[gg3]

This topic grew out of debate in the US President Speech topic. I suggested that certain appliances are more-necessary than it may seem, and gave examples. Monte replied that some of my examples were in his opinion terribly wasteful and shouldn't exist in a post-peak world.

So here we can do that topic in more detail.


Refrigerators:

Necessary for safe food storage, no disagreement about that. Make them more efficient, make smaller sizes available where needed.


Home laundry equipment:

In a family or any shared living environment, clothing and bedding can be a major disease vector.

In some and arguably many cases, processing at or above 160 degrees Fahrenheit is necessary for sanitation. Those temperatures kill germs and also kill parasites such as ticks, lice, fleas, and their respective eggs. In some cases, not only a high wash temp but a high drying temp is needed, for example clothing & bedding of persons with certain diseases that have a spore stage such as cryptosporidiosis (transmitted by infected birds via spores in their excrement).

Hand washing is enormously labor intensive and not possible for people who aren't physically fit. Speaking from experience of a lengthy (longer than a year) experiment in this area. The most physically demanding task is wringing out water after the rinse cycle, because this requires high hand pressures and torque. Rinse also uses up far more water than with a washing machine: when hand-washing, the detergent-laden water still present in the clothing can't be centrifugally extracted after the wash cycle or first rinse. Doing laundry by hand for one person requires two hours. For a family of four, that expands into an 8-hour day, hence the old term "wash day," meaning, the entire day spent washing clothes, usually by the woman of the household, often with the help of her kids.

Finally, hand washing does not permit the use of high temperature water, and hang-drying depends upon bright sunlight for its sanitary effectiveness.

Intelligent design & usage can vastly reduce energy consumption needed for washing & drying machines. Horizontal axis washers use 50% less energy and water than conventional vertical-axis machines. Electric dryers can be used in a "finish dry" capacity. For example:

Wash by machine, using the coldest water cycles applicable to the conditions (e.g. use hot water only if a family member is ill). Take advantage of the spin-dry cycle to get most of the water out. Then hang-dry the clothes, which can even be done indoors, overnight.

For example, if you can't have an outdoor clothes line: screw one or more hook-eyes into the studs on opposite walls in an open living area such as a living room or kitchen (as long as it's out of reach of any source of fire or flame; and not in a basement due to risk of mold). Get one or more lengths of nylon rope, attach a "dog-chain snap catch" to each end.

On wash day, string the lines across the room, and hang the clothes that are merely damp after the spin-dry cycle (no water will drip on your floors this way). The following day, the clothes are almost completely dry. Then put them into the dryer for 15 minutes, which is only 25% of a normal drying cycle but sufficient to kill any nasties that might have gotten through the wash.

Washer and dryer cycles should occur during off peak hours if possible. Some machines currently offer a timer that allows you to set them to operate at a specified hour, i.e. load the clothes in the evening, set the timer for the machine to operate in the late-night hours when surplus generating capacity is available.

With these points in mind, I don't think we have to go back to the old days of 8 hours of relentless toil to do a family's wash.


Dishwashers:

Also frequently condemned as wasteful. However: A fully loaded dishwasher always uses less water than would be used by washing the same load of dishes in the sink by hand. Also, the dishwasher does something you cannot do by hand methods: provides water at or above 160- degrees Fahrenheit, which is necessary to properly sanitize dishes. An individual living alone might get along without that, but for a family or group living situation, it can and does prevent spread of disease.

As with clothes, an intelligent procedure could reduce the amount of energy and water needed to sanitize dishes. For example, scrub off the food residue in the sink so the dishes look as if they're "basically clean." Then load into the dishwasher and set it for a hot water rinse and passive dry cycle. Now you get your 160 to 180 degree rinse, which washes off the soap film and kills all the nasties, and the dishes sit in the idle machine for a few hours or overnight to dry themselves without further energy being used.


The vacuum cleaner and its latter-day allies:

The only reason people use vacuums as "general purpose cleaning tools" is because they're ubiquitous. The alternatives of broom, mop, and carpet sweeper (the latter has a brush inside that sweeps up dirt when pushed, by hand effort alone) are actually far more convenient than the noisy, ungainly vacuum with its cumbersome hose, trailing wire to keep track of, and pesky bags to replace.

However, that being said, there is no other way to remove fleas, flea eggs, and similar hazards (outdoor pets sleeping inside -> fleas -> bubonic plague risk), not to mention plain dirt, from wall to wall carpet. The problem is not the vacuum, it's the carpet.

