To be fair, early low-water-use toilets were lousy at flushing solids. The usual design methodology for toilets for a long time was to design the toilet, including the flush channel, then figure out how much water you needed to get a good flush, and size the tank accordingly. When water-saving standards went into effect, they just resized the tanks and marketed and sold poor-flushing toilets. They were a meme for a while - even made the A plot of a King of the Hill episode.
So naturally every toilet made since can’t flush well, right? Wrong! The toilet manufacturers, knowing this was an issue for customers, started redesigning their toilets using better simulations of water flow in the flush channel, added new routes for water to get to the bowl and scour out solids - all kinds of tricks. Technology made the entire toilet better. Modern low-water-use toilets flush better than the state-of-the-art models from 40 years ago, and use way less water to boot.
But Donald Trump, grievance personified, still whines about the toilets he had to use 30 years ago, and probably assumes that the super-flushing low-flush toilets of today are really just transplanted versions of the old models that expended eight gallons of water to clean the bowl of a little urine. Who’s going to point out differently to him? It’s one of his articles of faith.
We see this in lots of areas affected by federal regulations. Car safety. Light bulbs. Again and again, manufacturers whine about regulations, but their engineers roll up their sleeves, get to work, and eventually design things that meed the new regs and are also better in other ways than what we had before. If I may mix metaphors - as long as everyone has a level playing field, the cream will rise to the top.
My complaint with the new dishwasher I bought a couple of years ago isn’t about how much water it uses, it’s that it doesn’t get the dishes dry enough. It saves energy by shortening the heated drying cycle, so there’s always water left. I have to open the door right at the end of the cycle to let it air out while everything is still hot, so the damp air carries away most of the left over water.
Also, the controls suck. Every fifth use or so, it just kind of decides it doesn’t want to start, and I have to reboot…my dishwasher.
Our Bosch is awesome. Quiet and gets everything clean. I did learn from a Youtuber I like to put detergent in the door for the prewash cycle. There is a little thing in the flap but I just squirt a bit on the door before I close. Also, use powder or liquid and don’t get ripped off buying the pods.
Unfortunately, I use a portable dishwasher, and around here, there were only two options to buy. One I looked at in the store was so poorly made, I really only had the one option. I’d have kept the old one I was using, but it just stopped working. For something I got used for $40, it was great. Worked for about ten years before it died, and was probably 30 years old overall.
Are you letting the dishwasher actually finish its cycle, or even letting it just sit for an hour once its done? European brands like Miele and Bosch started condensing dry systems some years ago and most other manufacturers use the same system now, at least for higher end models. They do not even have a heating element. Its more energy efficient. As a builder, I like it, because dishwashers with heated drying and the venting systems that come with that tend to damage cabinets and countertops.
This is one of the reasons for the move to stainless steel liners, to help condense the water vapour and direct it to a drain.
Dishes come out of our Miele dry (except for things that get turned over in the cycle or have lips that catch water). We don’t rush to empty the dishwasher though, so that might not work for spme folk.
Yes, it runs the whole cycle. I sometimes run it when I’m about to leave the house, so I come back to it hours later, when it’s been finished so long everything is cold, and there’s water on most of the dishes. I have to catch it just as the cycle ends to vent it if I want it anywhere close to clean.
This might just be a problem with my model, as I said above, I really only had the one choice.
I stayed in a motel last week that (probably) had an older model low flow terlet. It would not flush a wad of TP. It had no swirly action at all, water just flowed around the euphemistically called “solids”. NO amount of repeated flushing did anything at all. Had to get a plunger and force it. Not a fun stay!
It could have just been broken. Who knows, all I know is I never saw one that useless before.
So the IRS has agreed to leak contact/address info on people with deportation orders. And what does that mean? It means undocumented people that have been paying quite a bit into the system (close to $100b in 2022) have decided to stop filing their taxes. [Edit, didn’t mean to imply all of them, just some of them, enough to warrant an article anyways]
Also, ICE has been grabbing people out of courthouse hallways.
ETA - replying to posts about efficiency in appliances, they were directly above this one when I started writing.
I had this in-wall air conditioning unit with an energy efficient mode that I’m convinced was a total cheat.
When the AC was in normal mode the fan ran constantly, in the energy efficient mode the fan cycled on and off. This always puzzled me, because I’m pretty sure the fan isn’t the part that’s consuming most of the energy.
But here’s how the cheat worked. When I set the unit to 73 in the efficient mode, it cooled the room to 73 degrees. But I could get the room down to the same temp by setting it to 78 in normal mode.
I hated the efficient mode because the fan cycling annoyed me, so I just set it to 78 in normal mode instead of 73 in efficient mode. I don’t think I wasted any energy, if anything I think it was more efficient.
And one more example of Lone Star State Stupidity. Or more accurately culture war bullshit to distract people from actual issues. But I guess that’s a never-ending supply they have to choose from these days. “FURRIES” Act my butt. Brainless crap.
This sort of thing – legislation regarding “sex toys” – has been going on for a long time in Texas. As I remarked in a post here in 2014, regarding a Texas law that limited the number of Dildos you could legally own:
? I am unsurprised.