Yellow EnergyGuide stickers, how accurate should they be?

Most residential freezers have a 10 degree or so differential. Is your thermostat electronic or mechanical?

Not sure. It has two LEDs but the clicking sound more thermostat-like than a relay would. Depending on temps it cycles 2-3 times an hour.

Not enough alcohol. ;-)

They're designed to run that way. You think it's going to last 30 years?

No leaks. The cold has no way to get out of there and there are no puddles either. I think the hysteresis on the thermostat is a bit tiny. I hung an electronic thermometer in there and it never veered more than

I was almost gonna say, some of that Belgian stuff might survive. But it'll kill the taste.

The last one made it about 13 years. It was amazing, it was almost totally silent. So I don't know what its cycle times were but I thought

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Does anything last 30 years anymore these days...?

Also, in my experience, cheap fridge's (say $350) seem to last longer than the $1400 models. I am not sure why?

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Spite. ;-)

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Well, we'll have been married forty years in a few weeks. ;-)

$1400 is a cheap fridge. They're for wannabees.

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I presume the chinese mfr decides he can cut the parts cost and doesnt tell teh customer. Result: shorter life, lower energy efficiency.

Our European washers used to have hot & cold intakes. But now they use so little water that the hot fill is complete before any hot water gets down the pipe to the machine, so a hot fill valve is useless. Also heating the water up slowly from cold is advantageous for cleaning with our bio powder, at leat on some programmes. Cycle time is almost a non-issue over here, we don't have laundry days, we just put a load on in the morning if its needed and forget it till later in the day.

On small domestic items pf is hardly an issue, they were right not to care.

NT

It was probably made in Mexiko by a US company. Anyhow, they'd have a reputation to lose. Some may not care but a certain automotive company has lost in the high five digits in potential sales just in our family. And I know plenty of others who have formed the same opinion and won't buy their products anymore either. Needless to say that company has scraped along the financial cliff of doom twice already.

Yes, that can be an issue. Many houses don't have hot water recirculation. On those that do you have hot water instantly. It is sad to use precious electricity to heat water. That is much worse for the environment because the overall process efficiency is low.

Not so. This freezer is EnergyStar rated. For that it must fulfill the PF requirements. In Europe there is also a law and that affects gear above a certain power level. I think it's 70W and freezers are above that.

Yet companies do it every day.

Recirculation is incredibly inefficient. If it weren't for the heating elements in our dishwasher, nothing would ever get clean. Yes, we heat water with electricity. Not much choice, but it's not all that expensive ($.08/kWh).

No one has ever accused the Europeons of being smart. Improving PF on switching power supplies makes sense, maybe. On freezers?

The regulations apply to anything which connects to the mains supply and exceeds a certain power threshold. That doesn't mean that compliance necessarily requires any effort; the PFC regulations mainly concern harmonics.

It's often bad management. Their horizon stretches to the end of the current quarter but that's sometimes all the vision they've got.

Well, we live in a non-conservative state so ours costs almost 2x. In case you'd wash too many loads, have too many kids that play soccer, the rate quickly goes to 4x and more. You really don't want heat the wash electrically out here.

If homes were built more smart the recirc pump would get a signal from the washer, start 2mins before the wash and then stop until the next wash.

Ideally you'd want every load to have a PF of 1. AFAIK you must be above

The problem is that, for every "savvy consumer" such as yourself, Joerg, there are probably at least 10 if not 100 consumers who don't even consider longevity or efficiency in their buying decision (although putting those energy cost stickers right on the units -- even if they aren't that horribly accurate -- at least forces all but the most clueless to spend a moment considering it). And consumers have relatively short memories as well -- even if they vaguely remember that, e.g., growing up they had the same refrigerator all, say, 20+ :-) years they lived at home, most are quite willing to accept that, oh, the expected lifetime of a major appliance is now, say, less than a decade.

I'm not sure what the best solution to this problem is, though -- I don't really want government stepping in to mandate that, e.g., all refrigerators must last an average of 25 years or something like that either. Perhaps there could be, in addition to the yellow stickers, a purple sticker or something that lists MTBFor somesuch? -- I would expect that manufacturers already calculate that number internally anyway.

---Joel

Unlikely. The weenies seem to have no clue that their electric cars are coal-powered.

That could turn into a con job. Better would be actual long-term warranties. ...Jim Thompson

Hey Keith,

What do you think of this? -->

(In brief: Consumer product safety commission is contemplating all table saws to have "flesh detection" devices that prevent injury. E.g., the SawStop devices.)

Interestingly, it turns out that Steve Gass, the inventor -- and formerly a patent attorney -- has been very much behind the push for this. Surprise, surprise -- he stands to profit immensely, at least initially, if the CPSC manages to get legislation passed. More information on all th is:

(Your "European" mention made me think of this -- after hearing the article earlier today -- in that I recall reading how European table saws already have tighter safety standards than U.S. ones do.)

---Joel

They may accept that but usually only once per manufacturer. If something croaks way too early and the mfgs can't be bothered about it the consumer may shun this company from then on. I have a mental blacklist of companies from which I most likely will never buy again for the rest of my life. And if talk about a purchase comes up when around friends I tend to share such information, so there's a snowball effect that works against that manufacturer. Consumer memory may be short but that can become decades when they've been seriously fussed about a product or company.

Regarding efficiency the yellow stickers show the range of similar products so at least you can see (to some extent) how this new unit on display would stack up. Interestingly, those yellow stickers are not displayed for all online offers. Which can lead consumers to conclusions about products where they aren't displayed ...

The answer to that is the cost of an extended warranty as Jim mentioned. That is the true cost the mfg stands by. Because if they cheated and made this Dollar number too low they'd lose their shirt.

Problem is, while that is very easy with cars it may not with smaller stuff such as appliances. Usually they don't offer it, only the store does and at ridiculously expensive rates. I heard some stores give kickbacks to cashiers who manage to saddle a consumer with such an extended repair plan. Meaning they must make tons of profit on those.

I've actually been accosted, while standing in the check-out line at Best Buy, by some village idiot trying to sell me an extended warranty on some USB expander that cost maybe $10. ...Jim Thompson

Can't remember exactly but it was something that cost slightly over $500 and they wanted around $250 per year (!) for extended warranty. I almost had a major ROFL episode.