Intelligent design & use in this area: First, use area rugs instead of wall-to-wall carpets. Have an area immediately inside the front door where residents take off their "outdoor shoes" and put on "indoor shoes." Friends who visit can be allowed to remain shod, or run around in their socks or bare feet, or you could provide them with flip-flops if they prefer. This simple step prevents most of the outdoor dirt from getting all over the floors & rugs.

Second, use a hand-powered carpet sweeper on the rugs, and in some cases the floors, on the same schedule you'd ordinarily vacuum. Floors can also be swept by conventional broom, and damp-mopped (use a little bit of soap in the water for the first cycle, and clear water in the second cycle). At this point you don't need to vacuum except possibly once a month, or more often if you have pets bringing fleas in. Hanging up the rugs outside and whacking them with a rug-beating stick, is a task for people of normal physical capabilities only, and raises enough dust to cause respiratory illnesses in many individuals.


The magic of toast: eat your kilowatt a day?

There is an enormous energy-consumer on your kitchen counter, and most of the time it's never recognized as such. Look at the nameplate label underneath your toaster. Chances are it will say the toaster uses 1,000 watts of electricity to complete the ritual transformation of mere bread into the magical food known as toast.

The only health justification for toasting bread is possibly to kill molds that might be growing on it. But if your bread is moldy, you should throw it out altogether. Aside from that, toast is a luxury that we can easily forego, or regard as a special and rare treat, perhaps only to be served at the first Saturday or Sunday morning breakfast of each month, to mark the beginning of the month.


In general look for things with heating elements, they typically use 500 to 1000 watts. And look for "wall warts," those little AC power supplies that each use a little, and together use a lot. More later...

[Pops]

Having looked up “execrableâ€

[smiley]

You'll have to pry my espressomachine from my cold dead fingers.

I have a lot of electric appliances (computers, TV, amplifier stereo etc), but it always surprises me that my bill is a lot lower than other people I know. When I compare my situation with theirs I think there are a few differences.

I see a lot of unnecessary energy use in other houses. A few examples:

-I have two lamps in my living room, while other have 6-8 lamps (to create atmosphere).

-They also have wall plug perfumes (which in my opinion is the epitome of decadence), electric cat feeding systems etc.

- My heating system is analog system which doesn't use electricity, while others have a complete computer hooked up to their heater.

- I hate extra options on appliances. My philosophy is the more options the larger the chance that things break down. Ideally a machine should only have an on/off button. When I visit others I am amazed by the amount of LCD screens. I have a clock, I don't need an extra clock on my CD-player, Microwave, DVD player, television, washer, dryer etc.

I think these small things make the difference, since they are on for 24 hours a day.

60W might seem less impressive than 1000W, but when the 60W appliance is used 24/7 whereas the 1000W appliance is used only for 15 minutes a day (as for instance a coffee machine), the 60W appliance uses ~6 times as much electricity.

A 1000W machine which is used 15 minutes a day has the same consumption as a 10W machine which is used all day.

So I think that in your list you should not focus on the number of Watts alone but on the number of Watts multiplied by the time that the appliance is actually used.

[jpatti]

We've replaced most of our kitchen appliances with non-electric versions.

The biggest thing we kept was the microwave. Someday, with a wood stove, reheating food will be easy cause the stove will already be "on". But where we are (rental property) with crumbling chimneys that are shut off, the wood stove doesn't make sense yet. On the other hand, if the microwave died, we'd be unlikely to repalce it.

The thing I miss most of the appliances we've replaced is a hand mixer. It is a major pain-in-the-butt to get egg whites to peak or to whip cream with an egg beater.

Replacements for food processors suprisingly all work better than any electric one I ever owned. I have several items... a food mill (for making "sauces"), a hand-powered contraption with cylindrical graters of different sizes, several meat grinders, etc. Bunch of different things, all purchased at auction for a few bucks here and there.

As for laundry, there are low-tech "machines" that do not require you stick your hands in there to use them, so they can be used to wash laundry with hot water. Here is an example: http://www.lehmans.com/shopping/product ... handwasher

I don't really see that it is relevant though... I haven't used hot water in an electric washing machine in over a decade. I've done my laundry in cold water as little of my laundry is white and much of it shrinks. No plagues have broken out over this.

I have never owned a dishwasher, even before moving to the country and changing my lifestyle. Similarly, no one has died here from me doing dishes in water cool enough that my hands can stand it.

I think a broom and mop on a floor is much more sanitary than a vaccuum on carpeting. Anyone who has ever removed supposedly clean carpeting would likely agree.

As for refrigeration, we had no fridge when we moved here and did without for many months. What we did was freeze water in 2-liter bottles (because we did have a freezer) and put the bottles in coolers which we used as a fridge. Most of our food is dried or canned, so this was primarily useful for dairy and for leftovers.

