7 Crappy Products, Courtesy of the Green Movement
In the good old days, consumers got what they wanted. Supply and demand, not causes or ideology, governed product design and manufacturing. That’s why we have great American icons like the 1969 Chevy Camaro, the charcoal-burning Weber grill, and DDT.
But things have changed. The Green Movement’s worship of scarcity has changed the consumer landscape for the worse. Instead of big, powerful, and, most importantly, effective products, in 2012 consumers must suffer with pansy products. Sure, they are designed to save energy and make you feel good. But they just don’t work as well as the old, and usually cheaper, versions.
Below are seven crappy products we must endure, courtesy of the Green Movement.
1. Low Water Toilets
Any article with the headline above must start with low water toilets. Many of you will remember an age before the government decided water was scarce, when toilets could be counted on. In 1992, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, and President George Bush signed it. It mandated a maximum flush capacity for toilets. Naturally, the 1992 version of the Green Movement was behind the law, and behind the Republican sponsor – Representative Philip Sharp of Indiana. Since Bush signed Sharp’s legislation, plunger sales have sky-rocketed. Sharp’s bad idea has caused some of the most embarrassing moments of people’s lives, especially when they are visiting someone else’s home.
Beware, the freaks next want to eliminate water in your toilet, as well as toilet paper.
“Boeing jettisoned efficient copper wires, replacing them with lighter aluminum wiring.”
I’m sorry, there are good intentions and there are good intentions, but that one decision was mind-boggling stupid. Reminds me of NASA wanting to save a couple bucks on the Space Shuttle and used aluminum instead of titanium. Which meant that they had to develop the whole hand placed and replaced “heat-resistant tile” shuck and jive between every mission.
Colin Powell will be in touch. shuck and jive = racist.
So glad you think so. Sure adds to the discussion. The sun is coming up, you need to get back under the bridge.
He’s being ironic.
No, he’s being sarcastic.
Please look up the definitions, instead of just floating along with the tide of ignorance.
Mark V chill out. We’re on the same team here.
When we say it, were racist, when they say it, it’s cool. Smile Colin Powell, your tipping everyone of with your pouting lips.
If you read a history of Space Shuttle development you will find that it was Congress, not NASA, that essentially designed them.
I knew it was designed by a committee, but down to the fabrication metal?
Jeez Louise
Where EXACTLY did you get your information? Look it up is a wild goose chase.
Hogwash.
I thought Al Gore invented the Space Shuttle. ;^)
This seems to echo the experience with household aluminum wiring in the 80′s and also with whatever insulation was used on the F-4 Phantom wiring during the Vietnam era. Have all the senior engineers at Boeing retired?
No not all the senior engineers at Boeing have retired.
This article got it very wrong.
1. The Boeing 787 is powered by jet engines, not batteries. It is simply not possible for an airplane to fly on battery power (except in very small experimental craft).
2. The batteries on the Boeing 787 are used by Airbus as well. It appears that the batteries were simply a bad lot. Nothing to do with Boeing.
3. The airlines demand fuel efficient aircraft for purely economic reasons. A carbon fiber aircraft is far lighter than aluminum and it is stronger as well. Green nothing to do with it.
Signed A Senior Boeing Engineer.
Regarding your point #1 – the article doesn’t claim that the 787 runs on batteries; rather, it says that the airplane stores electricity to run aircraft systems rather than increasing the load on the engines to power the systems, thus improving fuel efficiency. I think the author understands that the plan still has engines slung under the wings.
Steve, I guess The Rock’s previous comment proves even “Senior Boeing Engineer’s.” don’t always understand what they read.
Green movement only proves we’re overpopulated,but if you state the obvious they call you a racist… go figure…
SAVE THE PLANET!
Compost an enviromentelist.
(or a whole bunch’a them)
Zeprin, environmentalists are toxic waste.
Me, I blame just two things:
Power Steering, and Air Conditioning.
Those two things formed the Petri dish of our Modern America…
Its of what allowed a left wing, feminist, sissy boy, metrosexual culture of the pampered and assisted “beautiful people” grow and multiply, to complain about “how horrible things are”, when their entire environment as well as the way they’re able to GET ABOUT IT, is provided by the ingenuity of SMARTER STRONGER PEOPLE than they’ll ever be.
Power Steering.
Air Conditioning.
Seriously.
WE could survive without it.
But THEY COULDNT.
as I recall, home builders tried the aluminum wiring concept for a few years until the houses went up in flames. they had to be replaced. Pity Boeing didn’t learn this leasson.
We had a subdivision that tried aluminum wire for their homes. After several fires from the wires, they had to go back, tear out the walls and replace it with copper wires. If I recall correctly, aluminum wires are no longer allowed in the local building codes. It can be used for distribution but not in living spaces. I wouldn’t want any aluminum wires in my home either.
When homes were built at the end of WWII or shortly thereafter, aluminum wiring was sometimes used because most of the available copper was being used for the war effort. It has since become the source of numerous house fires because aluminum is not as good a conductor and copper and the resistance causes overheating. It also corrodes faster than copper. The only thing it is better at is cost. But who cares about a few dollars in additional cost when the alternative is having your home burn down around you. One of the general notes I use for my home remodeling designs is “Any aluminum wiring found during the course of construction shall be removed and replaced with conventional copper Romex or BX wiring.”
Also, as the author points out, mercury vapor bulbs do not last any longer than the old fashioned incandescent bulbs. I also hate the “twilight” illumination when you first turn them on. You don’t get full illumination for at leat 3 to 4 minutes until the bulb has warmed up. Add to that the fact that you can’t use them with “dimmer switches” (3 way) and they are a lose-lose all the way around. And don’t let anyone fool you, they do not “pay for themselvess” over the course of the life. They cost more, give off less light and are considerably more hazardous to your health than the old bulbs.
Actually, aluminum itself is not the problem. The reason houses caught fire has to do with the galvanic corrosion that occurred between the aluminum wires and other non-aluminum connections in switches, outlets, etc. Had aluminum been the only metal in the conduction path, there wouldn’t have been any fires. Aluminum is actually an excellent conductor and is much lighter and cheaper than copper. We can only assume (hope?) that the Boeing engineers had enough sense to consider this in the design of the plane.
^ This is one of the first sensible comments I’ve seen in the whole thread.
If you’ve specified your cables and connections correctly, it shouldn’t matter if it’s copper, aluminium, or a taut string soaked in brine. Don’t blame efficiency drives for failures that are actually down to shoddy engineering.
So you’re using a cheaper material that doesn’t conduct quite as well/is more resistive, and therefore will overheat unless you use a thicker cable? Well… there’s your answer, then. Don’t use the same thickness of cable as you previously would, just substituting one material for the other – adjust what gauge you use, also.
If they had, instead of using aluminium, just gone for thinner copper wires and suffered the same problems, who or what would you then single out for blame?
