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Thanks for the summary. American dishwashers don't have their own heater? All dishwashers I've seen in Australia only have cold water supply.
by suprjami 1y ago
Thanks for the summary.
American dishwashers don't have their own heater? All dishwashers I've seen in Australia only have cold water supply.
- midnitewarrior 1y agoThey do, but they are generally confined to 10 amps, so they do not heat quickly.
- Rebelgecko 1y agoAmerican dishwashers are typically hooked up to hot water. Some will have heaters but they're not that powerful and they may only run for the main wash cycle
- brianwawok 1y agoNot true. Dishwashers get cold very often.
- tenacious_tuna 1y ago...what's not true? I can't tell what you're disagreeing with.
- sgerenser 1y agoAmerican dishwashers are always hooked up to the hot water supply. It’s right in the installation manual, and I’ve never seen one that wasn’t.
- devilbunny 1y agoThey do. I didn't realize this until my natural gas supply company decided to replace my meter on a Friday. Without alerting me ahead of time so that I could, you know, plan to be gone while my house had no hot water. Whenever natural gas supply is turned off in the US, for any reason, only the gas company can turn it back on. And they can't do so if there's a leak at all. You have to call a plumber to come out, detect the leaks, and fix them. After that, you can call the gas company to come back out (but not on a weekend) to turn it back on. And a same-day request for service requires someone to be home ALL DAY after it's called in. And this is how I ended up showering at work for three days that week after not having had one over the weekend.
- thomascountz 1y agoAs an American expat, I will use this story to explain some of the indignities of living in America. Thank you for sharing.
- devilbunny 1y agoEvery country I have ever discussed with its residents has something that, on its face, is a reasonable safety precaution (I definitely don’t want to blow up my house), but in practice is just a way to make your life miserable while helping the people who work there have an easier day. This just happens to be the one that affected me. Like modern gas water heaters that have electric ignition instead of pilot lights, because the one serious reason to have gas water heaters is that they work when there is no electricity. Now it’s just a price distinction.
- ajb 1y agoMy parents used to have an old cooker which rather than having a spark button, had individual pilot lights for all of the hob burners and the grill. My mother was forever worried about whether one of the damn things had gone out (which they occasionally did). I think if you switched the supply off, switched it on again, and someone has left their house for a week, it might build up a significant amount of gas. Although they are supposed to be small enough not to. Presumably there were hardly any of those left now, but they can't assume they're all gone.
- jojohohanon 1y agoPilot lights are often designed so that the heat from the flame holds a bimetallic switch in the open position. Should the light go out, the bimetallic switch will shut as it cools.
- genter 1y agoFor water heaters and wall furnaces with a gas control valve, yes. For old stoves, they don't.
- vel0city 1y agoA dishwasher cycle is usually only going to run for a specific period of time. Its more effective it if starts that time closer to the proper temperature rather than relying on waiting for the heater to get the temperature up to that time. Especially on the pre-rinse cycle, where the heater may or (probably) many not engage.
- reaperducer 1y agoAmerican dishwashers don't have their own heater? Some do, some don't. The ones that do vary in ability by overall dishwasher quality. The ones that don't are hooked up to the kitchen's hot water line. This is considered more energy efficient because a home's hot water heater (whether electric, gas, or another fuel) is better at heating the water in a bulk capacity than a tiny heater in the dishwasher. The downside is that the cold water between the big water heater and the dishwasher has to be purged first for it to be really effective. If your hot water heater is in the other side of the wall, no problem. If it's six rooms away, problem.
- WheatMillington 1y agoHot water from the house supply isn't that hot though? My dishwasher gets MUCH hotter than the hot water supply... and I don't think the heater is "tiny" I think it's a rather substantial element. The dishwasher also doesn't need to heat up a "bulk" amount of water, just the amount of water used for washing the current load of dishes.
- reaperducer 1y agoHot water from the house supply isn't that hot though? Depends on how you have it set. My current and previous hot water heaters had thermostats which permitted adjusting the temperature. They also had warning labels on them about scalding water. If it's hot enough to scald, it's hot enough. The dishwasher also doesn't need to heat up a "bulk" amount of water, just the amount of water used for washing the current load of dishes. If you're washing dishes and someone is, or has recently, taken a shower; or someone is, or has recently, done laundry; or someone is, or has recently shaved or done any of the other dozen things that draw from the hot water heater, then the water is already hot and available and doesn't need to be heated all the way from cold by the dishwasher. A properly insulated hot water heater can retain heat for quite some time.