They did something similar before refrigerators existed in storing ice in the winter in insulated ice houses and using it for refrigeration in the summer.

Another choice is a spring house, which is where you build a small outhouse over your spring and store food in bottles and jars and place them in the running water to keep cool.

Another choice that works, though not quite as cold as the above, is storing food in-ground. Dig a hole in your basement, insulate the top and use that as a fridge.

I am big on both rabbits and chicken for meat as both canning and drying takes a lot of work for large animals. The easiest way to store meat long-term meat is not in a freezer, but in an animal.

[jpatti]

I forgot toast.

We don't have one of these, but I've seen them at auctions. Basically, it's a little A-frame thingy that you put two slices of bread on and it holds them up. You then put the contraption either on the stove or in the oven. Seems to me it'd work on any type of stove or oven.

But it seems to me just as easy to stick bread on a cookie sheet and pop it in the oven though. Or stick a slice or two on a stick and toast it over a fire, which we do when we're camping. Just because people didn't have electricity when somehting like this was invented doesn't mean it's not a silly invention.

[duff_beer_dragon]

Washing machines are certainly time-saving and personal energy saving, and they can be part of a grey-water system,

fridges, freezers - definitley handy also, if you don't have an ice-hole dug outside

dishwashers tho' - I wouldn't bother with that at all, too much sterilisation of things has been known to cause superbugs anyway ; one way of sterilising for example a needle to take out a splinter is just to heat it in a hot lighter or match flame, other than that kind of thing I prefer to be 'earthy' since that gets rid of any succeptibility to infection anyway ...

microwaves - how how how can you actually want to eat anything that has been 'cooked' in a microwave, yuck - mobile phones use microwaves to transmit-recieve, yet some people don't believe that they are cooking the brain, I could feel them frying my head waaay before they became popular (knew someone that got one years before the latest text-phone type stuff started coming out, used it - I like new gadget thingies - that's about the first thing I thought and said to him - 'those are cool or I like them, but that is f-ing up inside my head'.

Lightbulbs use up a lot of electricity.......and they waste a lot of heat....and most of them are way too bright......strip-tube lighting is even more evil, I think they put loads of those in schools, offices, supermarkets, etc because they make people more and more stupid, as well as just to waste power instead of making architecturally-sound buildings that use natural light

vacuum cleaners - are for carpets, I like rugs - if they get dirty you can wash them or beat them outside......carpets are a nightmare to have, first thing you spill on a carpet and it's ruined plus it's stuck to your floor

perfume sprays and plug-ins and those kinds of "fresheners" ( yeah, right - how is it fresh air to mask a bad smell or bad smells with an even more artificial smell that is horrible anyway, open a f--ing window ) - those are so evil and brain damaging that I'm only going to write that about them because anyone that uses those either has no sense of smell or they are not real people.

[Kingcoal]

Generally, anything that makes heat as it's function is very inefficient if it's electric. Ah - you first year EEs say - but electric heaters are 100% efficient! Yes they are, until you look at what produced the electricity. Generally it's coal, which is at best 45% efficient (heat into electricity.) So your electric heater goes down to 45%. Subtract the heat that goes up the stove hood and you're lower still. Open flames tend to be more efficient than electric means, but not in all cases. An induction furnace used to smelt iron is probably better than a coal fired process because it heats from the inside out. A microwave is probably more efficient than a gas oven for the same reason.

Baseboard electric heat is a killer, though, as probably only 20% of the heat used to make the electricity gets recreated in the heating element (depending on how far you are from the generaton plant.) Replace all your incandesant bulbs with floresent - a big savings and don't run lights when you don't need them.

[Eustacian]

The magic of toast: eat your kilowatt a day?

There is an enormous energy-consumer on your kitchen counter, and most of the time it's never recognized as such. Look at the nameplate label underneath your toaster. Chances are it will say the toaster uses 1,000 watts of electricity to complete the ritual transformation of mere bread into the magical food known as toast.

The only health justification for toasting bread is possibly to kill molds that might be growing on it. But if your bread is moldy, you should throw it out altogether. Aside from that, toast is a luxury that we can easily forego, or regard as a special and rare treat, perhaps only to be served at the first Saturday or Sunday morning breakfast of each month, to mark the beginning of the month.

Great post - I really like this topic idea. However, not sure that the home toaster is that much of a waste - sure it consumes 1000 watts (1 kilowatt) but for probably only 1-2 minutes per day. Assuming 1 kilowatt hour = $1.00 (10 - 20 times higher than today's actual cost) then you are still only spending 3.3 cents to toast your bread. A waste for sure, but not monumental.