The galvanic reaction thing is nonsense, unless you’re shoving a huge amount of power through there and everything is already engineered with dangerously poor tolerances (how often in your normal life do you give two short craps about what metal the conductors in a plug and socket, or battery and receptacle, etc are made out of? Even with 15+ amp AC sockets, never mind high load batteries?)… and, well, again, your problem is already highlighted in this sentence. You haven’t allowed a safety margin. Besides, the answer can again also be to make sure you’re building every part out of the correct, matching material, even if that’s no longer copper.
Question is – once you adjust for these things, is aluminium still a more economic or ecologic choice?
And you are all mindful of the burgeoning copper shortage, right?
I work as a fire investigator and have not yet seen anyone mention that these light bulbs ( some of them ) also catch on fire and have been the cause of several house fires. I have seen some of these failed bulbs and it is not good.
Aluminum wiring was used in homes in the late 60s-early 70s. Was it not pulled from use for causing electrical fires? My mom and dad bought one of those homes. Yep. My sisters bedroom caught on fire when the drapes touched the electric outlet.
Aluminum wiring carries more current per kilo. It is the only type used on poles. It not practical for lower power.
On poles weight is the constraint and heat is not because wires are naturally ventilated and not in contact with flamable material. In houses weight is not a problem but heat is. The solution is make the aluminium wire rwo times thicker but then it becomes problematic to insert not to mention that the aluminium wire would also be much stiffer.
Dear Craig,
You are obviously ignorant of the concept of ampacity. To you and, to all others who share his ignorance, this may clear things up:
Aluminum wiring is not inherently unsafe. At all. The problem with aluminum/copper circuits is that copper has a higher ampacity, that is, the ability to carry current (measured in amperes, or amps) safely through a conductor. When aluminum is used on a largely copper circuit, it is vitally important to choose an aluminum conductor which will carry the SAME amount of current as the copper wiring already extant. In other words, the aluminum conductor will necessarily be of a heavier gauge than the copper.
For instance, say you want to extend a circuit from one receptacle to another, while maintaining the total ampacity of that circuit. If that circuit has an AWG (American Wire Gauge) rating of 14, and is copper, you’ll need to use a 12 AWG aluminum conductor (cable, or wiring; same thing, in laymen’s terms) to safely match the ampacity of the original circuit.
So, Boeing didn’t make an unsafe choice here, as I’m certain that the engineers wouldn’t make the colossally stupid mistake of not choosing a higher ampacity aluminum conductor instead of copper. Since the element aluminum is much lighter and–due to massive speculation in the copper commodities market–possibly somewhat cheaper than the element copper, it was probably a fairly easy choice.
As for the decision by NASA to use the tile system, bear in mind that at the time of the shuttle’s design, we were still at “war” with the USSR (you know, them commie Soviets, right?), which at that time (and may yet still) possessed the largest reserves of titanium ore on the planet. So, you may understand that it would have been logistically difficult, not to mention politically suicidal, to acquire enough titanium for the shuttle program. Not to mention that the element titanium is, to say the least, HIGHLY unsuitable for use on the shuttle, or any other vehicle which escapes our atmosphere and returns to Earth. Since the plasma temperatures at re-entry can exceed 10000 Kelvin (about 17,000F), and titanium’s melting point is 3000F, this would necessarily rule out titanium as a shield for re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Titanium also begins to lose strength 800F. Even if the re-entry temps were lower than that melting point, the physics surrounding re-entry also eliminate titanium. At the very least metal fatigue would eventually lead to catastrophic failure. The tiles could be individually be replaced, too. Ceramic and its attendant variants are the future, Craig. Ceramics.
Hope this helps.
ps: the original toilets which came out after the new standard was put in place were indeed problematic, because the channels were designed for the higher water volumes. Most toilets manufactured these days can easily handle the low-flow standards. Even with “solids”.
Lightweight aluminum wiring has been used in Boing aircraft since the late 1960′s .
I fear you’re probably mistaken on why dishes don’t come clean any more. It’s not the dishwasher, it’s the dishwasher detergents. Yes, the shortcomings ARE the fault of the Green Movement, but their crime is to force reformulation (lower/no phosphates), not more efficient washers. The quiet, efficient washers get your dishes clean using the old formulations, but not the new. The older, noisier dishwashers do better with the new formulations, but still not as good as they did before.
I get around that by spiking the detergent with a little sodium phosphate in every load. You can find it in the paint department at Home Depot or Lowe’s. It also helps in the washing machine. I hope that this remark doesn’t result in a midnight knock. Does the EPA have SWAT teams?
Does the EPA have SWAT teams?
Don’t give them ideas.
Pournelle, Niven, and some other guy wrote a novel based partly on that idea.
Too late. The EPA does have SWAT teams. http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/8700-when-the-epa-swat-team-comes-a-knockin-
You can also toss in some Borax with each load to help the clean cycle. Cheers -
It’s actually TriSodium Phosphate, or TSP. You can find it at Lowes – if you don’t live in New York. The substitute stuff doesn’t work. It’s not good for cleaning prior to painting either. This is the ingredient that is missing in your dishwasher detergent and your laundry detergent.
If you do live in NY, swing by a home improvement store in a neighboring state. They don’t search your car when you return, yet and buy the real thing. A quarter tablespoon per load will fix you right up.
You’ll be going anyway if you hunt or target shoot, because you won’t want to pay for a background check to buy ammunition.
Be careful buying TSP. As God is my witness, TPTB are sneaking phosphate free versions of TSP onto shelves. No, I’m not kidding; I couldn’t make up something that stupid if I tried. Many times it’s marked Tri Sodium Phosphate PF . The PF stands for Phosphate Free. So read the labels carefully.
I buy TSP online from hobby sites for people who make their own soaps and detergents.
I’ve read Lemishine still has phosphates, if you can find it.
I wonder if Obama is considering an executive order to deal with TSP?
Phosphate-free Phosphate? Wait until the American Chemical Society hears about this! Some were already up in arms about 12-karat “gold”.
I saw that last year in Lowes. Had to read it several times, and compare it to the real thing (still on the shelf) to be sure I was reading it right.
Use 1/4 to 1/2 cup vinegar in the pre wash cup.
Of course don’t mix it with the “normal” detergent. Acid and base…
I don’t know if this will effect the longevity of your machine. It works.
When we have house parties we post prominent notices near the toilets to the effect of “flush often, repeatedly and freely”.
well with all the bullets the govt has been buying, they just might.
Yes. I have used tri-sodium phosphate (TSP found in the paint department) to improve dishwasher cleaning. The EPA prohibited dish detergent manufacturers from use in consumer products but granted waivers for use in commercial products (thanks to lobbying associations). It is a mad world and the EPA should not even exist.
Or what’s known as “rinse aid” or “dishwasher salt” over on this side of the pond. I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal given that your average washer is designed to use it and will probably have a reservoir that you fill with it if you look.
Part of the problem here may be misunderstanding. Water supplies vary in their intrinsic mineral content (or “hardness”), and that affects whether you need a phosphate based rinsing agent at all, and if so, how much of it. When it was incorporated in the actual detergent, this amount was unregulated… and certainly in our “soft” water area, we ended up with lots of suds bubbling out of the drain every time the dishwasher emptied itself.
