Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

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For decades, I used the dishwasher exclusively to wash my dishes, but once the pandemic began, I started washing my dishes by hand and have been doing so ever since.

I used to hate washing dishes by hand, because I found touching the leftover food and grease to be really gross, but since the pandemic I started using nitrile gloves when washing dishes by hand, and then since the leftover food was no longer touching my skin I didn't find it gross any longer.

In fact, I was surprised to find that washing dishes became sort of a meditative experience for me, when I took a break from whatever I was involved in in my day-to-day life, and for 10 minutes or so focused on just doing the dishes. So I almost started to enjoy washing dishes by hand, and only rarely run my dishwasher any more. Really, the only time I run the dishwasher now is when I'm too exhausted to do the dishes by hand, instead of every single time.

It's also nice not to have to wait for hours for the dishes to be washed and dried, and not to waste so much electricity to just do a handful of dishes.

Dishwashers are usually much more water efficient than hand washing.

...if you only wash a full load and your hand washing is extremely hot water with the faucet at max flow.

How does it balance out when electricity use is taken into account? Saving water might be better in water-poor locations, but saving electricity might be better in high-electric-rate locations. In water-poor locations, it might be more advantageous to use the gray water from hand washing for other uses, such as watering the lawn or flushing the toilet.

Most of the electricity usage is due to the drying cycle of the dishwasher. If you want to be super efficient, set your dishwasher to skip the drying cycle and either prop the door so that the dishes can drip dry, or hand dry the dishes coming out of the dishwasher.

Generally, when hand washing dishes, hot water is used. Typically ~5-10 times more water is required when hand washing, which results in more water needing to be heated (and is less energy efficient as a result).

> Generally, when hand washing dishes, hot water is used. Typically ~5-10 times more water is required when hand washing

Ah, is that so? I've not had a hand washing experience where hot water was used, I thought everyone used cold water. Also, I'm surprised at the efficiency of the dishwasher. Do people leave the faucet running while they do dishes? What I do and typically see is an initial rinse, then water is off while scrubbing, then a rinse to remove the soap. I personally direct the water stream so that the same water passes over other dishes while I rinse the one in my hand, thus reducing the amount of rinsing needed for subsequent dishes.

Sure, if you run the tap the entire time that you're hand-washing. But you can just fill the sink with water, plug it and wash many dishes with that water. I once worked with a guy who lived in a cabin without running water for most of his life. Needless to say, he was very efficient at hand washing dishes with very little water.

I did some quick calculations out of interest.

It seems our sink fits about 25 liters of water. Let's say half of that volume is taken by dishes, so 12.5 liters. You need a second sink for rinsing unless you run the tap (which would be worse), so that's another 12.5 liters.

From experience, you need to change the cleaning side's water at least once if you have as many dishes as a dishwasher would fit. So the total would be 37.5 liters.

Now I checked on Bosch's website for a standard 60 cm size dishwasher and the water usage ranges from 9.5 liters (eco program) to 18 liters (most intensive/quick program). So the dishwasher wins by some margin.

Personally I don't rinse most dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, mostly just remove any solid bits of food with a knife or similar. So I'm inclined to believe that in my usage the dishwasher is much more efficient.

Keep in mind though, that dishwashers use less water than washing by hand.

That depends on the dishwasher and the dish washer, though.

Keep in mind that marketing departments will pick and choose statistics that make their product look attractive. Dishwashers use more power and the water savings only apply if people don't rinse the dishes first, which many do.

There is some meditation that goes along the lines of:

How do you know that you actually enjoy your tea if you don't enjoy washing the bowl?

It would be nice if somebody could point out a source for that idea.

Sounds like something Uncle Iroh would say, but I can't find the quote.

Not to burst your soap-sud bubble, but modern dishwashers use less water than washing by hand[1], and by extension less electricity (purifying water is high-electricity usage, moving it around within your dishwasher is not)

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/11/24/564055953/to...

I haven't measured my water usage, but 5 GALLONS for a standard dishwasher, and 3.5 for a compact?

I feel like if I tried, I could use less water than that... I already don't run the tap while washing. I wet my sponge and scrub away. I only use 30-50mL of water at a time if my sponge gets dry, and my main water usage comes from rinsing.

If you tried. It takes active effort to use less than that. The typical sink fills with more than that, and even if you fill it half way, you use more than the rest rinsing.

Since it's HN: Bill Gates has mentioned he likes washing dishes. I can't stand it myself.

Steve Jobs also preferred hand-washing his dishes.

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