Oh yeah. Have been for a while. I run into them a lot when I’m in Italy and still haven’t used one that worked well. Unless you want a load of laundry to take half a day. Then they work fine.
There have been for some time. There are some issues.
A minor one: the max wash load is larger than the max dryable load.
A major one: the act of unloading and reloading gives you a chance to shake out tangles in shirt sleeves and whatnot. If you don't untangle your clothes you'll find they don't dry as well and can fatigue a lot faster!
Dryers are great if you live in the south where things won't dry on their own, or if you need to run laundry fast. If you can afford it, a drying rack works great, is cheap, and is far, far easier on your clothes.
I have one of these and I love it. Takes half as much space in the closet as having a normal washer and dryer and still finishes most loads in a little over two hours as long as I don’t put a crazy amount of stuff in it. I’ve also noticed the water usage is significantly lower than my previous HE washer. Mine is the “GE Ultrafast” one.
I think the scale of the incumbents means innovation from startups always results in relatively much more expensive products which are doomed to failure because no matter how good they are people don’t want to pay 5x more.
That was my first thought. I’ve had that experience. Eco Mode on my current dryer works fine, unless I put the full set of sheets in so I suspect as always YMMV.
For some reason no matter what setting I use the sheets ball up and the sensor seems to not be able to tell the middle is still damp.
This looks like fairly breathless, non-critical reporting. (The tagline of Grist is "Climate. Justice. Solutions." which at least implies a motivation for biased reporting.)
The article:
* avoids the question of whether the new washers and dryers will be the same prices as the models they replace.
* does not address whether the new technology will be as reliable as what it replaces or the possibility of additional maintenance costs (extra cleaning, etc.)
* It only quotes what appear to be biased sources (and dismisses opposition as "conservative backlash" and uses the "Fox News" straw man)
My personal experiences with "efficient" appliances have not been positive, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
My mind drifted when I read this to the oft required multiple flushes of low flow toilets and the lovely fluorescent lamp bulbs that require a hazmat team to dispose of properly.
Good intentions don’t always equal desired results.
I really wanted a heat-pump dryer but the problem is that they seem like they are all designed to go in tiny European closets.
I am not space constrained and would like a larger dryer, with a big filter and a larger drum. It seems like everyone has problems with the filters, and I imagine that at least some of that has to do with the compact form factor.
Please trade some space for reliability and load size.
I thought this was about some new technological advancement. Nope, it's "guidelines" aka government mandates. Look at what that did to the small car market. Your washer and dryer is about to get a whole lot more expensive, with smart features you didn't want to boot.
""These rules represent an opportunity for more efficient appliances that provide the same level of performance but have reduced operating expenses,” a Department of Energy official told Grist....""
It's good these appliances will be up to 40% more energy efficient and that washing machines will use 28% less water and supposedly perform to the same level as older equipment.
However I wonder if the DoE official's statement will actually hold up in practice. Sometimes the devil's in the detail. No doubt washing machines can be made more efficient yet achieve the same performance as present equipment on what could be deemed a nominal household washing load but I wonder how the performance will hold up on heavy loads.
By heavy loads I mean say washing well-soiled overalls and similar. I have enough difficulty now getting the dirt out of my overalls without taking a performance cut—a cut that may not manifest on a 'nominal' wash load. When washing overalls I often have to use an extra amount of heavy duty washing powder (containing lots of sodium percarbonate) and use a wash-then-soak-before-spin setting as well as an extra rinse cycle (to get rid of the remaining dirt and washing powder from the first rinse). Also, sometimes even now things have to be washed twice to get them clean.
In these circumstances I'd question how well a washing machine would perform with less water and with less energy going into the wash cycle.
Electric motors are already very efficient, so to achieve a reduction in power consumption less power will be supplied to the washing agitator, thus I'd need it to be demonstrated that the performance remains the same before I'd be convinced. If it's necessary to repeat the washing cycle and or use more washing powder then this defeats the purpose of such regulations.
We've seen such 'efficiencies' introduced before in the name of saving power. It's my understanding that the EC has limited domestic vacuum cleaners to 2,000 Watts to save power. I'm not in the EC but manufacturers who market to the EC have found it convenient to also market these 2,000 Watt machines where I am instead of the 2,200 and 2,400 Watt models they previously marketed here. The fact is these lower powered vacuum cleaners simply do not work as well as the earlier more powerful models.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 67.0 ms ] threadA major one: the act of unloading and reloading gives you a chance to shake out tangles in shirt sleeves and whatnot. If you don't untangle your clothes you'll find they don't dry as well and can fatigue a lot faster!
Dryers are great if you live in the south where things won't dry on their own, or if you need to run laundry fast. If you can afford it, a drying rack works great, is cheap, and is far, far easier on your clothes.
Are there no companies out there making ultra-efficient household appliances even when they aren't being forced to?
Heat pump "sources": exterior air, interior air, underground loop, underwater loop, electric strip heat, gas, Proof-of-Work waste heat,
For some reason no matter what setting I use the sheets ball up and the sensor seems to not be able to tell the middle is still damp.
The article:
* avoids the question of whether the new washers and dryers will be the same prices as the models they replace.
* does not address whether the new technology will be as reliable as what it replaces or the possibility of additional maintenance costs (extra cleaning, etc.)
* It only quotes what appear to be biased sources (and dismisses opposition as "conservative backlash" and uses the "Fox News" straw man)
My personal experiences with "efficient" appliances have not been positive, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
(minor edits for grammar)
Why do you regard the US Energy Information Administration as "biased" and what issues do you have with their residential consumption data?
https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/c&e/pd...
( as quoted in the article )
Good intentions don’t always equal desired results.
Please trade some space for reliability and load size.
It's good these appliances will be up to 40% more energy efficient and that washing machines will use 28% less water and supposedly perform to the same level as older equipment.
However I wonder if the DoE official's statement will actually hold up in practice. Sometimes the devil's in the detail. No doubt washing machines can be made more efficient yet achieve the same performance as present equipment on what could be deemed a nominal household washing load but I wonder how the performance will hold up on heavy loads.
By heavy loads I mean say washing well-soiled overalls and similar. I have enough difficulty now getting the dirt out of my overalls without taking a performance cut—a cut that may not manifest on a 'nominal' wash load. When washing overalls I often have to use an extra amount of heavy duty washing powder (containing lots of sodium percarbonate) and use a wash-then-soak-before-spin setting as well as an extra rinse cycle (to get rid of the remaining dirt and washing powder from the first rinse). Also, sometimes even now things have to be washed twice to get them clean.
In these circumstances I'd question how well a washing machine would perform with less water and with less energy going into the wash cycle.
Electric motors are already very efficient, so to achieve a reduction in power consumption less power will be supplied to the washing agitator, thus I'd need it to be demonstrated that the performance remains the same before I'd be convinced. If it's necessary to repeat the washing cycle and or use more washing powder then this defeats the purpose of such regulations.
We've seen such 'efficiencies' introduced before in the name of saving power. It's my understanding that the EC has limited domestic vacuum cleaners to 2,000 Watts to save power. I'm not in the EC but manufacturers who market to the EC have found it convenient to also market these 2,000 Watt machines where I am instead of the 2,200 and 2,400 Watt models they previously marketed here. The fact is these lower powered vacuum cleaners simply do not work as well as the earlier more powerful models.