Now with the separate detergent and rinse aid, with the system adjusted to release a far smaller amount than the “assume hard water” default each time, it washes just as well, and doesn’t create the mountain of suds that are the hallmark of overzealous phosphating. You want that floating down your local stream if the sewage plant can’t deal with it?
The appliance guy who fixed my dishwasher told me new dishwashers are designed to work with a rinsing agent. I used to neglect keeping my rinse aid dispenser full prior to learning this. I have found that the stuff makes a big difference.
Totally agree. I replaced my 10 yr old dishwasher, thinking that it was the reason my dishes were not coming clean. After spending just under $1000.00 on a new Whirlpool dishwasher, my dishes are still not coming clean
. It’s the new detergent. I’m adding a 1/4 cup of bleach to each load, otherwise I wash dishes by hand. So disappointing.
I’ve gone to the trouble of checking, and each place I’ve lived in the past two decades was served by a sewage treatment plant where big investments were made for equipment to remove phosphate from the effluent.
Both the dishwashers and the detergents are at fault. Our daughter owns one of the new “efficient” dishwashers, and it’s terrible. It takes hours to run a cycle, the dishes are not always clean, and they are always still wet after the so-called drying cycle.
However, at least for now we can still buy dishwashing detergent with phospates! It’s called Bubble Bandit and you buy it online at bubblebandit.com
Washing machines are all ruined now. Even the top loaders don’t use enough water to get clothes clean and work by beating clothes to death.
If only we could find a way to smuggle in full-flush toilets from Canada and full water usage appliances from Mexico, I would be a happy camper. Enviro-whackos are turning the US into country with 3rd world living standards.
You forgot about the worthless clothes detergents. Remember when whites were white? Last century was a century of progress. Since then, we’ve gone backwards
Turning the clock back? That’s not a bug; it’s a feature!
I like to recall the golden age of laundry when we used Tide. one excellent product. Instead of lugging around and purchasing stain removers, pre-soaks, and softeners along with the emasculated detergent. three or four expensive bad products that don’t work effectively instead of just the one that got away. ugh.
I had been an early adopter of the CFL light bulbs, and they were about 10X more expensive, and burned out QUITE quickly in any environment where they might get warm. And yet, the government busybodies continue to promote the lie that they are less expensive.
When CFL bulbs get to be as cheap as incandescents, THEN they may be worth buying.
I too bought CFL’s early to see what they were all about. I was not impressed. The light was unpleasant and several of them burned out sooner than incandescent bulbs I installed at the same time in other fixtures. One was installed in a ceiling fixture in the basement and it burned out in no time at all.
I really soured on them when I put one in the lamp I use most. That lamp was quite old but worked perfectly. The CFL bulb killed it. That bulb wasn’t in there more than a week before the socket began hissing and popping when turned on or off. Turns out that you are supposed to have special sockets that can accept CFLs something I didn’t know until I bought a replacement lamp.
They should have left well enough alone until LED’s become practical. There are some on the market now but are very expensive and not overly impressive. Give it another few years though and those issues will probably be solved. But Immelt at GE had to loot while he could and wrote the regulations that banned the incandescent in favor of his CFLs and now we’re stuck.
I have found that CFL’s have a shorter life span also and my light bill has not gone down from having them in use throughout my house. I’m getting older, but still learning. A part of you wants to believe the “do good sayers”, but after you have been drawn in, you find out the facts first hand. These new technology companies are getting help from the government (our tax dollars) and then, because they have the approval of the green movement, they add to their profits by reason of being a modern advancement for clean energy savings and state freely all the good and healthful things they bring to modern society. And on top of that, now we find out the use of CFL’s may be cancerous in their radiations. And the disposal of them is a serious matter. I wonder how many people give a damn when they throw out the burned out CFL’s? Remember when fluorescent lighting was the rage? You can check the effects on the human body from working under this lighting in many health science journals. The finding are very damaging.
Oh yeah, and I wont be surprised to see the CFL companies taking out bankruptcies as more users find out they have been used!!!
Another dirty little secret about CFL bulbs is that they burn out faster if they are turned on and off frequently – you know, how most people use lights. The flickering also gives some people migraines and can trigger seizures. They are a bad deal in every way.
Yes, in my experience as well, the CFLs don’t last as long as incandescent. Plus there’s all that mercury going into the landfill (everyone I know just throws them in the trash). To top it off, a recent news piece reported a study finding that the UV light emitted by the CFLs is enough to be carcinogenic if you get too close to them (reading lamps and task lighting, anyone?). The people who approved these should be shot. Or even better, cooked to death by the light of a thousand CFLs, in an oversized Easy-Bake Oven(tm).
I don’t throw CFLs in the tray. Each time one burns out I drive six miles each way to the home improvement store the accepts them. The greens are idiots.
My own experience with CFLs has been far more positive than yours. I bought my first batch via eBay to try them out because I was fed up with the short lifespan of incandescents. Every few weeks, it sometimes seemed, another IC bulb went “pop” when I switched it on. Except for one or two from that early batch of CFLs, I’ve typically gotten a year or two out of the rest, sometimes longer. I subsequently bought a few more from Home Depot and the market next door; that’s it. I have just five CFLs installed between the living and bed rooms, all installed in simple IKEA globes. It’s been at least a year since any have required replacement.
As to the mercury question, don’t the more traditional fluorescent tubes we’ve lived with all our lives contain mercury as well? In my apartment house we have a bin in the basement where we collect all fluorescents for proper disposal.
Funny thing about mercury, when I was a kid (a long time ago), we used to play with mercury from broken thermometers. We’d roll it in our hands, across surfaces and play with it and magnets (IIRC). I guess we didn’t get the memo as to how dangerous it was.
It’s not the silvery metal form that’s dangerous; it’s the oxidized form (mercuric oxide).
yes, and CFLs deliver just that when the pop!
Larry, DITTO!!!
Actually in the bad old times workers in mercry mines developped a Parkinson-like disease.
Also mercury lead to the term “mad as a hatter” as it causes damage to the nerves.The hat makers of old used mercury.I reckon the ‘green’ lot are madder than any Hatter.Are the good old-fashioned incandescents banned in the US..as in Australia??
Shortly after moving into my current house, my incandescent bulbs were burning up like crazy, so I switched to fluorescent bulbs. I’ve changed one bulb in four years since.
So I have to wonder about he truthfulness of the people that say that fluorescent bulbs don’t last any longer than incandescent bulbs. That simply has not been my experience with fluorescent bulbs.
There are “10-year” incandescent bulbs on the market, or there used to be. Their I’ve got a few and while 10 years is a stretch they last far longer than regular bulbs. Interesting to note though: lightbulbs could always have been built with very long lifespans, however, decades ago manufacturers got together and decided that they should be built with a short lifespan so that people would have to buy more of them. It was perhaps the first ever case of planned obsolescence and it was also the first taken to court and ruled against. Even though laws and regulations were passed against this rigging of the lifespan of light bulbs, it was never enforced and the short span became the norm.
when I was growing up in the late 50s my old neighbor (was over 100 when he died in 1960)had a garage light with a bulb that had been bought from Edison decades before. It was still burning around 1960 and was probably 40+ years old then.
