To wash by hand, or by machine, that is the question. Personally, I’ve been washing by hand all my life. I don’t find dishwashers very effective, they take up room in the kitchen that I would rather use for other things. The dishwashers I’ve worked with are usually old and don’t work very well and new ones, well, cost money. Another reason I washed my dishes by hand was because I’ve always believed that it saved money. But is that really the case? Can dishwashers really save you money? Lets find out.
So if you wash by hand, there are two ways to do so. (1#) You either fill up a container and then use that water to wash and then you run water over the washed dishes to rinse them. (#2)Or you wash and rinse over freshly pouring water. There may be other ways of washing your dishes by hand, but these two are probably the most common ways.
Method #1. Clearly there are some problems with this method. You’re washing your dishes with dirty water after some point. Your container must be large enough to accommodate your larger dishes or pots and pans and your still using some water to fill up your container and then, to rinse your dishes.
Method #2. My method also has some clear problems. First off, your using a heck of a lot of water, as it’s constantly being used and the water being used is hot. Heated water is more expensive then cool water, as energy is required to heat that water. Then you got the problem that eventually all your hot water will die off. In my case that’s at the 40 minute mark and yes, sometimes I get to that point.
With a flow rate of 2.2 gallons per minute (gpm) and with a dishwashing rate of 50 minutes every 4 days, you’re looking at a cost of 15.06$/Year, plus 76 hours.
Now the dishwasher.
So the dishwasher needs 3 things to operate efficiently. Energy, water and some sort of detergent. Without energy the machine doesn’t work. Without water your dishwasher isn’t really washing anything and without detergent, your dishes will come out wet but not clean. So with all three, the dishwasher becomes a formidable opponent to hand washing.
According to Energy Star average dishwashers use around 6 gallons of water per cycle. Say you wash your dishes 3 times a week (full loads). You’ll be using 18 gallons of water a week, so roughly 936 gallons of water each year with your dishwasher. With water at around .75$/500 gallons, you’d be paying around 1.5$ for the dishwasher’s water bill.
If we still take into consideration that we’re using a newer energy star appliance (from the year 1999 we’ll say), it uses 422kW a year. At a price of .089$/kW your looking at a cost of 37.56$/year. So a total cost of 39.06$/Year for the operation of a dishwasher.
In conclusion?
Believe it or not, dish washing under running water is actually cheaper then using a dishwasher, as there is little to no electricity being used for the duration of the wash.
September 28, 2011 at 7:42 am
You are correct that it might be cheaper to wash by hand. However, because dishwashers use hotter water they kill more bacteria than hand washing. The energy cost is maybe an issue but it is a trade off really. You can spend the time that you aren’t standing over the sink earning some extra cash by doing surveys or selling old DVDs on eBay, for instance.
Anyway, I like this post. It is good to see some numbers around the hand-washing/ dishwasher debate.