a cheapie dishwasher that was so loud I'd only run it when I left.
Anyway, the lesson is that you need to be a savvy consumer... And skip the cheapest models!
New toilets are awful.. just terrible.
New models can be good!
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/the-best-dishwash...
They have otherwise nearly identical models with physical buttons. If I were buying it over again, I would definitely get one of those.
But the Ikea dishwasher we bought, it was loud but it worked
I lived in a studio apartment with this kind of dishwasher for five years.
I refused to run it since it was so obnoxious.
Now I just treat the dishwasher as a drying rack. Works great.
I'm not sure that's a good idea.
I had a dishwasher that had the failure described in the article linked below. The electronics circuitry (top of door) caught fire. Opening the door didn't stop the smoke, and also caused water to spew uncontrollably into the kitchen.
Fortunately I made a quick dash out to the garage and turned off the breaker so there was no damage to the kitchen.
But if I wasn't home .... what would have happened? If we were all sleeping upstairs while the fire was downstairs .... what would have happened?
https://www.consumerreports.org/dishwashers/whirlpool-settle...
When my old one failed to drain and filled up, I was amazed at how much water came out of it when I shimmy'd it to the back door and released the kraken over the back garden. It was like a tsunami.
1: https://www.consumerreports.org/dishwashers/energy-efficient...
0. use aerating faucet head to increase spread of water.
1. Short splash of cold water to remove stuck-on food, letting it sit if needed.
2. Wash with detergent on wet sponge, no added water.
3. Rinse with cold water, low water volume, with stacked dishes below faucet so that water from the rinse is rinsing dishes below as well.
I've never measured how much water is used, but I would think that it's fairly competitive against a dishwasher.
That's like just over a minute of the tap being on full blast for an aerated tap.
I am sure you could compete with that if you really tried, but from what I've seen a lot of people simply leave the tap on for the majority of the time they are washing the dishes.
Also, an additional difference between handwashing and using a dishwasher is the environmental impact of the manufacturing of the dishwasher, if the main concern is the environment. If the main reason is reducing work, then the dishwasher comes out ahead.
Finally, there has been very few times where it has been necessary for me to use hot water instead of cold. Unless I had burned the food, almost everything will come off after a good soak and scrub, even in cold water.
I have an unusual interest in this topic. I grew up in the UK, and that's just how people do the dishes. Or at least, the people in my orbit. So when I see that on TV, it's completely normal.
But, I now live in Mexico and everybody uses some variation of your method (again, everybody with a "people I've observed washing the dishes" qualifier). I find it completely bizarre.
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/27/791707318/trump-vs-toilets-an...
What you really want is "sensor dry + 10 minutes" or some other offset.
we really need open appliances (with some safety features)
A year later, I decided to look into it. It occurred to me that there should be an exhaust somewhere on the exterior of the house where the dryer is blowing air out of. I went looking for it, and couldn't find it! This was crazy.
After a lot of searching, I finally found it - the previous owner(s) had blocked the vents - they were covered. I removed the block, and air could flow freely again.
And suddenly the sensor dry worked perfectly.
If yours is not working, do some debugging.
The energy saving has become goal, not an efficient outcome.
Dryers can absolutely be made to be more energy efficient! They just need to use reverse-cycle airconditioners to efficiently heat the air and dehumidify it instead of simply using a resistive heater. These are much more complex to make and are expensive.
Blowing lots of cool air through clothes will also dry them eventually, which is cheap and "energy efficient". Of course, this doesn't work well in humid climates and damages clothes. It's probably overall a net loss for the environment, as making new clothes takes a lot more resources than drying them.
I've seen these in apartments in Europe; I presume this is because it's a PITA to route a dryer exhaust vent to the outside in a 400-year-old building with 2-foot thick stone walls. Such dryers work well; you just have to dump the accumulated water out of them every so often. But I've never seen one for sale in the US.
At least that's what I think my Hotpoint does.... it does get mighty hot and release a rubbery sort of smell when it's drying; my wife can't smell it but to me it stinks.
Clever equipment though.
https://www.abt.com/product/140010/Bosch-24-800-Series-White...
Then there are "Heat Pump" dryers that operate with a compressor the same as a reverse-cycle air conditioner. "Heat Pump" dryers are always "Condenser" dryers.
I've read the opposite, that heat can damage clothes.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990831080157.h...
Heat may confound this, suggesting an equilibrium that minimizes both wear from excessive heat and from excessive tumbling.
Note for the other commentators that there are also "Condenser" dryers that pump the water into a hose or water tub instead of into the air - that are still otherwise resistive and not "Heat Pump" dryers though "Heat Pump" dryers are always "Condenser" dryers.
So I use the heat I warm my room with the extra airflow of the fans works well with my apartment
Unless the measure is page-load time, in which case it's a damn good measure.
Also, if you want to iron something, it better be not completly dry or you have to wet it a little bit for ironing.
I know this because long ago when we retired our old cheapie house phone, I took it apart and it had two lead weights in the base and handset.