There is a lightbulb in Livermore, CA (incandescent) that has been going continuously (except for power outages) for 112 years and counting…
(Warning for Environmental “Science” graduates here – real science content follows, you may wish to get some organic willow bark tea before continuing).
Incandescent bulbs do _not_ “burn out.” The cause of failure for incandescents is metal fatigue – as the filament heats, it expands, and then contracts when it cools. The number of times it is switched on and off is the controlling factor. “Long life” bulbs simply use a metal alloy that is more resistant to this fatigue.
On the other hand – fluorescents _do_ literally burn out. This is because their light comes from creating an electrical arc through the easily ionized gas that fills them. Even though the majority of the gas is non-reactive, the arc points slowly burn away every second that the bulb is lit (however, the fluorescent does _not_ wear faster with a more rapid cycle).
So – a properly built incandescent will last longer when it is used for continuous lighting – while a fluorescent will last longer when it is used for short but frequent periods.
Besides the risk of heavy metal poisoning and fire, this is why I don’t use CFLs. All long-usage bulbs in my house are now LEDs – they’ve been installed for more than a year now (but have not yet paid off – it will take at least two more years for that). My experience, though, has been that they actually produce more useful light than what they replaced – made a very big difference in my kitchen / dining area.
Thane36425, it’s interesting what you had to say about the 10 year incandescent bulb, how the mangf. decided to shorten the lifespan of the bulbs. The CLF companies seem to have decided to do the same thing from the start and just not correctly inform the purchaser. Sorry to say, that’s why I stopped buying American made cars, enough said.
There is a relationship between the light an incandescent bulb puts out and its life. It’s pure physics and doesn’t have anything to do with a conspiracy of the manufacturer. I don’t have a formula for the light output, but the life is approximated by:
Life at Vx = Life(nom) x (Vnom/Vx)^12
In words, the life at a given voltage is equal to the life at the nominal voltage times (nominal voltage divided by given voltage) to the twelfth power.
A standard 100 watt 120 volt bulb has a life of 750 hours. At 130 volts, it will burn brighter and bluer and last 287 hours; at 110 volts it will burn dimmer and redder and last 2131 hours. Long life bulbs are rated at 130 volts. Assuming they lasted 750 hours at 130 volts, they will be dimmer and redder at 120 volts, but they will last 1960 hours. If you never want to change light bulbs again, buy 240 volt bulbs. They will last over three million hours, but will barely give off the light of a candle.
Right you are. I’ve been trying to mollify people who are upset about the incandescent ban by detailing all of the incandescent lamps that are not covered. “Rough service” bulbs would look like a good candidate for your favorite reading lamp — because of the familiar shape and wattage — but the lower light output resulting from the thicker filament makes them not a great choice for people with failing eyes.
” Every few weeks, it sometimes seemed, another IC bulb went “pop” when I switched it on”
Thats the dirtiest little secret of all.
Remember that “flicker, glow, BRIGHT” start-up sequence in big florecent tubes? Thats where most of the “energy draw dollars” are coming from, they only run “efficiently” once fired up they stay lit. And its hard on the ssstem if you turn them on and off constantly. Thats why yhe big overhead florcent tubes at our office run 16 hours at a stretch.
Its VERY harsh on the little tiny CFL systems when you turn them on-and-off alot.
But thats what happens in typical HOUSEHOLD lighting situations, isnt it?
Down to the basement and back.
The fridge door open and close
“Who left the bathroom light on! AGAIN!”
CFL actually use MORE energy when “treated like an incandecent”, and wear out much faster than advertised because of the all the “on-off” THEY ARE NOT DESIGNED TO WITHSTAND.
Their touted “superior life spans” that will “save you money” are based on using them “differently” than you probably will.
So, for MOST people in MOST homes, there is no benefit to them over Incandecents, and quite a few drawbacks.
Which is why they need to FORCE you to buy them.
Which is why they are good for places where you can just leave them on, like the dark basement stairs, or that outside corner you’d rather have constantly lit.
With their low energy usage, you can just leave them on 24/7 for years.
They are quite effective at saving energy in such applications.
Excellent points I agree with 100%.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if we were allowed to use that information to make case by case choices based on what served our own particular needs best?
Instead the Government invading our personal lives so deep as to MANDATE the particulars of how we shall illuminate our bathrooms and porches?
The comment on how to use CLF’s efficiently is another case of how the government-green movement is being dishonest. CLF’s have no business in the house. Having them in the businesses that leave lights on for long periods of time, might make sense and save cents, but again, how much value do they put on the long term health of their employe’s. I think the lights may just go out on the CLF movement for good. But “we’ll leave the incandescent light on for you”!!!
Another reason they force you to buy them, is because GE and Sylvania make a lot more money selling these expensive bulbs, and both companies know how to buy politicians.
The actual cause of your incandescent bulbs failing early could be the voltage and not the bulbs. As can be seen by my name yes I am a real electrician and you probably bought bulbs for replacements at something like Lowes or home Depot and not an electrical supply house for the contractors that install such items for a living as I have done in the past. In the Nashville and surrounding areas close to the power distribution of the local dam at Old Hickory you voltage instead of being 115 volt will average about 124 to 128 volts so a 120 volt rated bulb will die a quick death.
My sister lives in Madison Tennessee and as such is quite close to the main generator and a voltage reading at her home gave me the 127 volt real voltage instead of the 115 in the outlying areas. She was constantly having to replace certain bulbs in her kitchen and I simply replaced them with 130 volt bulbs (yes you can get them) and this was twelve years ago and they are still burning today, so if you have access to a TRUE RMS Voltmeter then test the voltage of your incoming power and if it exceeds 120 volts then you need to buy bulbs rated for 130 or greater voltage.
Yes I have some of those curley que CFL’s but have had to replace them with real light bulbs, and no they do not last longer nor do they give off good light, plus it is not instantaneous and they cost too much! The Reveal bulb gives off a great pleasant light but it is costly but well worth the price!
“The Reveal bulb gives off a great pleasant light but it is costly but well worth the price!” I agree with this. I have found the CFL’s are very hard on the eyes. There is something particularly harsh about that type of light, so I have stockpiled incandescents.
Raymond like i posted earlier, be careful with the CFL you buy,, there has been many home fire after they short out in the inner workings as some if not all have a ballast built inside that sometime will catch fire. (Also suspected if they are in an environment where dust can get in the ones with a plastic looking cover around the glass area. These have caused fires. not seen this one myself but was told about it)
AND actual follow up studies confirm what I already knew. They don’t produce any where NEAR the same lumens as incandescent bulbs.
Yup…
Wierd dull yellowie and uncomfortable light impossible to DO anything that REQUIRES good lighting.
In my Lab we had those big magnifying lenses..the ones on articulated arms, with the light bulbs? They worked great because they were ancient, older than me I’ll bet.
