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Low Tech Magazine always writes like this. They always offer some idea which seems interesting on its surface but leaves gaps. They then end the article explain

Low Tech Magazine always writes like this. They always offer some idea which seems interesting on its surface but leaves gaps. They then end the article explaining away the gap with a moral polemic about how we need to change our ways and return to an older way of life. These days I just take the magazine for what it is; a medium containing interesting ideas but overall disingenuous and often impractical. (Though I do think that Americans uses clothes dryers _much_ more than they should. Most other G20 countries do not. In our household we hang dry any load of laundry that doesn't involve our heavy blankets, and that usually ends up extending the life of our laundry as well, while taking just a few additional minutes. (See, "often impractical" not "always impractical").)

SilverRed 5y ago
Not always using a clothes dryer is fine and good advice. But not using an electric kettle and replacing it with heating water on a gas stove is so beyond absurd I'm shocked how they even came to this conclusion since gas stoves are less efficient and much worse for the environment than a kettle. And a kettle is so low impact anyway. It uses a high amount of power for a very short time and spends almost all of its life turned off. The faster you heat the water the less waste there is as it cools during the heat process.
- citrin_ru 5y ago
  > since gas stoves are less efficient and much worse for the environment than a kettle. It is not obvious at all and requires calculations. When you use electric kettle you use energy which was obtained mostly from coal and gas (60% of it in the US) and efficiency of the conversion is less than about 40% on average (limited by efficiency of a steam turbine). Then about 8% of this power is lost during transportation/distribution. When gas is burned in a gas stove 100% of its energy converted to heat. The only problem - some fraction of this energy heats a room instead of a kettle. But it is not bad if you had to heat room anyway (where I live 8-10 months out of 12 I'd prefer indoor temperature to be higher then it is). I expect this loss to be smaller than 50%, but I've not found credible numbers for this. Efficiency for an oven may be low because it measurably heats a kitchen, but ovens is another story.
  - megous 5y ago
    It should be possible to just heat the 1l of water in a kettle and in a pot using gas, and compare the electricity and gas consumed. Time-wise I'd think it's quite comparable, in my experience. This of course depends on sizes and quality of kettle/pot. Wide pot, with large surface area and a quality heatspreader on the bottom will get the water boiling more quickly. Also covering a pot is a must. Sometimes when I'm in a hurry I split the water between a pot and el. kettle, to get a boiling 2l of water faster, and there's no huge difference in time to boil.
    - rini17 5y ago
      Have you tried induction stove? It loses almost no heat to outside of pot and that makes palpable difference.
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        But in this conversations its basically an electric kettle.
      - SilverRed 5y ago
        An induction stove is pretty much the same thing as a kettle for heating water. The OP post is against kettles because they require AC power which their solar panel and battery can not sustain. But somehow gas doesn't have to be accounted for and just comes for free.
  - eldaisfish 5y ago
    >It is not obvious at all and requires calculations. Heating water in a domestic setting on a gas stove is incredibly inefficient and you don't even need a calculator to know why - put your hand adjacent to the stove and feel the heat being lost. This is not a small fraction, it is significant unless you run the stove really low and spread that heat over a large area. Now put your hand and any point outside an electric kettle and see how much heat you can feel. Almost none. This isn't really as complicated as you're making it out to be.
- IlliOnato 5y ago
  Well, if you burn wood to boil water, it's a renewable, right? I am sure we can use wooden stoves for cooking. Besides, why you need to boil water for tea or coffee? These days tap water is safe for drink, and if you want to add extra flavor, you can chew your tea leaves or coffee beans... ;-)
tetromino_ 5y ago
Re clothes dryers - many Americans don't have much choice. Most apartment buildings in the US prohibit drying clothes on the balcony (to avoid giving the impression that poor people might live there). And some towns and neighborhood HOAs prohibit outside clothes lines even for residents of single family houses.
- OtomotO 5y ago
  TIL... Land of the free my ass
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Housing is one of the most heavily restricted activities in the US with institutions like HOAs or rental companies often applying all sorts of restrictions to enforce homogeneity or cultural values.
  - cassepipe 5y ago
    TIL means "Today I learned. Well today I learnt. Edit : Don't downvote. I am just the messenger. I just wanted to spare the googling to someone
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      i wonder if your comment saved energy or used up more energy than no comment at all. I guess we'd need to know how many people don't know and want to know what TIL means.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  I've usually hung my laundry indoors or on the stairs if I lived in a place with stairs. I realize this requires some space, but usually keeping the clothes in front of the window is enough to have them dry. I've had one of [1] these for years and it hasn't let me down yet. [1]: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frost-drying-rack-indoor-outdoor-white-40244831/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frost-drying-rack-indoor-outdoo...
emacsen 5y ago
> Though I do think that Americans uses clothes dryers _much_ more than they should. There are many reasons for this. Some of them are cultural, and other are legal. Many Americans simply don't remember drying clothes on a clothes hanger outside, and aren't used to hanging them indoors as many Europeans do. And to be fair, indoor clothing hanging is time consuming in comparison to "transfer clothes from one machine to another". But what many don't know is that it's often banned in many home owners' associations, and banned in many apartment leases, meaning that hanging your clothes outside is actually a luxury that many simply can't partake in.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I can't do it because the mold spores and pollen would make life very miserable.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "it's often banned in many home owners' associations, and banned in many apartment leases" That seems extremely inappropariate. Are there no restrictions on what they can ban, like can they ban children or cooking curries?
  - bluGill 5y ago
    There are a few restrictions, but not very many. You agree to them before you move in, so you are expected to not move there in the first place if you don't like the rules. I just refuse to live in one which solves it for me.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      But they can change the rules, right?
      - emacsen 5y ago
        The HOA or landlord can modify the terms, but they're disincentivized to do so. The reason that both HOAs and landlords disallow outdoor clothes drying is that it's seen as an eyesore. People associate clotheslines full of clothes with images of testaments in NYC in the 1920s and representing overpopulation and or immigration. Landlords in particular don't want people hanging things from the apartments- even objects like small satellite dishes are often not allowed. What many don't know is that in the US, many of these rules are simply null and void: https://www.sightline.org/2012/02/21/clothesline-bans-void-in-19-states/ https://www.sightline.org/2012/02/21/clothesline-bans-void-i... The challenge is that this requires a great deal of work on the part of the homeowner, and in doing so they would be entering into a conflict with the HOA. They would win in a court, but they would need to put up the money to fight in court. Even if/when they won, the HOA would make life unpleasant for them and likely retaliate in some other way.

