In the spirit of curious dopery, I measured my water use when I washed the dishes for tonight’s meal - 6 litres including the rinse (the plastic bowl in the sink only takes a little over 4 to the three quarters full point that I use). That’s 2.1 US Gallons.
It wasn’t a particularly large or messy load to wash though - so maybe it would be three or four gallons after the Sunday roast.
Well, yes, but as we’re seeing, that means different things to different folks. I wanted some numbers to look at.
Data point – this is illegal in Louisiana. Not that this law’s not been flouted from time to time, to be sure … but still.
I was waiting tables at an Olive Garden once when the dishwasher broke. The restaurant closed down on the spot until the machine was repaired.
Okay then, ONE sinkful.
It’s a joke, son.
Oops, and there’s me being a great proponent of metric too. :o <= blowjob to apologise.
Anyway, I’m at home now and measured the bastard properly, and it’s 27cm w x 32cm d x 13cm h, but I only fill it to about 10cm, which gives us 8,640 ml. Which is 2.28 US gallons. So, I was wrong, but even adding the rinse water, it’s still not anything like the alleged benchmarks to compare dishwashers.
Great minds think alike - just measured my bowl (before I even booted the computer) - about 28 x 25 by 13 cm deep (measuring the length and width halfway up the height, as it’s slightly flared).
So that’s a (brimming over) capacity of 9100 cubic cm - or 9.1 litres or 2.4 US Gallons - and I would never use it that full.
So unless I batched a whole day’s washing up into one dishwasher load, I don’t think I’d be consuming less water, and then it wouldn’t be a significant difference. (not that I have the space for a dishwasher in any case).
Except that running taps use more than you think and you are talking about doing a running rinse at the beginning plus more at the end if required, plus changing the water if there’s too many dishes (and an entire dishwasherfull would be too many dishes, is my guess).
I accept that your frugal method probably uses less than all but the most economical dishwashers, but are you a good datapoint?
I found a cite re: cold water and washing dishes.
"Can Cold Water Clean Dishes?
This is for all the germ conscious folks that worry
about using cold water to clean.
John went to visit his 90 year old grandfather
in a very secluded, rural area of West Virginia .
After spending a great evening chatting the
night away, John’s grandfather prepared
breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast.
However, John noticed a film-like substance on
his plate, and questioned his grandfather asking,
“Are these plates clean?”
His grandfather replied,
“They’re as clean as cold water can get them.
Just you go ahead and finish your meal, Sonny!”
For lunch the old man made hamburgers.
Again, John was concerned about the plates
as his appeared to have tiny specks around
the edge that looked like dried egg and asked,
“Are you sure these plates are clean?”
Without looking up the old man said,
“I told you before, Sonny, those dishes are as
clean as cold water can get them.
Now don’t you fret; I don’t want to hear
another word about it!”
Later that afternoon, John was on his way to
a nearby town and as he was leaving,
his grandfather’s dog started to growl, and
wouldn’t let him pass.
John yelled and said,
“Grandfather, your dog won’t let me get to
my car”.
Without diverting his attention from the football
game he was watching on TV, the old
man shouted .
“COLDWATER, GO LAY DOWN!!!”
Having read this thread and the other on the topic, I doubt Straight Dope exists given all the variables. How many dishes, are pots and pans included, what sort of food was prepared and served, how long have they sat since the preparation/consumption, what is the material of construction (hand glazed thrown pottery,stainless, non-stick, etc.), what are the specifics for the machine and so on.
Anecdotally I’m in Mangetout’s camp with consumption rates. Practically it involves a water pump and then water heater. A dishwasher adds its own loads and boosts the other two.
Where dishwashers really shine for me is the throwing of parties and having dinner guests where the increased workload prevents socialising.
People, people, read the peer-reviewed study I gave in the first response. It identifies differences in washing styles (identifying a range from the “supercleaner,” who works to get everything as clean as possible, to the “economizer” who tries to use as little water and energy as possible, to the “carefree washer” who just leaves the hot water running). Even the most carefully conservative dishwashers were unable to use as little water as the machine dishwasher. This was even giving the benefit of the doubt to the manual washers - no “burned in” bits of gunk on the plates that would be tough to scrub away, etc.
The machine dishwasher was able to use 15-22 liters to wash dishes for a set of 12 people. Most washers used over 100 liters, but some extremely efficient washers were able to get down to the 20s and 30s. Only two out of the 113 people were able to use under 20 liters - and the less water they used, the less clean the dishes generally turned out.
Then don’t drink out of the glassware at a busy bar…they use it all the time, although they tend to use sanitizer tablets in the rinsewater instead of bleach.
Edit: actually, the bars I tended we used a “three sink” system, suds in the first, sanitized water in the second and plain cold rinsewater in the third, all of which I changed out pretty regularly. Used a lot of water.
Interesting - in my 25 years in restaurants, the health department’s specification for a 3-sink system was Wash -> Rinse (plain water) -> Sanitize. The idea being to remove the detergent from the dishes before putting them into the sanitizer, as detergent breaks down the bleach (or whatever sanitizing agent you’re using) and renders it useless for sanitizing. It’s the same reason they specifically instruct us to not put soap into the bleach water we use for sanitizing work surfaces.
For 5 months I did dishes with 8 oz of water and a finger, drinking the result. No trots.
Ahh, I think you’re right on that one. I believe I got my order of sinks confused. That can happen when you spend most of your time polishing stemware in order to help the restaurant move an older bottle of $500 wine…
Possibly not, I think the average lies in a different place in this country than perhaps it does in America, and I’m not too far away from this local average.
I’m also not consciously trying to be frugal BTW - this is just the way I’ve always done it.
Certainly I think a dishwasher could trounce me on water economy when scaled up to 12 place settings, but if twelve people came to my house for dinner, there wouldn’t be enough plates, so it’s not a meaningful comparison, for me.
It is just my wife and I here at Casa de Rick. but quite often we are doing a load of 10-12 plates.
We don’t run the DW every meal. We wait until it is full. Quite often one of us notices that either we do the dishes now, or we will have to go out for dinner as we are out of plates. FTR we have 12 dinner plates.
same with the stuff that does not go into the DW. We wait until we have a load and then do them all at once.
I’d be running out of other things before I got to that point. Having multiple redundant plates would be easy, but multiple sets of the knives, boards, pans and utensils I use in preparing each meal would just be impractical
Au contraire, mon frere.
I worked in restaurants in college, and I know that many, many wash dishes with a hot water sprayer and a two-sink system that protects them with a cap-ful of bleach.
I DO know what I’m talking about.
Well the Wusthoff knives don’t go in the DW same with the good pots and pans. Utensils do go in as do cups and glasses. I think our everyday silverware is for 16 (two sets of 8)
There are times when I will do pots and pans twice before the DW gets run. You also have to factor in when it isn’t raining, I do a large portion of my cooking outdoors on one of the grills. No pots or pans required to cook a steak, just a plate to put it on.
We find the limiting factor to be plates most of the time.
YMMV of course
I just wouldn’t have the storage space for that kind of redundancy. My kitchen is less than 7 feet wide by about 10 - worktops down both sides, sink at the end under the window. I bought a sandwich toaster recently and finding storage space for it was a genuine puzzle.
In fact, probably the point where most water-waste comes into play in my kitchen is when I have to wash up mid-prep - either because I need a clean pan, having used them all once, or because I need to clear the decks to make space to work.