Well, corporate green initiatives meant we got a “cheap replacements” for inspections…the CFL’s in them give off a such a ghastly light, inspections are now so difficult and fatiguing that defects we’d normally catch are getting by…
And now the Rocket Scientists are trying to analyze UPSTREAM PROCESSES to figure out where the “increase” in defects in the field are coming from.
When all the people IN THE LAB have been bitching about the “new” CFL equipped inspection stations since day one.
Here in the UK the use of fluorescent bulbs is increasing. Problem: almost all you can find in the big stores seem to be what are known as “warm white”, colour temperature 2,700K If you shop around you can get some that are “cool white”, colour temperature 3,400L. However, if you want to buy ones with real daylight output – this is 6,400-6,500K that I speak of – you have to buy them online. Even then you have to look around to see if they are available in either bayonet cap or scree cap.
Yes, they do take a few minutes to get up to full brightness, but that can be seen to; just get one that’s the equivalent of one 25 watts higher! Thus the one I am using now is rated 25 watts, equivalent in light output to 125 watts incandescent. Waiting in the wings to succeed it is a 30 watt(150 watt equibalent) I got from another place. Some online suppliers offer ones of 45W(225W), 65W(325W) and even 85W(425W) output, but except for the first they seem to be for industrial use.
I was also an early adopter of CFL – I have over a dozen in my house (and have for years). They are not bad if you remember a few things:
Use them where the light is ‘filtered’ – the light straight from the CFL can be annoying, but when filtered through a typical frosted glass fixture it’s much better.
Up-size – if you’ve been using a 75 watt bulb, don’t replace it with a ’75 watt equivalent’ CFL – go to a 100 watt equivalent CFL. It still uses much less electricity than the conventional bulb, and you end up with more light (this is one of my favorite benefits of CFL – I can safely put in a ‘brighter’ bulb than the fixture is rated for).
In the bath – I left one conventional bulb in the three-bulb fixture (the other two are CFL) – that helps with the initial dimness of the CFL when you turn them on.
Don’t use CFL in ‘high cycle’ places, and don’t needlessly cycle them. The break-even for electrical use of a CFL is something like five minutes – if you’re leaving the room for a couple minutes, just leave the lights on.
My experience has been that CFLs sometimes suffer infant mortality – sometimes failing within a few days/weeks of installation – but if they survive that they last a long time. I’ve also gotten a couple ‘bad batches’ where every bulb from a 4 pack failed within a few months of install – but they’ve gotten lots better and it’s been quite a while since that happened.
And the really good news? My house is all electric save hot water and space heating. My electric bill averages about $50/month.
td
Some good info in tdracer’s reply, unlike many of the other posts here which smack of uninformed, knee-jerk responses to anything green, or more precisely anything “forced” on us.
I switched all my bulbs to CFLs about 5 years ago, with great results. Most have yet to burn out, and on average I am replacing them every few years rather than every few months. The energy savings are greater than advertised, as I get additional, significant savings from having to run my AC less (due to the significantly lower waste heat coming off CFLs).
As for performance, as with any new technology that will only improve over time. The light quality that many people don’t like (the “Walmart” brightness) is mostly due to a huge marketing fail as the packaging usually fails to adequately communicate the necessary info. Look for a Kelvin rating in the 2500-2800 range (rather than the 5000 range) and you’ll get the soft natural light most of us prefer.
Or pay higher electricity bills. Your choice!
I switched just about all of our lights to CFL a couple of years ago and have not (yet) noticed any big changes in longevity or savings do to the higher purchase cost. Other than the potential hazards of a broken bulb, one of bigger complaints about ‘green’ lighting is that we are now being told to scrap the CFLs and move up to the better, safer, even greener LEDs … at a cost of 3X the CFL’s already higher price.
Either you were ripped off at purchase time, or you haven’t done the maths right (or haven’t been counting at all?)
Simple equation to start you off – at a (now rather low) unit rate of ¤0.12 or so per kWh, a 1 watt device running continuously all year will cost you ¤1.00
So a 12 watt bulb in place of a 60 watt one, run for 6 hours per day … or in other words saving 48 watts for 1/4 of the day… will save you ¤12.00 in electricity charges even at that low rate.
If you’ve paid even ¤6.00 for a 12w CFL, you’re dumber than you look.
Problem is carl, we don’t have a choice thanks to lunkheads like you who acquiesce silently when forced to buy crappy products.
As for YOUR knee jerk response to the comments on this site, go troll elsewhere.
Actually, almost everyone I know who knows what color temperature actualkly is prefers a higher color temperature bulb, in the 5000-7000 DegK range- the daylight bulbs. Esp. with the CFL’s, the higher color temps have a much better CRI- or color rendering index. But, as I said in another comment, I have but a few CFL’s left. Another few burn out, the house will be all LED. With daylight bulbs.
Here is your typical knee jerk reaction, wait till your house catches on fire from one of these god send CFL bulbs. There have been some after they failed and don’t even go with the heat issue.. They get hot just like any other freaking bulb.
Oh yes–heaven forbid anyone would dare take offense at having idiotic counter-productive poisonous products forced on them. Take you medicine and like it, peasants!
In April 2008, I put together a review of CFL’s and some of their difficulties that are not talked about or printed on the box.
The CFL Advertising Account
The good and bad about compact fluorescent lights. Why the ads are both true and false. How to save and waste money on CFL’s.
My research indicated that the average CFL at that time will turn on 2000 times before its electronics fail. The recommendation to leave them on for 15 minutes is a crazy interpretation of that fact. Leaving them on doesn’t heal them. But, hey, at least if you leave them on for 15 minutes each time, you will get 500 hours use out of them before they fail. If you leave them on for 5+ hours at a time, then you will probably get the full 8000 or 10000 hour rated life.
Interesting to me, people who report on current CFL’s omit definite information about how many on-off cycles current bulbs will complete. Consumer Reports gives a Good-Bad rating for this, but not an absolute figure. This still seems to be a problem.
I also present a cost analysis of expected savings, taking into account CFL and standard bulbs release of heat energy, under air conditioning, winter heating, and no heating or cooling needed.
The rules for cleaning up a broken bulb are hilarious. I think the small amount of murcury is not harmful with a bit of care. But, our environmental agencies can’t admit that, because they have taken an extreme position on coal emissions. So, they give instructions suitable for hazmat toxic cleanup.
I fell for it too.
I’m no fan of CFLs, but after a good deal of research, I believe I found the answer to their short life span. I too was frustrated by their rapid burn-out.
The reason why CFLs don’t last any longer than traditional incandescent light bulbs is the start-up circuitry. Without thinking about it, most people turn a light on when they enter a room and turn it back off when they leave, repeating the cycle each time they reenter the room – often several times in a single evening. The start-up circuitry in the base of the CFL burns out after an undefined number of on-off cycles. When you turn a CFL on – leave it on for the entire evening until you go to bed. I know – it defeats the “savings” we’re supposed to get from using them when they’re left on when you’re not in the room.
The CFLs I put in my children’s rooms repeatedly burned out within six months due to the heavy on-off switching they endured. I have three CFLs in my living room floor lamps that are left on the entire evening (about six to seven hours of continuous use). Those CFLs have survived more than five years and show no signs of dying to date.