- nomel 1y agoMy cheap GE dishwasher uses a hot water line, but also has an internal heating element to "boost" it, and help dry. My electric bill definitely suffers if cold water is used.
- WheatMillington 1y agoSame in NZ, never seen a dishwasher with a hot water connection.
- Titan2189 1y agoIf you check the manual you might find that you can hook the single inlet pipe up to the hot water tap.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoI feel like it's probably pointless. The dishwasher will be full of water before the hot water starts coming out the pipe. Depending on how far the dishwasher is from the water heater I guess.
- tguvot 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulator_pump#Use_with_domestic_hot_water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulator_pump#Use_with_domes...
- Gigachad 1y agoThis seems like something that only makes sense when water is scarce but electricity is cheap. You’d be constantly losing heat to the poorly insulated pipes.
- tguvot 1y agoI have all hot water pipes insulated in my house
- maxerickson 1y agoPeople who do it more or less don't care about the price of energy (except maybe in the abstract). It's for comfort and convenience.
- 1y ago
- mrandish 1y agoSome US washers don't but many do. However, US washers tend to not heat water as quickly or to as high of a temp. The video cites two reasons: 1. US power being 110V vs 220v. 2. US dishwasher heating elements being limited to 800 or 1000 watts because many are designed to potentially share one 20A residential circuit with an oven and/or fridge due to possibly being retrofitted into a kitchen built before built-in dishwashers were standard and manufacturers not wanting to create different models for retrofit vs new installs.
- beerandt 1y ago3) manufacturers placing energy star improvement quotas over safety in programming the cycles.
- lawlessone 1y agoThe energy star stuff isn't unique to US dishwashers though.
- masklinn 1y ago> share one 20A residential circuit 15, dishwasher manufacturers can't assume the dishwasher is on a 20.
- dylan604 1y agoThis plus the comment about sharing a circuit with an oven. If the oven is electric, even in the US it is 220v. If it is gas only, then it could be 120v as it only needs to run the igniter and other circuitry without running any heating elements.
- bcoates 1y agoI think he said sharing a circuit with a fridge, which are generally 110 in the US -- i think this is how my apartment is wired (2-phase 30A to oven dedicated, one 20A for the whole rest of kitchen) Trying to run a resistive heater on the same circuit as a fridge compressor without tripping leans towards very conservative wattage
- alvah 1y agoThis has always struck me as dumb, as until recently it was far cheaper to use your existing (gas-fired) hot water than to use a resistive element. However, with gas going out of fashion (and already hugely expensive in the Eastern states), and abundant solar PV, the calculus has changed.
- selcuka 1y agoThe problem is that the first few litres of the water coming from the hot water pipe may be cold or warm. Therefore adding a resistive element is a better solution to guarantee a specific temperature.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoGas (especially just in time) still works well for water heating even if you can use heat pumps for everything else. No sure when that will flip, I assume it will eventually.
- alvah 1y agoGas is already outlawed for new builds in Victoria, despite vast gas resources in the Bass Strait. Presumably that's the direction other states are heading too.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoIt was a direction some states in the USA were heading before Trump, but now… anyways there will come an economic/technological point where electricity just makes more sense like it does for almost everything else. No need to legislate a transition when one will happen naturally, but we aren’t there yet.
- totallymike 1y agoI can’t speak to Australian dishwashers, but trying to skip the video by catching a summary has failed you. Heating is discussed extensively in the video
- fsckboy 1y agotraditionally (in household washing machine time) US houses were large and had a lot more hot water capacity for the whole house, and putting a heater into individual appliances was not necessary/cost effective. retrofitting old traditional houses (especially stone) with higher capacity plumbing was expensive and infeasible, so putting heaters in appliances was a cope for markets that needed it.
- mattclarkdotnet 1y agoQuite, another thing to add to the list of USAian weird exceptions.
- graemep 1y agoMy fairly cheap dishwasher in the UK has its own heater, but you can attach it to a hot water supply, which may save money as gas is so much cheaper than electricity.