Monday, August 11, 2008

Dishwasher vs. Sink

So I did a bit of research over cheerios with G3, and I found quite a few forums of argument over which method is more economical. Here is a passage from thriftyfun that kind of sums it up:

RE: Handwashing vs. The Dishwasher - Which is more economical?
Post By (Guest Post) (04/17/2006)
A friend who is a plumber told me this."If you wash dishes by hand three times a day, breakfast, lunch, supper with a full sink of hot soapy water you will use more water then using your dishwasher once a day"."Your electricity will be about the same as you are using less hot water from the tank and if you don't need to heat the water for the dishwasher it is equivalent. However, this is with most newer dishwashers".The other thing is you should always run your water in the kitchen sink until is hot before you turn your dishwasher so it will be hot, and use air dry if at all possible.Hope this helps you out!


The general consensus is that unless you have a very small family or make very few dirty dishes, the dishwasher is the way to go. This makes me very happy, since I don't particularly like washing dishes by hand. Since the age of the dishwasher seems to play a part, I'm going to assume mine is less than 10 years old, which is how old our house is-the dishwasher was here when we bought the house.

I had not, however, heard about running your hot water prior to starting the dishwasher. Since dinner dishes are usually what fills it up, and there are always dinner dishes that HAVE to be handwashed (aka pots and pans) this will work nicely for me. Hey, you learn something new everyday!

1 comment:

Becca said...

So, that could be a valid reason for me to give Jeff in my efforts to get a dishwasher, huh?