My two cents.
Mythbusters did an episode a while back that tested lights’ life when cycled frequently. IIRC, they took ordinary bulbs, halogen, CFLs and LED bulbs and cycled them for an extended period. All but the LEDs died pretty quickly. LEDs are very expensive right now but if you have an application where the light gets cycled on and off a lot, they might be a viable alternative.
The Great Recession may eventually be the undoing of the accursed Green Movement.
In my experience, most of the greenies hold those views after being subjected/brainwashed into them during their formative university years. A professor hands down knowledge from the ivory tower on everything from the legitimacy of western civilization to what political views are correct.
As part of this brainwashing, you have the Green Movement.
As younger generations become less and less able to afford to go to a 4 year university, they will therefore be less likely to be exposed to such nonsense.
Over time, this could unwind some of this bull$hit as fewer relative numbers of subsequent generations are taught to hold such views in the first place.
Alas, even the best intentioned progressive utopia cannot be effectively realized without prosperity. Why does anyone take these bozos seriously?
In the Seventies, after many long, involved conversations with environmentalists(when they would actually discuss facts, instead of personally attacking anyone who disagreed with them), I found out their real goal: elimination of about 90% of the human population, and Stone Age technology, along with a hunting/gathering lifestyle. Nothing has changed since then. They want to roll back the Industrial Revolution, and they hate the Constitution and the free enterprise economic system, all the things that make life worth living. They are a greater threat than Marxism and islamism.
Robert,
“Stone Age technology, along with a hunting/gathering lifestyle”
That’s my favorite contradiction with them.
Maybe the ones around here think they’re “more primitive” than us “conservatives” because they dont bathe as often…
But they’re all addicted to E-gadgets, and far too squeamish (and weak from lack of protein?) to actually, physically “hunt” with primitive weapons, and are of course, are dutiful gun-haters as well.
Their complex “exists nowhere on earth” dietary needs consume huge amounts to energy to:
A) Transport “Healthy, Fresh” seasonal produce (often rare and exotic) to places that, well, are not HAVING that season right now, thank you, and:
B) Power complex mechanical/chemical process systems that concentrate weird and unappealing low energy slop (toufu, soybeans etc) into something with enough calories and additives to be nutritious enough to sustain life, and look “marketable” enough to resemble “real food”, because they typically distain:
C) Meat, cheese and milk… the only things you’ll “naturally” find in abundance, in the middle of FEBRUARY
They are simply whiners and complainers, blaming “civilization” for the stress and angst their own non-competitiveness creates within them…
Living the collective fantasy that if only EVERYTHING were DIFFERENT, they would finally be “masters of their own fate”
I cant imagine any of them actually surviving a week in a truly “primitive” world…
And deep down, neither do THEY.
Robert —
In the 1970′s I preferred discussions with ecologists – they were likely to be open minded and committed to the scientific method. Environmentalists were, and are, authoritarian political activists demanding conformity to group-think.
Why does anyone take these bozos seriously? Because they are clowns with power that can ruin your lives via court sanction and public shame (via their sycophants in the media).
40 years of liberal control of our education system has resulted in lousy uncompetive schools with more and more liberals being turned out and put in places of power to wreck havoc with our economy. Our Prez is a perfect example. Schools teach more marxism than capitalism and history. And the greenies have signed on to any crazy idea to ‘save the planet’. Of course getting rid of all the people would do that and our new healthcsare system will help fill that goal.
I never had the displeasure of using a low-flow toilet until I went to a hotel a few months ago which had them. At first I was impressed with the velocity of the water but then it settled down. It was annoying to have to stand there for a mandatory second, and sometimes third, flush. The only drawback to an otherwise excellent hotel.
Didn’t know they put banks of batteries on the plane. That’s just ridiculous. Those things are heavy and would cut down on passengers, cargo and mileage. It’s also amusing how the liberals think there is no pollution involved in the manufacturing of the batteries nor in the mining of the materials to make them.
Here’s the strange part. I’ve always had trouble with toilets overflowing, even the old kind, but now that I live in a more-or-less European country (Israel), they almost never do. The trick is there are two buttons or two parts to the lever, and you can choose (horrors!).
A few years ago I spent some time in Egypt where they don’t want toilet paper flushed down the toilet. They want you to spray water up your butt. I didn’t like it at first, but then I came to prefer it to our method.
No, I’m not going to demand that everyone do this, though I wish I had the choice of being able to do it here in the U.S. But I hate the greens. They’re enemies of the people.
Also, wouldn’t the low-flow toilets work better if, like the way the British do it, the tank was higher off the floor? That way more gravity would be helping things along.
If you like that “Egyptian” style toilet they are called a Bidet (bid-day) you can get them at the box stores, or fashion your own with a spray nozzle kit for a kitchen sink, also from a box store.
A year ago management decided to move us to a brand new enviromentally friendly building with the brand new enviromentally friendly toilets. And guess what? Anytime people have a poo a little larger than usual (like if you hadn’t gone there for a day or two) and push the big buton, yes the big one Mr Smart A.., the thing remains there and doesn’t go down. Often the toilet becomes clogged and usnusable. It takes at least five minutes before the flush has enough water to push again. At the end of the day the cleaning personel ends cleaning the mess. I would put the bright minds who shoved us these toilets to clean them with their bare hands.
We went back to a toploading washing machine because not only are they more expensive and don’t clean, but they sometimes leak. All over the floor and into the next room which had wood floors. Another problem is the smell; if you leave the clothes in very long without drying them, in the summertime especially, the seal keeps any air from circulating and all the clothes smell mildewed.
Oops. *not only are _top loading machines_ more expensive
That smell can be eliminated by leaving the door open after taking the wash out. YMMV, but mine cleans well. I’m sure I won’t save any money and it does take longer than the old top loader.
I’m still trying to figure out how something that turns your house into a hazmat zone when it breaks is “greener” than the old technology. I sure hope one of them envirowizards chimes in to clear that up, because I haz a confused.
(Fortunately stocked up on the old style bulbs. I have two littles, and while one has a decent throwing arm, she has no control over where the projectile goes.)
They’ve answered that question already lilly, you just werent paying attention:
GE gave Obama tons of money
Their lighbulbs became mandated by law
Then they paid no taxes.
Why cant you see how that makes your life so much better?
The votes to end production and sale of incandescent bulbs came under Dubya, not Obama. And the Boehner-led House didn’t undo it. We can’t blame all this ‘green’ nonsense on the Democrats. Apparently enough Republicans have been bullied into submission to do their work for them now.
The Republicans in the House can’t even get the Senate to bring up a federal budget for discussion despite it being required by the 1974 Budget Act. As long as the Democrats control the Senate, there isn’t much the Republicans can get them to do.
Please point out where the article mentions Obama. Note I name different Presidents.
I have a Samsung front load washing machine and it works great. Gets the clothes much cleaner than our old Amana top loader. And it is quieter and uses less water, which is becoming a precious fluid now that the Lefties at City Hall have jacked up the price of water to 10x what it was 20 years ago.
