The SO got her probably '90s-era dishwasher out of storage and used it last night. It took longer to wash dishes that it does me to do them by hand. How much water did it use?
Is it a portable? Plug the drain in your sink and watch. Er…don’t leave the room, just in case.
My early 2000’s portable full size used a sink full of water with the basic wash and rinse cycle. Now, I’m not sure how big my sink was - it was a fairly standard single basin sink. Maybe 6 or 7 gallons? I used more water washing the same sized load by hand, but I was faster than the dishwasher.
The current Energy Star standard for dishwashers is to use less than 4.25 gallons per cycle. As of August 2009, the standard was 5.8 gallons or less. The current spec went into effect in January of this year.
You make it sound like the SO’s dishwasher is a portable, so it would be easy to measure the water use - just catch the drain output in a large bucket or stockpot.
As a 90’s model, it might be an Energy Star model - the first Energy Star dishwashers came out in 1996. The EPA’s website doesn’t make it readily apparent how much water they allowed back then, but they do say a pre-1994 machine uses ten gallons more per cycle. Again, they don’t make it obvious if that’s ten gallons more than a 1996 Energy Star machine or a current model.
Older ones could use a ton - 15, 20 gallons, more than most people would use to do it by hand. Newer ones that comply with Energy Star use less, as gotpasswords already noted. Some high-end and European models use even less - I believe my Bosch uses about 3 gallons per full load.
The tradeoff is time - with only a small amount of water, it takes longer to get the cleaning and rinsing operations done. With a good, high-efficiency dishwasher, though, most households will save energy over hand-washing. It is important to use the machine right - mainly, run only full loads. This can be a problem for small households. With only a few dishes per meal, especially if any have baked-on gunk that will harden into difficult washability, you’re probably better off hand-washing each load using an efficient process. By the time you thoroughly pre-rinse items so they can take a long stack time (days to accumulate a full load), you’re losing both convenience and energy savings.
I’ll have to give that a try.
Sure, it took the machine longer; it can’t rub the dishes. But seeing who’s washing dishes faster isn’t the point of using a dishwasher. Did it take longer for you to hook up the hose and push a button than for you do wash all the dishes by hand? While it’s washing dishes, you’re out having fun.
Dad had a built-in dishwasher, but he washed his dishes by hand. He said a dishwasher couldn’t get his dishes as clean as he could. Now, I know that dishwashers wash dishes perfectly well. But I learned how to wash dishes from dad, and I picked up his bias. (I’ve seen food stuck to dishwashed dishes. Dad spent, and I spend, quite a lot of time per item scrubbing and rinsing them. I think I’m a mite compulsive about that.) But I rinse dirty dishes and don’t let them sit with crud on them. I know that the machine will have no problem with them. It just seems weird hearing the machine running long after I would have been finished.
We all grew up with those dishwashers where you had to pretty much wash the dishes by hand before running it. They sure have gotten better over the years!
I have a friend who had two dishwashers built in when he remodeled his kitchen. He said it was so he would never have to empty the dishwasher again. He just takes clean dishes out of one to use as needed, then deposits them into the other dishwasher after he eats off them, until it’s time to run the new one. Then he does the same thing with the now-cleaned dishwasher.
That is awesome.
Yep, my brilliant Dad did the same thing when designing The Most Awesome Kitchen Ever. It also comes in so handy for large (25+ people) family gatherings. In that case, we do empty the dishwasher, but that way one is always running while one is open to receive dirty dishes.
I have a friend who had two dishwashers built in when he remodeled his kitchen. He said it was so he would never have to empty the dishwasher again. He just takes clean dishes out of one to use as needed, then deposits them into the other dishwasher after he eats off them, until it’s time to run the new one. Then he does the same thing with the now-cleaned dishwasher.
I like how your friend thinks!