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In November 2006 our washing machine packed up with a controller
failure. As is was over seven years old we decided to replace it
with a more efficient one.
Water Use
A survey of the published water use for a range of machines from
the cheap to the very expensive demonstrated a wide range of
between 40 and 80 litres per wash. The published figure is however
somewhat misleading in that this is under optimal conditions
and the machine we chose (after careful reading of the manual)
showed it could actually use between 43 and 60 litres per wash
for a 43 litre machine. Checking into the cheaper machines gave
similar results. Whether you can use the most economical program
or not it still seems that the more expensive machines give lower
water consumption. One thing that confused the issue is the variation
in wash load of between 5 and 8 Kilograms. So for comparison
purposes the number of litres used was divided by the load size
to give a litres per kilogram figure. More recently machines
have become available that adjust the amount of water depending
on the load.
Electrical Use
The electricity consumption during use seems pretty consistent
irrespective of the price of the machine with a typical figure
of 1.1KW Hr per wash for the most economical complete wash cycle.
I was unable to establish the standby current from the literature
or by questioning staff and in two cases contacting the manufacturer
where machines have a timer facility rather than an on/off switch.
The machine we chose has a real on/off switch plus the facility
to leave it on standby to come on a number of hours into the
future (probably the best compromise). The actual standby current
was measured as 2 Watts with the power consumption for the normal
cycle we use being 1.35 KW Hours.. The old machine ran on a time
switch to enable cheap rate electricity to be used, the time
switch has a consumption of 1 watt. The old machine used around
1.5KW Hours per wash.
Running Costs
Our original 6 kilogram load machine (according to the handbook) used between
53 and 70 litres or water giving a saving of around 10 litres per wash. As
we use the machine about 3 times a week on average this gives a saving in water
use of around £2.16 a year.
Using the figures for electricity use above the saving will be
around 63p per quarter.
So it is worth paying a little bit more for the machine with a
built in timer and the lowest litres per kilogram load. This is
the decision we made.
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