SilverRed 5y ago

Not always using a clothes dryer is fine and good advice. But not using an electric kettle and replacing it with heating water on a gas stove is so beyond absurd I'm shocked how they even came to this conclusion since gas stoves are less efficient and much worse for the environment than a kettle. And a kettle is so low impact anyway. It uses a high amount of power for a very short time and spends almost all of its life turned off. The faster you heat the water the less waste there is as it cools during the heat process.

citrin_ru 5y ago
> since gas stoves are less efficient and much worse for the environment than a kettle. It is not obvious at all and requires calculations. When you use electric kettle you use energy which was obtained mostly from coal and gas (60% of it in the US) and efficiency of the conversion is less than about 40% on average (limited by efficiency of a steam turbine). Then about 8% of this power is lost during transportation/distribution. When gas is burned in a gas stove 100% of its energy converted to heat. The only problem - some fraction of this energy heats a room instead of a kettle. But it is not bad if you had to heat room anyway (where I live 8-10 months out of 12 I'd prefer indoor temperature to be higher then it is). I expect this loss to be smaller than 50%, but I've not found credible numbers for this. Efficiency for an oven may be low because it measurably heats a kitchen, but ovens is another story.
- megous 5y ago
  It should be possible to just heat the 1l of water in a kettle and in a pot using gas, and compare the electricity and gas consumed. Time-wise I'd think it's quite comparable, in my experience. This of course depends on sizes and quality of kettle/pot. Wide pot, with large surface area and a quality heatspreader on the bottom will get the water boiling more quickly. Also covering a pot is a must. Sometimes when I'm in a hurry I split the water between a pot and el. kettle, to get a boiling 2l of water faster, and there's no huge difference in time to boil.
  - rini17 5y ago
    Have you tried induction stove? It loses almost no heat to outside of pot and that makes palpable difference.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      But in this conversations its basically an electric kettle.
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      An induction stove is pretty much the same thing as a kettle for heating water. The OP post is against kettles because they require AC power which their solar panel and battery can not sustain. But somehow gas doesn't have to be accounted for and just comes for free.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  >It is not obvious at all and requires calculations. Heating water in a domestic setting on a gas stove is incredibly inefficient and you don't even need a calculator to know why - put your hand adjacent to the stove and feel the heat being lost. This is not a small fraction, it is significant unless you run the stove really low and spread that heat over a large area. Now put your hand and any point outside an electric kettle and see how much heat you can feel. Almost none. This isn't really as complicated as you're making it out to be.
IlliOnato 5y ago
Well, if you burn wood to boil water, it's a renewable, right? I am sure we can use wooden stoves for cooking. Besides, why you need to boil water for tea or coffee? These days tap water is safe for drink, and if you want to add extra flavor, you can chew your tea leaves or coffee beans... ;-)