[nero]

Washing dishes by hand can save water and energy, and money so I would class the dishwasher as an unnecessary appliance. But really the key question is what is the return (in terms of quality of life improvement) to investment. In that sense I think the dishwasher is one of the lastappliances to go. Of all the household appliances that I think could go by the wayside, the lawn mower has got to be at the top of my list. To my way of thinking your quality of life is reduced by the pernicious appliancel.

[Eustacian]

microwaves - how how how can you actually want to eat anything that has been 'cooked' in a microwave, yuck - mobile phones use microwaves to transmit-recieve, yet some people don't believe that they are cooking the brain, I could feel them frying my head waaay before they became popular (knew someone that got one years before the latest text-phone type stuff started coming out, used it - I like new gadget thingies - that's about the first thing I thought and said to him - 'those are cool or I like them, but that is f-ing up inside my head'.

Cell phones do NOT use Microwaves. They use frequencies ranging from 900mhz to 1900mhz. Microwaves require a line of sight in order to transmit data (one dish must be physically capable of seeing the other dish) - therefore microwave technology wouldn't work for cell phones.

[Eustacian]

Here are a few of my takes on moden day appliances,

1> Refrigerator / freezer - 100% necessary. Most food can be safely kept at a temperature of 40 - 45 degrees. Depending on your climate, there are many ways to take advantage of nature to help provide refrigeration. If you live in an area that gets a hard freeze during the winter, then there is a chance you can get free refrigeration fall through spring - dig in a shaded spot until you hit frost, then dig a hole, line with boards and you've got yourself a cold box. Just cover with wooden lid and earth when not in use. It is also possible to build a cold room in your basement (think root cellar). Also if you are using conventional refrigeration - you can cut into the hot gas lines and extend the condenser into any room which could use the extra heat. Solar refrigeration is also possible using adsorption or solar boiling.

2> Washer & dryer - not necessary but nice. Beautiful clean vibrantly colored clothes are one of the last things I'll need when the world collapses. As long as I can get most traces of a hard day's work out of my overalls then I'm happy - clothes can be cleaned well enough by hand and dried very well in the open air.

3> Hot water tank - not necessary but nice. You can reduce the demand on your heater element by routing your supply water through a heat exchanger buried in your chimney (hot flue gases will preheat the water into the tank). You can also pre-heat (or 100% heat) using solar radiation panels (even in winter). The system would be equipped with solenoid valves that would close off the pre-heating source if it was colder than the original source water.

4> Lighting. (3) 48 inch fluorescent T8 tubes consume as much electricity as a single 100 watt lamp (each tube rated at 32 w) for more lumens. Compact fluorescent lamps rated at 15 watts produce as many lumens as incandescent lamps rated at 60 watts. LED lighting is even more efficient, lasts longer and produces a higher quality light. LED lighting is far more expensive than CF though. The use of sun-tubes and large picture windows can make a big difference on your use of artificial light. Also, paint surfaces in light colors to take advantage of reflection.

5> Microwave oven - 95% necessity. New microwave ovens are extremely efficient at boiling water and cooking foods with a high water content. They can consume as few as 300 watts and cook food 3 -5 times faster than a conventional oven - even faster than stovetop. For that reason, microwave cooking consumes much less electricity (of course, a wood stove consumes none). You can eliminate some power use by getting rid of the interior light, rotating turntable and clock features. I also like my small george forman grill for the same energy saving features (cooks quicker using less electricity than stove).

Some things that nobody really needs - bathroom heat lamps, curling irons / blow dryers, electric razors, electric toothbrushes, electric shaving cream warmer-uppers, lava lamps, "torcherre" type standing lamps, towel warming racks, electric back massagers, neon "art", gawdy lit holiday decorations, musical doorbells, drive way snow melters, automatic garage door openers, "invisible" pet fences, backyard fountains, etc, etc, etc.

[gg3]

Good stuff here.

Pops, even with the hypothetical 1,000 reactors and 200,000 wind turbines, we'll still need to conserve like crazy to get by. I'm not suggesting we can nuke & windmill our way back to the 1960s.

Smiley, good points.

"Atmosphere" lighting has to go, it's "decoration."

Wall plug perfumes are defintely execrable, not to mention excremental. When you see those things in someone's houses, shake your head and say "gee, I'm sorry you fart so much you need that thing to cover it up, you really should see a doctor about that.." In other words, create the association between the wall-plug perfume and some kind of personal embarrassment, thereby making the device itself embarrassing. Those things should be illegal. AND, they are also a VERY convenient means by which terrorists could disperse chemical weapons agents: just add the appropriate poison, plug in at some convenient point in a public building, and call up the TV stations to take credit for a few hundred casualties.

