Saving on hot water when washing dishes

Floss

oystercatcher said:

...I hate it when I go to someone's house and the cups have grubby bits around the base and handles where they have washed up by hand .

You won't find those here! 😁

Torry_Quine

On my own so every few days I boil the kettle to do my dishes. I then just put them to dry on the dish drainer, no rinsing either. I don't believe I'm using too much water this way.

summertime_2

We never had room for a dishwasher plus hubby says he would never have bought  one  anyway as convinced they use more water.  And lv never minded as he does all the washing up anyway....he's very particular in having very clean pots and pans lol.
He washes up, once a day, after tea, as during the day we don't have greasy items as we usually only cook at night as lunch is either a sandwich or hm soup. l dont eat breakfast so there isnt much crockery used during the day. As we use slow cooker mostly now daily in Autumn and Winter we dont have much to wash up at teatime, Oven dose'nt need cleaning much either but he does wipe down on every evening  but it rarely needs a scrub as it's rarely used.If we have to cook veg on stove, its cooked in a double saucepan to save gas.
Our washing bowl is a small one , as our new property is a much smaller kitchen than our last family home, plus we are on a water meter now we are retired. We use approx l gallon water in that bowl and the items are air dried. The waste washing up water is poured on my flower boarder in the Summer, again to keep cost of the water meter down. 

-taff

Floss said:

oystercatcher said:

...I hate it when I go to someone's house and the cups have grubby bits around the base and handles where they have washed up by hand .

You won't find those here! 😁

You would have at mine....And probably some of the last dinner to hit the plate, or a bit of egg yolk or something...

No matter how hard I tried to do it properly, I just couldn't...

Mistral001

I get the dishwasher versus the big basin of hot water argument.   Dishwasher owners must get fed up with people thinking that they use a lot of energy when they actually do not.  I was trying to bring my one pint of hot water way of washing dishes to the attention of those who do have not havr a dishwasher for whatever reason and cannot avail of their savings. 

Effician

Mistral001 said:

I get the dishwasher versus the big basin of hot water argument.   Dishwasher owners must get fed up with people thinking that they use a lot of energy when they actually do not.  I was trying to bring my one pint of hot water way of washing dishes to the attention of those who do have not havr a dishwasher for whatever reason and cannot avail of their savings. 

I think it's an often confused comparison,  efficiency vs cost ,which are not the same .

Lets take cost,

£300 D/W with a life of roughly 10yrs = 80p/week , a fixed cost of ownership excluding repairs.

1kw/h of energy on average for one cycle @ svr cap =21p

consumables ie tabs, salt lets say 10p a cycle

Now lets say it gets used 3x per week , this would equate to a weekly running cost of  £1.71 ( excluding water)

The efficiency comes about in the relatively small amout of electric & water used to clean potentially 30+ place settings.

The cost of hand washing comes into it's own when doing small scale , as a 2 person household we wash up every day, enough to fill a standard drainer.

To kettle boil enough water for the above amount of washing up would use approx 250w , so 5.25p. Add 2p for detergent & our daily cost is around 7p/day

We'll probably use about 10l of water per session but as we're not on water meter it makes no difference to our cost.( plus we make savings on water use elsewhere)

So washing up by hand is not an overly efficient use of resources , but i couldn't wait 3 days to fill a dishwasher , never mind having all the extra pots, crockery & cutlery.

I guess it roughly works out on my example that a dishwasher would only cost around £60 a yr more than our handwashing , not a lot really but still £60 & i like watching the birds in the garden whilst washing up.

To try and compare one method with the other seems rather futile.

I understand the convenience of a dishwasher & the relatively low weekly cost in a busy household ( or someone that just hates washing up ) , but both methods have their place.

No doubt someone will nitpick about  tabs only cost 5p or my machine was under £200 ,or my hot water is free in winter( sorry the hot water is me ) i have gone with what seems like averages .

 

littlemoney

Effician said:

Mistral001 said:

I get the dishwasher versus the big basin of hot water argument.   Dishwasher owners must get fed up with people thinking that they use a lot of energy when they actually do not.  I was trying to bring my one pint of hot water way of washing dishes to the attention of those who do have not havr a dishwasher for whatever reason and cannot avail of their savings. 

I think it's an often confused comparison,  efficiency vs cost ,which are not the same .

Lets take cost,

£300 D/W with a life of roughly 10yrs = 80p/week , a fixed cost of ownership excluding repairs.

1kw/h of energy on average for one cycle @ svr cap =21p

consumables ie tabs, salt lets say 10p a cycle

Now lets say it gets used 3x per week , this would equate to a weekly running cost of  £1.71 ( excluding water)

The efficiency comes about it the relatively small amout of electric & water used to clean potentially 30+ place settings.

The cost of hand washing comes into it's own when doing small scale , as a 2 person hosehold we wash up every day, enough to fill a standard drainer.

To kettle boil enough water for the above amount of washing up would use approx 250w , so 5.25p. Add 2p for detergent & our daily cost is around 7p/day

We'll probably use about 10l of water per session but as we're not on water meter it makes no difference to our cost.( plus we make savings on water use elsewhere)

So washing up by hand is not an overly efficient use of resources , but i couldn't wait 3 days to fill a dishwasher , never mind having all the extra pots, crockery & cutlery.

I guess it roughly works out on my example that a dishwasher would only cost around £60 a yr more than our handwashing , not a lot really but still £60 & i like watching the birds in the garden whilst washing up.

To try and compare one method with the other seems rather futile.

I understand the convenience of a dishwasher & the relatively low weekly cost in a busy household ( or someone that just hates washing up ) , but both methods have their place.

No doubt someone will nitpick about  tabs only cost 5p or my machine was under £200 ,or my hot water is free in winter( sorry the hot water is me ) i have gone with what seems like averages .

 

Plus the cost of having enough crockery, pans,  knives etc that you can leave them unwashed pending the next use of the dish washer

Norman_Castle

Mistral001 said:

  She would wash dishes in the basin one at a time using a small sponge and then rinse them in running cold water.  I have tried this by heating the required pint of hot (not boiling) water in a kettle.  This method seems to clean the dishes just as well as my old way and while it takes slightly longer, I reckon that the electricity consuption in washing dishes is reduced by about 80-90%. 

If you use less soap there's no need to rinse. I use one kettle of water cooled with a bit of cold water. Wash cleaner items first, glasses first then cups, cutlery, plates, saucepan lids, saucepans then any oven trays or similar.

thriftwizard

This is how my OH washes dishes, and I agree it's very frugal if there's not a lot of washing up. However, given 5 adults & 2 different diets (though there is some crossover - we eat the same carbs & green veg with each main meal) by the time you've washed 5 x main plates, pudding bowls, side plates, glasses, tea & coffee cups etc., never mind the saucepans, chopping boards & utensils, the water's cold & not very clean. So I do use a sink-full of hot if washing by hand, and to be fair we also have a dishwasher which usually goes off every other day. I do however rinse in a bowl of cold water; OH believes rinsing is a waste of time & resources. He may well be right but I'm not a fan of lashings of detergent!

Not that we have any choice just now! Just one emergency tap on the incoming main, buckets for the loos & kettle & small Burc0-type boiler for hot water until a plumber's free to join our water & heating system back up again...

tboo

Mistral001 said:

She would wash dishes in the basin one at a time using a small sponge and then rinse them in running cold water.  

As others have said this method will use a lot of water. I am on a meter so I would not tolerate this method at all.

The Yanks seem to wash this way as well and they also eat off paper plates, which is bizarre.