Saving on hot water when washing dishes

Mistral001

tboo said:

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.

You do not need to use much cold water to rinse the dishes.  Even if you decide that you need to use lots of cold water to rinse, please see my calculation above (post No. 6 on the first page) on the cost of the water involved.  It is very little compared to what you are saving on electricity.  

In fact the total water you use, that is the amount of hot water for waashing plus the amount of cold rinsing water, is less than the water in a full baisn of hot water.   That means that water use is irrelevant when comparing the method I use to the big basin of hot water method.

Mistral001

Norman_Castle said:

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.

I get what you are saying, but the method I use probably uses far less water than you think.  I are tallking about only about two or thress tea mugs full  of hot water.  That is less than an inch of water in a plastic washing up basin.  My friend who showed me the method I am using had a plastic basin shaped rather like a baking bowl where you could get deeper water for your to or there musgs full.   I cannot find the exact type of plastic bowl my friend used in Greece in the local shops.  It might be a continental basin that is not widely used here.