To have a similar "heft" compared to the old "ma bell" phones - which are made of actual durable materials - they removed lightness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfGN7bfohms&t=13m51s
This is not the reason for the weights. Remove them from the base, and the phone ceases to stay put when you pick up the receiver (which is attached by a springy cord). Remove them from the receiver, and it is not heavy enough to keep the buttons on the hook depressed when hung up.
(Source: I did exactly this in college, with exactly these results.)
Either their standard was too lenient or their testing procedure unrealistic though, because my dishwasher has the "EU mode" (which has to be selected by default by law), and then 4 other modes that will actually clean the dishes.
I'm surprised that the manufacturers didn't label the EU mode as such to make clear to customers who they have to thank for that.
Such experiences sour consumers for future eco initiatives (compare e.g. early CFLs and LEDs leading to people hoarding incandescent bulbs and refusing to touch the technology to this day).
Vacuum cleaners are the EU's most recent victim.
In the US these newish dishwashers drive me crazy. They don’t have a heating element on the bottom (efficient!) and anything plastic is absolutely dripping wet, even after it’s been drying overnight (or rather, actively drying for a couple hours and then just sitting there). You’re supposed to top them up CONSTANTLY with Jet Dry (drying agent), but it barely does anything. Parent was spot on in describing the efficiency gains as being a result of not doing the damn job.
THANK YOU, I had no idea why my dish washer seems to go through jetdry like it was water!
Also they still make both and the models with the heating element aren't hard to find.
How is that possible? Even when I hand wash plastic items they'll usually dry within a few hours, at worst overnight.
Never ever again.
The biggest problem with this is some of the not dry items have so much water on them they end up getting everything wet again when you even so much as slide out the dishwasher racks.
But mine is a cheap samsung dishwasher provided by the landlord, so I don't expect it to be terribly effective. Mainly I use the dishwasher when I forgot to do the dishes and need to start cooking and need the sink. It's basically an overflow sink for me.
On vacuum cleaners - i would hazard a guess that you are in the UK where this has been a major talking point e.g. during the brexit referendum. Truth is that there are plenty of studies showing that new vacuums are as good as old ones and just use less energy. Regulating vacuums was a huge success in that sense. Of course if you get a 40£ tesco vacuum they fared better before they were obliged to try and be efficient, but by a proper brand and you shouldn't notice any difference (except where the brand maybe decided to reduce cost e.g. Dyson has gone downhill for years and recently decided to move HQ to Singapore...).
It must be a quality thing I guess? Cheaper/worse dishwasher will never clean dishes as well as a better one without using least efficient programs.
And what's wrong with vacuums? I got the good old Henry hoover(if you're in UK you might know the brand) just a year ago and it's as good as ever.
For example, I recall there was some computer EPA energy saver test - you ran the test and compared energy used to energy used at idle. Thing is the computer was so efficient that running the test was done mostly in hardware and took very little energy. So the ratio of benchmark energy to idle energy was pretty much 1:1.
The older style toilets I remember as a kid just worked. One flush would properly and fully clear out anything that didn't clog the darned thing.
The new toilets barely flush properly with two flushes, and I still wonder how much is left behind in the backwash.
Anecdata is anecdata. It's most likely that some toilets are just bad and some are good, regardless of flow amount.
Because of humidity that actually might be the right behaviour in some cases-- drop the temp lower then let it go back up a bit to lower the humidity level... but not in others. :)
In the NEW versions of the hybrids, they never go to no bars or full bars, and a toyota rep told us they made that software change because new owners were ringing up and asking if they need to do something to stop the car over charging (because it was showing full bars).
This sort of "presumptive tail wagging the dog" bullshit needs to stop. Manufacturers need to show us real data not the Fischer Price data.
If the car fuel economy is getting worse I will use the data feedback to collate anecdotal evidence to deliver to my mechanic.
I might pay a visit to my mechanic sooner if I see strange behavior. I t might save me money, it might save a life.... but with a fake ass dashboard feeding me bullshit readings It's not in the slightest bit useful.
If you're only measuring energy usage, then actually doing the job is irrelevant.
Higher-quality brands like Miele still suck as good as ever, they just use less power thanks to improved designs.
They "work" because the most common form of evacuation for humans is urination. And that is easily cleared with a lower volume of water. The math is that even if you have to flush three times after you poop to get everything gone, you've saved water because most of the time you only peed and that took less water than it did before. The math checks out.
That said, washing is a different story. That is because washing is a chemical process, not a mechanical one. Regulation has simultaneously cut phosphates[1] (EDIT: per wikipedia the phosphates chelates the water which allows the detergent to be more effective) and reduced water (which is required for chemical action) and as a result the effectiveness of washing units (dishwashers and clothes washers) has in some cases stopped being effective.