I also have a quiet efficient Samsung dishwasher. It works better than the old GE it replaced and is much quieter.
We replaced all our appliances with Brand S two years ago and couldn’t be happier.
Glad to hear things are going better for you than me. Our experience was that the “UE” light flashing meant “uneven”, but that if the washer started flashing “IE”, that indicated the sound I was about to make because several gallons of water were about to come gushing toward our brand new Brazilian cherry floors. (But oh, hey, less water than would have been in a top load washer)
I remember the commercial front-loaders from 50 years ago, so the technology here really isn’t new, as with the low-flow commodes, just modified. Today’s machines (at least on the commercial washer level) probably use less water than the ones from the early 60s, but if the spin cycle speeds are high enough, the new ones do get up enough speed for the dirty water to reach escape velocity from the clothes. Not sure if the home washers’ motors have the oomph to do that, long-term.
I’m old enough to remember those old wringer washers that are now considered antiques. I overheard a young lady in a second hand store call one ‘quaint’. I guess I’m sliding into antique-ness. My mother used to enlist us kids (there were 5) to help with the wash. Wash day was a major production (so was bread-making day). There was no sorting of the wash – most everything we wore was cotton and it all went in together. After a half hour or so the wringer was put to use to squeeze the soapy water out – clothes were dumped into a large sink with cold rinse water where they were agitated by hand to help remove the soap. They were then run through the wringer again – dropping into a wicker basket and taken outside where the ‘solar’ dryer was engaged – we hung them on a line strung between a couple of ‘T’ poles to dry as best they could in Western Washington’s humid and not often warm air. Some times we’d hang them inside on a rack on those rainy days. There were lots of rainy days!
Times have certainly changed – and for the better at that! I’ll fight tooth and nail with anyone that wants me to turn back the clock to a time like that or further.
At the top of my list of crappy products is that old wringer washer machine. It could be dangerous – and today could not be made because of the dangers of that wringer. Seems we all knew someone that had caught a hand in one of those machinations. Funny thing – nobody I know of ever sued the maker of any of those machines. And the reason why I put that machine on my list is because of the fine washer and dryer set I have in the wash room. The washer is a top loader – takes a bazillion gallons of water to get things clean – and the dryer manages to dry everything and do it while keeping the clothes nice and soft. Every put on a pair of jeans fresh from a ‘solar’ dryer? Stiff as a board – yeah – clean but not very ‘friendly’ for the first few hours of wear.
I was all prepared to say “back in your box, gramps!” … then I actually READ your post
Three cheers! I need to introduce you to my grandmother. You two would have a blazing argument…
Our front loader works great. It gets the clothes cleaner, with less water, which is easier on my well pump and septic system.
It also gets the clothes dryer than a top loader, and takes about the same amount of time.
Maybe some of y’all are just buying the El Cheapos or something.
And a washing machine of ANY kind combined with Brazilian Cherry floors is just STUPID.
They can ALL leak. Hoses can break, seals can fail, tubs can crack. Top load OR front load.
And where does this “rough tub” nonsense come from? I’ve looked at a lot of front loaders, and have not found one yet that had a rough tub.
Oh, yea, front loaders are easier on the clothes, too.
Wrong answer. I wouldn’t have written the article based on experiences with “El Cheapos.” These are top end front loaders from different makers -all a joke. You can’t wash clothes in a puddle of water. You need gallons and gallons.
Mr. Adams,
I too have a front-loader which does everything as advertised. Uses less water and electricity, gets clothes cleaner, actually, and spins them dryer. Much quieter, too. Perhaps this anecdotal evidence is an anomaly? All I know is we were attracted by the cost savings of water and electricity – for economic reasons, only (I am not an environmentalist). We’re getting our money’s worth, so far.
Boeing’s goals for the 787 weren’t to appease the green weenies but to lower operating costs for the airlines. Jet fuel is one of the biggest expenses for operating an airliner. The 787 was designed to use 20% less fuel per passenger-mile than other airliners. That’s why airlines placed orders for over 700 787s years before the first one flew.
Larry – please alert Boeing to remove their “reduced emmissions” goal from their 787 website.
Maybe a little OT but even more annoying to me is what has happened to food. Nothing is real anymore and it all tastes like crap. They have taken out all of the fats, sugar, butter, salt etc and it has not done anything to keep down the obesity problem. We are still trending up.
It doesn’t work because the problem is not in the supply of available food, it is in how we eat and the gigantic portions Americans consume. Take out the trans fats and we just eat more of it. You can’t cure an alcoholic by adding water to his whiskey either. This approach just makes it worse because people do not learn to eat right and limit portion size.
Even McDonald’s fries and coca cola do not taste right anymore. These days I buy the Mexican coca cola made with real cane sugar.
+1000
remember in 1984 how everything was fake and tasteless? And real food was a distant memory?
Why do you think Lefist Shock Troops are all “vegan” any way?
To power a strong 150-200 pound man, you need lots of protein carbs and calories, and THAT comes from animals..
Meat, cheese, milk…cheesesteaks, pizza, burgers
Ever see what a 20 year old Marine, athelete, or body bulider wolfs down to stay strong and still be trim?
Leftes dont want that.
They dont want Strong Men to challange them
So they push for all this B.S. Food Nazi-ism, with the vegan/veg-heads as shock troops promoting the “government food agenda”
For your own good of course
Good on them for eating tofu and rabbit foods! I like beef – and I like chicken. When it comes to ass-kicking time I’ll have no problem with those lightweights. And it seems like ass-kicking season is right around the corner…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa
one more unintended consequence of do-gooderism
they are starving pooe people
Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?
Ethical consumers should be aware poor Bolivians can no longer afford their staple grain, due to western demand raising prices
Or you could, yknow, eat beans. Lots of protein there…
You can get vegan cheese as well… when presumably means you can get vegan whey powder… which is a pretty popular thing for bodybuilders, I hear.
Buy Kosher for Passover Coca-Cola, which uses cane sugar. (It has to do with a Western Jewish custom.) Should be avaiable in late March.
Find a good authentic local Mexican Restaurant (where the all Landscapers eat)…
In the a big glass cooler full of drinks by the counter, they’ll probably have Coke bottled in Mexico, its got cane sugar (second ingredient!) and available year round…my wife loves it, she happier for one of them than if I came home with a bottle of wine!
Just be careful on the PHONE…coworkers overhearing you saying “I’ll get some Mexican coke for party the weekend” raises eyebrows!
In many places you can buy Mexican Coke. It’s available in Akron, OH for instance. Made with cane sugar!
might as well add those horrific “waterless” urinals that smell like skid row in the “low-flow” toilet section
There was a mall in Colorado Springs that had those no flow urinals in the men’s rooms. They found out the hard way that the acid in urine corroded the sewage lines. Water in regular urinals dilutes the urine enough so it isn’t a problem. That mall had to replace not only the urinals but also a lot of sewage lines. Smelled terrible, too.