Electric cat feeders: ditto. Keeping a lonely kitty fed whilst traveling the globe is the only possible excuse for those things, to which my response is that abandoning one's cat for days and weeks at a time should be an animal cruelty charge. If you're a security freak like me who won't give out his housekeys to anyone for any reason, take the cat to a friend to take care of if you're going to be away.

Computerized heaters: ditto. A simple timer is quite sufficient to turn down the thermostat at night, and that should be powered by the AC mains, not by a battery.

Passive consumption such as the ubiquitous clocks on microwaves and suchlike, TVs that are in perpetual "standby" mode, etc.: Also bad, outlaw it.

Good point about comparative consumption between toaster and wall-wart. Though, thousands of toasters coming on in the morning before rush hour, impose a peak load on the grid. OTOH we're going to do away with rush hour, which should even out the load a bit.

Jpatti: Microwave Yes. Far more efficient than a thermal oven. In cases where food needs to be cooked in such a way that the exterior is crisped etc., use the microwave to get the internal temperature up, and then pop it into the thermal oven for "finish" cooking.

The hand-held electric mixer is an interesting borderline case. There are hand powered egg-beaters, some are made well enough to stand up to hard use, but for certain recipes these are still less than adequate. IMO the mixer gets to stay because it's not used often enough to add appreciably to the load.

Food-processors & their replacements: Yeah, agreed. My grandmother's cooking was out of this world incredibly good, using hand-tools end to end. Ditto my mom's and dad's cooking.

Low-tech washers: Up to a point; still there's a problem with the rinse function. And the price of that unit (your URL) is as much as for a complete washer & dryer, though its payback time is much faster since it uses zero electricity. My ideal case in this area would hook up a pedal power frame to a conventional horizontal-axis washer mechanism, which normally uses a 1/4 HP motor, which is about as much power as a human can supply consistently.

Bare floors more sanitary than carpeting: agreed. As I said, no more wall-to-wall, use area rugs instead, and sweep up with brooms/mops and carpet sweepers.

Ice houses assume trucks to deliver ice blocks to residents, and assumes residents are home during the delivery hours. Not so feasible with both parents at work.

Storing food in the ground: Uh, no thanks, potential for sanitary nightmares of all kinds if even the slightest imperfection in the storage containers. (Long list of potential infections omitted to save space).

The a-frame thingie for toast assumes there's ambient heat from another source; and popping the slices of bread into the conventional oven probably uses 50 to 100 x as much power as running the toaster for two minutes. So I'll take a pass on these methods also.

Duff: Washing machines feeding into graywater system: Yes, definitely true, though the same can be done with hand-washing systems such as the unit in the URL above.

Fluorescent strip-tubes making people stupid: Yes, because the 60-hz flicker is the first harmonic of the high beta brainwave frequency, which is the frequency your brain uses when you're trying to pay attention and concentrate on an external stimulus. However, compact fluorescents don't have this problem, and I'm speaking from experience as someone whose concentration is wrecked by long-tubes but is OK under CFs.

Electric heaters: Evil if abused, but consider the following: You're hanging out in one room, and you can close the door. You can't make your household gas heating system selective room by room, but you can use an electric space heater in the room you're in, and let the rest of the house stay at 58 (yes, fifty eight) degrees Fahrenheit. Question is, which is more efficient? (Anyone with appropriate engineering backgrond, input invited here.) To this extent, "open" floorplans without distinct rooms or doors in the common areas, are another execrable innovation of modern waste that has got to go; replaced with floorplans having distinct rooms with doors that can be closed to avoid heating unoccupied spaces.

Nero, yes, the dishwasher also has a significant benefit in terms of domestic tranquility, in group households where "dishes" are a major source of friction, and inadequate washing of same is a potential source of contagion.

Eustacian, a friend of mine always held her cellphone on her right ear. The rare type of brain tumor she got was on the right side of her brain. Glioblastoma multiforme. She fought the good fight and managed to live six months after the diagnosis. She doesn't need a cellphone where she is right now, all communication in the hereafter is by thought, and is instantaneous with no busy signals or voicemail.

Agreed about "beautifully clean vibrant clothes" being unnecessary for most of us; I'm a geek and therefore clueless about style; but I can definitely tell by smell when something needs a good wash, and machine washing does get the stuff cleaner than every hand method I've tried (and I have tried many by way of experiment in this area).

Excellent point about heat exchanger in the chimney. Though, a larger hot water tank would make it possible to take advantage of this factor whenever the household fires are burning.

