gg3 wrote: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.
duff_beer_dragon wrote: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'.
gg3 wrote: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.
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.
gg3 wrote: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.
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).[ /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.
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