Washer/Dryer energy usage
 

Has anyone here ever put a Kill-a-Watt on their clothes washer to see how much energy is used for a regular load of laundry?

I just bought a used front-loading washing machine to save on water usage, but I am curious about electric usage as well.

I have a Kill-a-watt and will post results on my washer after my next load of laundry.

(PS - just talking electrical energy here. I know hot water takes some additional heat energy from electric or natural gas. I pretty much always wash in cold water.)







Edit:
Looks like the new dryer uses about 680 watts of electricity while running (automatic dry mode, middle setting) with the glow plug on. It then drops to between 250 and 300 watts when the glow plug turns off.

I used 5 gallon buckets in my utility sink to see how much water the washer used per load. Over one load of laundry, the washer produced almost exactly 20 gallons of water.

My toilet is a 1.6 gallon per flush model. (Plus I have a brick in the tank.) That means that if I routed water from my washer to my toilet tank, I could flush the toilet a dozen+ times per load of laundry.

You could think about using a solar-powered clothes dryer instead. No energy, no CO2, and (unless you live in a city) your clothes smell better: As an energy-saver, the clothesline makes a comeback | csmonitor.com

The Kill-a-watt says it took .13 KWhrs to do a load of laundry.

The clothes are drying in the sun even as we speak! :thumbup:

Did you know that the hoses on a clothes washer use the same threads as a garden hose?

You did? Well, you are pretty smart. I had to actually figure it out.

Since I already moved my old washer onto the back porch, to make room in the laundry for the new one, it isn't hooked up to test for power and water usage. If only I could run it with a garden hose!

You can! Just connect your garden hose to the washer hose to the washer. Fits right on. Then turn on your garden hose spigot and activate the washer!

The top-loading washer used 35 or 40 gallons. I sort of lost track while I was frantically emptying five gallon buckets.

The top-loader also used .20 KWhrs of electricity.

As you said in the first post, the largest part of energy cost of doing a load of laundry is going to go into heating the water. So you've already got the old washer hooked up to the garden hose. Now you need a couple hundred feed of black plastic irrigation tubing, with hose adapters at the ends. Coil it up in a sunny spot, and do your wash in the middle of the day, with free hot water :-)

I really never wash in hot, but you are right, that's a dead-simple solar heating system!

Looks like the new washer will save me 15 gallons and .07 Kwhrs of electricity on every load! Lets say I do four loads of laundry a week.

4 x 15 gallons = 60 gallons per week.
60 x 5 (number of weeks we usually go between emptying the 2000 gallon waste-water holding tank.) = 300
300 / 2000 = 15%

I just saved 15% on my water utility! With my typical usage, that saves me $140 a year! (Holding tank pumping is expensive - it currently runs $90 for every five weeks!)

I paid $250 for the new-to-me washer and dryer.
If I sell the old pair for $100, that brings my real cost to $150, which means the new washer PAYS FOR ITSELF in a year and 5 weeks!

That's based on four loads of laundry per week. If I do more, the payback is even faster.

There's a LG washer/dryer that uses a dehumidifier to dry while recovering heat. I have one and it uses less than half the energy of a regular dryer.

But hanging it out on the clothesline uses zero. Though of course those of you who live in places where it rains frequently might not always be able to do it when you want...

WOW! That's awesome, I'd never heard of them.

Note : I was searching to reply to this thread on EcoRenovator - Powered by vBulletin ;)

We measured yesterday's loads. 2 loads, 1 at 60°C (140°F) and 1 at 40°C (104°F) and total electricity consumption was 1.319 kWh. Sorry I don't have individual consumptions.

I have no idea about water consumption, but the washer settings was toward economical.

It's in our plan to change this 10 years old washer. There is washers that are using your already hot water so they don't have to heat it by themselves. The change of our 11 years old fridge lowered the yearly consumption from 650 to 140 kWh :) but this is another story to be followed soon on EcoRenovator - Powered by vBulletin ;)

Denis.