Another engineer here said that LED lighting is actually far less efficient than CFs. Someone should research this point and get back to us with a definitive answer.

Large picture windows: No, no, a thousand times, no. Living in a fishbowl is revolting, and in any case those windows leak heat even if double glazed. Light indoor colors: yes, though I hardly know anyone who chooses to paint rooms in dark colors these days. Can't think of a single instance except a fellow geek who painted everything black and lived by the light of his computer monitor:-).

Microwaves: but the rotating turntable makes for more even cooking, which arguably cuts down the time needed to cook something thoroughly. In any case, still far more efficient than thermal cooking, by a mile.

Your list of execrables is interesting. But surely you don't think people use those electric back massagers for their *backs,* do you?:-). I'll have more to say about some of the items on your list but at the moment I have to go field to fix a PBX (client did a no-no, made two phones go down, we call that "civilian interference," me go fix now:-).

[bart]

Hand washing is enormously labor intensive and not possible for people who aren't physically fit. Speaking from experience of a lengthy (longer than a year) experiment in this area. The most physically demanding task is wringing out water after the rinse cycle, because this requires high hand pressures and torque. Rinse also uses up far more water than with a washing machine: when hand-washing, the detergent-laden water still present in the clothing can't be centrifugally extracted after the wash cycle or first rinse. Doing laundry by hand for one person requires two hours. For a family of four, that expands into an 8-hour day, hence the old term "wash day," meaning, the entire day spent washing clothes, usually by the woman of the household, often with the help of her kids.

I asked my grandmother (b. 1895) what she thought the most important invention of the 20th century was -- cars? TV? modern medicine? She answered without hesitation: washing machines! (She had five kids.)

[pea-jay]

My votes for the must stay appliances:

Refrigerator (will eventually want to get an absorption model)
Microwave (the most efficient way to heat water w/electricity)
Food processor/blender (quick and infrequent)
Any type of fan (low energy consumption but maximizes climate control)
CF lightbulbs
Push-style lawn mower. Keep lawns to a minimum in the first place, but use one of those manual push models for the remnants

What appliances I wont miss. (i dont use them currently)
Electric blanket
Towel heater
Wine refrigerators
Electric Humidor (sp?)
Air conditioner
Jacquzzi

[frankthetank]

Stay:
Refrigerators--people should have smaller ones, less energy
Notebook computers--less energy then desktop (no CRT)
CF--my house is full of them!
Microwaves--mines a 600watter, with a dial thing

GO:
dishwasher--i don't use soap half the time (i'm not getting sick!)
washer and dryer--seriously, i wear clothes a lot longer then most! (wear deodorant)--i have done some hand washing, its doable.
TV's!!!--they need to go...

USA most extreme waster of energy: STREET LIGHTS-- ban 'em!

[MonteQuest]

gg3,

I think I might not be to far off base to say you just might be a hypochondriac. Bet you don't like bugs!

Those temperatures kill germs and also kill parasites such as ticks, lice, fleas, and their respective eggs. In some cases, not only a high wash temp but a high drying temp is needed, for example clothing & bedding of persons with certain diseases that have a spore stage such as cryptosporidiosis (transmitted by infected birds via spores in their excrement). Finally, hand washing does not permit the use of high temperature water, and hang-drying depends upon bright sunlight for its sanitary effectiveness. Then put them into the dryer for 15 minutes, which is only 25% of a normal drying cycle but sufficient to kill any nasties that might have gotten through the wash. An individual living alone might get along without that, but for a family or group living situation, it can and does prevent spread of disease. However, that being said, there is no other way to remove fleas, flea eggs, and similar hazards (outdoor pets sleeping inside -> fleas -> bubonic plague risk), not to mention plain dirt, from wall to wall carpet.Hanging up the rugs outside and whacking them with a rug-beating stick, is a task for people of normal physical capabilities only, and raises enough dust to cause respiratory illnesses in many individuals. The only health justification for toasting bread is possibly to kill molds that might be growing on it.Those things should be illegal. AND, they are also a VERY convenient means by which terrorists could disperse chemical weapons agents: just add the appropriate poison, plug in at some convenient point in a public building, and call up the TV stations to take credit for a few hundred casualties.Storing food in the ground: Uh, no thanks, potential for sanitary nightmares of all kinds if even the slightest imperfection in the storage containers. (Long list of potential infections omitted to save space). Nero, yes, the dishwasher also has a significant benefit in terms of domestic tranquility, in group households where "dishes" are a major source of friction, and inadequate washing of same is a potential source of contagion.