Regulation itself has become less effective (in my opinion) because it continues to attack the symptom and not the problem. For example, it would have been just as effective to upgrade waste water treatment plants to remove all phosphates rather than ban them from detergents, however that solution creates a tax burden which can be resisted by a population whereas restricting the sale of products the consumer wants cannot be countered by the consumers directly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphates_in_detergent
But plastics recycling comes to mind as a bit of a counter example, where all the effort has been put on dealing with the end problem, when perhaps they should be targeting the symptom (regulating unnecessary plastics and packaging, and taxing the producers instead of the consumers). Currently plastic producers have incentive to generate more plastics, and consumers are left trying to deal with the waste.
I’ve said this for years. It’s always been ignored or downvotes to oblivion, but maybe it’s finally catching on?
It’s not an end-consumer problem, because the further down the manufacturing and delivery chain you go the more difficult it becomes to recycle.
A complex mechanical product is more likely to have problems, which is something that can’t be ignored.
Unless it's a radiant heater by the window, it gives exactly as much energy as it consumes. An "energy efficient" heater is a useless one.
I've also been to countries where these bags make it into the ocean and become micro plastics. As with all things there are pros and cons. Most of our civilization has cons for the environment, but from what I can tell the best situation for most people who's garbage makes it to a landfill is to use mult-reuse recycled plastic bags.
Being as I've already made the commitment to the cloth bags I just have to keep using them until they hit their 131st use, then keep going.
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/paper-plastic-or-reusable
Since Australia banned single use plastic bags at supermarkets I have not seen a single bag floating around the street which used to be a common sight.
They get washed once in a while when they inevitably get dirty and I can repair them quite easily if a stitch finally fails or they get tears, which hasn't happened yet.
People need to keep and use what they already have instead of lazily buying more new stuff all the time.
I'm pretty confident that it's minuscule locally (these aren't European rivers: https://www.google.com/search?q=plastic+waste+river&tbm=isch), but I couldn't find solid data on waste that gets first exported, then dumped into a river.
Say it takes 1 year (probably less) from when a bag is created to when it gets thrown away. After it gets thrown away, it takes 100-1000 years to completely decompose. That means bags are entering the landfill faster than they are "leaving" via decomposition. That's going to be a problem. After enough time we'd just be like a malicious or poorly-designed AI that covered the Earth in plastic bags rather than paper clips.
Supposing for the sake of the argument you're right, that means we need enough landfill space for 500 years' worth of plastic bags. Is that really so much space that it's a problem?
They really don't last forever. I've had to replace over 3 LED bulbs in my house that didn't last 3 years.
https://blog.1000bulbs.com/home/what-is-an-enclosed-fixture-...
So you will get some failures but over all they last much longer.
I've had dual-flush Toto units for many years without problems. Small button = small flush, large button = large flush.
Feels like a solved problem in the USA, where a $100 toilet will use 1.3 gallons (~5L) of water to flush away whatever will fit down the tube. And do it through a gravity fed system that works without power and has about two moving parts that are easily accessible and repairable by any dummy that is using the toilet at the time.[1]
Is this a regulatory thing or a cultural thing? I've had so many issues with UK toilets. Why is this a problem.
[1] https://www.lowes.com/pd/AquaSource-Henshaw-White-WaterSense...
The in-wall cisterns may look like a maintenance nightmare, but on Grohe products (I assume other manufacturers are the same but don't have experience) you can open the flush plate and easily take out every single part through the 20x30cm hole. It's actually easier to repair than a traditional toilet as you don't require any tools, other than a flat screwdriver to turn off the water valve.
I could rant all day about poor habits of the construction industry in the UK, but toilets aren't even in my top 10.
Whereas with US toilets, I just don’t get them. The low flat bowl is weird, discourages peeing standing up, and then the design of most public and business toilets with those massive gaps on the doors, giving you no privacy... what’s with that?
It replaced a 100 year old pull chain toilet with that with a copper cistern. it sadly was at the end of its life. there's no way the fiddly plastic parts in the new toilet will last 100 years, let alone 20.
What will wear out in your new toilet is the rubber seals. Same as the old one.
That does not sound like the typical American home toilet. I don't think I've ever seen a toilet using that kind of siphon system, I'm having trouble imagining how it works.
Why don't we use that kind in the USA?
I'd guess ordinary toilets in the USA are the worst of both worlds then, no water-saving small-flush, plus leak-prone design.
1: https://youtu.be/Cg8KQfaT9xY?t=333
For anyone else clicking the link, watch it from the beginning for that bit.
We need laws around serviceability and warranty just as much as resource usage. How about every device should work for 10 years, no exceptions.
I refuse to believe we can make cars with 10 year, 100k warranties but not toilets or refrigerators. Ever try to get an appliance fixed? You’re basically paying a guy to come out and tell you a circuit board needs replaced for 300 dollars or to just buy a new device, btw that estimate costs 100 dollars.
It’s ridiculous, especially since it hurts regular people way more than the profits help anyone.
This is a simple maintenance issue affecting every western flush toilet design I've encountered.
I don't understand why a negligent owner/tenant problem is being portrayed as a failure of water-saving flush toilet designs. Are we now expecting plumbing fixtures to disable themselves when in need of simple servicing? Is that the world we want?
How about we stop wasting potable fresh water on flushing toilets instead.