tetromino_ 5y ago

Re clothes dryers - many Americans don't have much choice. Most apartment buildings in the US prohibit drying clothes on the balcony (to avoid giving the impression that poor people might live there). And some towns and neighborhood HOAs prohibit outside clothes lines even for residents of single family houses.

OtomotO 5y ago
TIL... Land of the free my ass
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Housing is one of the most heavily restricted activities in the US with institutions like HOAs or rental companies often applying all sorts of restrictions to enforce homogeneity or cultural values.
- cassepipe 5y ago
  TIL means "Today I learned. Well today I learnt. Edit : Don't downvote. I am just the messenger. I just wanted to spare the googling to someone
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    i wonder if your comment saved energy or used up more energy than no comment at all. I guess we'd need to know how many people don't know and want to know what TIL means.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
I've usually hung my laundry indoors or on the stairs if I lived in a place with stairs. I realize this requires some space, but usually keeping the clothes in front of the window is enough to have them dry. I've had one of [1] these for years and it hasn't let me down yet. [1]: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frost-drying-rack-indoor-outdoor-white-40244831/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/frost-drying-rack-indoor-outdoo...

emacsen 5y ago

> Though I do think that Americans uses clothes dryers _much_ more than they should. There are many reasons for this. Some of them are cultural, and other are legal. Many Americans simply don't remember drying clothes on a clothes hanger outside, and aren't used to hanging them indoors as many Europeans do. And to be fair, indoor clothing hanging is time consuming in comparison to "transfer clothes from one machine to another". But what many don't know is that it's often banned in many home owners' associations, and banned in many apartment leases, meaning that hanging your clothes outside is actually a luxury that many simply can't partake in.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
I can't do it because the mold spores and pollen would make life very miserable.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"it's often banned in many home owners' associations, and banned in many apartment leases" That seems extremely inappropariate. Are there no restrictions on what they can ban, like can they ban children or cooking curries?
- bluGill 5y ago
  There are a few restrictions, but not very many. You agree to them before you move in, so you are expected to not move there in the first place if you don't like the rules. I just refuse to live in one which solves it for me.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    But they can change the rules, right?
    - emacsen 5y ago
      The HOA or landlord can modify the terms, but they're disincentivized to do so. The reason that both HOAs and landlords disallow outdoor clothes drying is that it's seen as an eyesore. People associate clotheslines full of clothes with images of testaments in NYC in the 1920s and representing overpopulation and or immigration. Landlords in particular don't want people hanging things from the apartments- even objects like small satellite dishes are often not allowed. What many don't know is that in the US, many of these rules are simply null and void: https://www.sightline.org/2012/02/21/clothesline-bans-void-in-19-states/ https://www.sightline.org/2012/02/21/clothesline-bans-void-i... The challenge is that this requires a great deal of work on the part of the homeowner, and in doing so they would be entering into a conflict with the HOA. They would win in a court, but they would need to put up the money to fight in court. Even if/when they won, the HOA would make life unpleasant for them and likely retaliate in some other way.