[jpatti]

Low-tech washers: Up to a point; still there's a problem with the rinse function. And the price of that unit (your URL) is as much as for a complete washer & dryer, though its payback time is much faster since it uses zero electricity. My ideal case in this area would hook up a pedal power frame to a conventional horizontal-axis washer mechanism, which normally uses a 1/4 HP motor, which is about as much power as a human can supply consistently.

Simplest and cheapest would be simply to put a plunger in a washtub and attach a wringer to it. I'd stick it on a table though... back-breaking otherwise.

But I *want* the James.

Ice houses assume trucks to deliver ice blocks to residents, and assumes residents are home during the delivery hours. Not so feasible with both parents at work.

I assumed harvesting ice in winter and storing it in a giant pile of straw.

Hubby has a notion of building a giant insulated box and opening the top to fill it with water in winter and then closing the top to insulate it through the summer. We've not been able to find anyone who's ever done this, but it seems a lot easier than harvesting ice (which used to be a neighborhood project).

Anyway, once you've got the ice, you can build a convenient enough fridge. There's this old type of "fridge" that is basically a metal box with fabric laid over the top and down the sides with a tray on the bottom. You put a chunk of ice on the top and as it melts, it wicks down the sides, cooling the contents, before gathering in the tray at the bottom.

Basically, you chop a hunk of ice of your storage every day and stick it on top of your fridge and there ya go.

That's my long-term plan for a fridge anyways. Meanwhile, I have a regular old fridge... but still keep the 2-liter bottles in the freezer whenever there's empty space cause a full freezer is more efficient.

Storing food in the ground: Uh, no thanks, potential for sanitary nightmares of all kinds if even the slightest imperfection in the storage containers. (Long list of potential infections omitted to save space).[ /quote]

Errr... why?

We "root cellar" in an old broken freezer in our basement. We drilled a hole for ventilation and covered it with very fine wire mesh to keep rodents out.

I see no reason why burying it would be any more dangerous than keeping it in the cellar. If buried, I'd want it deep enough to cover with a pile of straw or other insulation.

The a-frame thingie for toast assumes there's ambient heat from another source; and popping the slices of bread into the conventional oven probably uses 50 to 100 x as much power as running the toaster for two minutes. So I'll take a pass on these methods also.

I think it's a dumb idea myself, but these are old cast-iron toasters, built for a wood stove. When you turn a wood stove on in the morning, you have a lot of extra heat... there's not "burners" like on an electric or gas stove, but the entire surface as well as the oven. So I think it could make sense, except again, I don't see the benefit over just toasting on the stove top or on a tray in the oven directly.

Electric heaters: Evil if abused, but consider the following: You're hanging out in one room, and you can close the door. You can't make your household gas heating system selective room by room, but you can use an electric space heater in the room you're in, and let the rest of the house stay at 58 (yes, fifty eight) degrees Fahrenheit. Question is, which is more efficient? (Anyone with appropriate engineering backgrond, input invited here.) To this extent, "open" floorplans without distinct rooms or doors in the common areas, are another execrable innovation of modern waste that has got to go; replaced with floorplans having distinct rooms with doors that can be closed to avoid heating unoccupied spaces.

We live in a stone house from the 1800's and have oil heat only vented to the first floor. Unfortunately, the bathroom is upstairs. So we use an electric heater in the bathroom cause the alternative would be to either heat the house enough to warm upstairs, which would waste a fortune in heating oil, or to stink all winter. Note that showering in the cold is *not* an alternative.

[Annatar]

Everyone seems to have forgotten telephones, either landline or mobile. In an medical or other emergency, having a functioning telephone may be a lifesaver.

[Pops]

I guess my point was, down the road 30-40 years, what is it your kids and grand kids will see when they open that fridge? Soda pop, prepared foods driven thousands of miles from factory farm to factory processor to mega mart, corn feed beefsteaks, tomatoes from Guatemala?

What exactly are those kids going to be throwing into the washer? Polyester wash and wear sweat suits, acrylic sweaters?

What do you think they are going to be vacuuming? Nylon carpets?

Not to mention the problem of supplying all that plastic going to build those appliances, the steel and copper, etc.

There was a reason that the original iceboxes and refrigerators were so small; there wasn’t much to put in them, people only washed clothes on Saturday because they only had 2 sets of clothing, they used brooms because only the rich could afford woven wool rugs.

I’m not saying that will happen next year or next decade, but if PO turns out to be the problem many think it’s going to be, conservation may make this generations life easier for a while, but you won’t conserve your way out of the decline of cheap energy.

[gg3]

Iron Fist: *I* sure as heck didn't forget telephones, they're "what I do for a living" (see the end of my earlier post about going field to fix a PBX problem), I'm a PBX engineer. A landline telephone uses 2.5 watts while in conversation, zero otherwise, and maybe 1 - 2 watts while ringing. I could go into excruciating detail about telephony if anyone's interested. Needless to say, our intentional community (rural California; plans pending) will have fully modern telephone & computer network.

Telephones also save travel.

Monte, clever ad-hominem but only half right. I'm not a hypochondriac, but neither will I eat bugs, a topic that Itch and I often joke about ("I'll trade you a pound of caterpillars for a half pound of fresh rabbit!":-). I haven't gotten sick with more than a three-day cold in over ten years, and those colds are usually pretty mild affairs once a year. And I even smoke (a pipe, only, but it's still tobacco).

Re. germs and buried food storage: Go look up "anaerobic bacteria." Ever hear of botulism? Never mind, go ahead and bury food and encourage others to do it also, the world is overpopulated, that will help a little but every bit counts:-)

Bart, your grandmother's immediate response about "what's the most important invention of the 20th century?" is also the nearly 100% consensus of women who lived "before" and "after" the invention of the washing machine. Anyone here who doesn't believe in washing machines is welcome to do without one for a truly long enough period of time to find out. I did it myself, voluntarily, as an experiment in trying to develop alternatives. Ask your spouse to do the entire family's laundry by hand every week, and you'll be served with divorce papers faster than you can say "sue me":-) .

Patti: Plunger in (whateve container) does not work. I tried that method also, using both a 5-gallon bucket and a 20-gallon drum. Requires enormous amounts of water and still doesn't get enough agitation to do the job effectively. The James is at least a well-proven and workable system, but I would suggest using warmer water and less detergent in order to make the rinse cycle work more efficiently.

In general, hand-powered washing systems work better if you wash more often rather than less often, i.e. don't wait for clothes to get really grimy before washing, wash them after one or two wearings.

Patrick: Towel heater?! I didn't even know such a thing existed! Yeah, ban those also. Electric humidors? Anyone who knows anything about cigars can buy or build a perfectly good humidor with no need of electricity (us pipe smokers have it easy, we just store our weed in the unopened tins, it even ages nicely that way; and bulk blends can be compressed into mason jars and kept at room temp).

Jacuzzis: Yes, another execrable piece of dinosaur-wasting decadence that the world can do without. Except for people who need hydrotherapy as a medical matter, on prescription; but those are few and far between, and clincs have hydrotherapy tanks in any case.

Frank: Deodorant needs to go. Nasty chemicals applied to the body won't cover up poor washing. The aluminum compounds in certain antiperspirants are toxic as hell also.

Agreed, get rid of overhead street lights, though perhaps small LED lights could be used to mark dangerous turns and so on. People can carry wind-up flashlights. As for the public safety issue of badguys taking advantage, that's where citizen-watch ambushes come in. And/or carry a pistol while out walking in the newly-darkened cities; chances are you'll have one anyway for household defense, may as well carry it on the streets.

Ice boxes: I still get the impression that these are going to be problematic. On the other hand I may be mistaken. Empirical results would be interesting.

Electric heater in upstairs WC: exactly the kind of acceptable use-case example I had in mind, where it's more efficient to heat one room electrically than to heat a much larger area by whatever means.

More Execrable Appliances: Christmas lighting particularly outdoors. Lawn mowers (agreed about having a deliberately small patch of lawn and using a push-mower). Electric pencil sharpeners and electric staplers. Computer-game and video-game consoles: may as well just use the same wattage for an electric vibrator, it's more direct and the results are more satisfying:-). Oddly enough, I know so little about what's up in the "consumer" market these days that I can hardly come up with decent contributions to the examples list. But those electric room-perfumers definitely take the cake as the most useless type of crap, and the kind of thing that should be illegal to produce.


Other room for improvement. Electrically powered clocks are unnecessary, and a clock in every room is unnecessary. Windup alarm clocks are available for as little as $10, or you can pay $50 and get a high quality version from Europe. Anything with a wall-wart: put it on a power strip that's controlled by a switch, or build a little switch-controlled power cord so you can turn the darn thing off for real when not in use. Remote controls are for people who are too lazy to get off their butts to change the channel or the station. High-powered audio systems are unnecesary, as the iPod illustrates. In fact the iPod is a good case in point re. how intelligent design can reduce power consumption, same as Apple's emphasis on laptops shows what's possible with home & office computers. Also, modern table radios offer surprisingly good sound for a fraction of the power consumption of a conventional audio system.

One use of batteries that's always justified: smoke detectors.