I had to visit Georgetown Hospital in D.C. last spring. Went to a bathroom there and encountered a low-flow urinal. It stunk. Above was a placard bragging about how Georgetown was conserving water in this way. Then a sign over the lavatory admonished all to wash their hands three times each visit. Wow.
You forgot to add menstrual cups. What is wrong with good old-fashion tampons?
That’s a little fringe though.
Fail.
1. These are not being forced on anybody.
2. Women who use them do so because they PREFER them.
It’s called a free market. Just because YOU don’t like them, doesn’t mean they should not be sold.
Actually, the main reason those dishwashers don’t work is because the Greenies got triple phospatase banned from dish detergents despite the fact it causes no environmental harm what so ever. You can still buy the stuff. Add a quarter of a teaspoon to your load, and the dishes will come out perfectly clean.
Almost all the points have been hit.
1. Low water toilets. Some are good, some are crap. Older sewage systems are suffering with all the new low flow water devices because there’s not enough water flowing to move solids down the pipes. That’s a big “Oops!” in low use water philosophy. With 20 feet from my house to the septic tank, and smooth wall pvc, not really a big problem. In San Francisco, with miles of rough walled concrete sewer pipe… The first ones were all crap, because they were a 1.6 gallon tank on a 3.5 gallon bowl. Once the whole toilet was redesigned to use 1.6 gallons, they got better.
2. CFLs. Agree. Not as advertised. The early ones with magnetic ballasts were simply horrible. The new ones with electronic ballasts are better. Lifetime is poorer then advertised because people (us) won’t pay out money to buy good ones, so cheap ones, with cheap components, flood the market. My house is now almost completely LED lit. BTW, a commenter mentioned incandescent lifetime. Went through a light bulb class from Phillips- 8 hours of light bulbs. The filaments used in incandescent bulbs are tungsten. A 100 watt bulb can be made that would last over 100 years- and put out as much light as a 5 watt bulb. Or, with 100 watts, you can make a bulb that produces over 1000 watts of light- with a lifetime of seconds or part thereof. Standard bulbs are designed for a 3000 hour lifetime as a compromise. Longlife bulbs put out fewer lumens for the same watts. Supposedly GE developed a new filament a few years back that gave several years lifetime and CFL lumen efficiency. All news of that development has disappeared; no product ever made it to market.
3. No comment.
4. Front loaders do wash better then top loaders- and are easier on the clothes to boot. Virtually every study is in agreement with this, as well as my own experience. Door seal leakage- not very frequent at all. From what I know, the most common source of washer flooding is from those rubber supply hoses that you are supposed to replace every 5 years- and don’t. And as pointed out, all washers would work better- if- we brought back phosphates into the formula.
5 and 6 no comment
7. Phosphates. I sell appliances part time. When phosphates first were removed, had a slew of customers come in to buy new machines because their old ones had stopped working. At my store, and perhaps others, though I don’t know, we directed them to try some TSP with their soap before buying anew. All those customers will eventually come back to us when they really do need a new machine- or are remodeling- because we were honest with them.
I had to replace the toilet in my main bathroom about 5 years ago. After talking with the guys at Home Depot I selected one that they recommended. It cost about $100 more than the cheap ones – has the larger egg shaped seat instead of those little oval ones – and has never plugged up. The ‘bonus’ is I can sit down and drop my ‘junk’ inside the bowl too. I know – too much info but something to think about. A guy can do #1 and #2 at the same time! That is a real time-saver!!! Can’t do that with those tiny little bowls.
While I agree with you about toilets and CFL’s, my front loading HE washing machine and high-efficiency dishwasher (both purchased last month, and Samsung brand) do terrific jobs…..I don’t give a good damn about their environmental ratings, if they didn’t do a good job (replacing 20 year old machines) they would have gone back to the store.
our experience with a front loader is very different. Half the time and cleaner clothes. Dunno if it has to do with the fact that the old washer was over 20 years old.
Our dishwasher is 10 years old and does fine.
I think the author is just cranking boilerplate to fill quota.
My gripe is about the low-flow faucet aerators and low-flow shower heads. These come with internal flow constrictors that restrict the flow to maybe 1.5 gallons per minute or less.
I live in a home where the water pressure isn’t great to begin with. As a result, sometimes I get barely a trickle out of these low-flow components.
Fortunately, some shower heads let you remove the flow constrictors. Some faucet aerators used to let you do that too. Unfortunately, Government regulators got wise to that and forced manufacturers to create aerators with integral flow constrictors that can’t be removed.
I HATE those restrictors! My female tenants complained they were in the shower forever because they couldn’t get enough water flow to get the soap out of their hair.
On kitchen faucets, the lower flow means it just takes longer for me to fill a pot or clean dishes. Neither of these ‘innovations’ are saving me in water & sewer costs!
You are right about making them non-modifiable. The last aerator I picked up from Home Depot couldn’t be modified (yet.. I will find a way).
“The last aerator I picked up from Home Depot couldn’t be modified (yet.. I will find a way)”
Drill holes in it
Did that.. got the holes too big.. didn’t aerate properly. I will try again with a really tiny drill bit.
I always tell customers this, in these words: “The government doesn’t allow me to tell you that if you drill the hole bigger in the flow restrictor more water will come out.”
That is what they make drill bits for.
1.5 gallons…
*does maths*
Depending on whether those are US or UK gallons, that’s about 6 to 7 litres per minute. Which is what I get out of my own shower running full blast, now that I’ve cleaned the much neglected primary filter. (When was the last time you descaled yours?)
I rarely ever run it full blast though. It’s damn near painful for a start, but also, at a good 8.5kW, the heater can’t bring it up to a decent temperature at that rate for more than a few weeks out of every year at this latitude (and during those periods, I tend to run at half power and lower flow for comfort anyway).
You want to see poor flow rate, you need the 2-3 litres per minute I suffered when it was clogged. Could hardly even get a stable temperature out of it at half power even in winter, and it was usually a boiling-freezing-boiling trickle that took forever to rinse away the soap.
Perhaps you need to double check your actual flow rate and see if something in your system is clogged or scaled up? The highest recommended flow for most units I’ve seen isn’t much over 2 gallons/minute anyway, which would be like a firehose through anything other than a wide-mouthed faucet with no sprinkler head.
I have used front-loading washing machines for 30 years, and find that my clothes come out just fine. And yes, I have washed my clothes in top loaders on occasions (rental homes, etc.) and see no difference. Never have had a leak. Note: I am single so the loads tend to be small. No super dirty kids’ stuff or oily work clothes. This may make a difference when you buy a new machine.
Do your homework when you buy a new toilet. The Japanese are decades ahead in design because they have water supply limitations. Toto has several products that are really good.
Hate CFLs. In my bedside reading lamp, I use a halogen bulb. It gets hot, but the light is clear and bright. The last bulb lasted 8 years.
Thanks to all for the TSP tip.
Can someone give me a tip about how to get a high water capacity toilet? Biggest mistake I ever made (I blame my contractor) was to replace toilets in my condo that were original to the unit from 1972. They worked fine, but I was encouraged to change them since I was redecorating anyway. I HATE the new ones. It takes at least two flushes.
I’ve heard I can still buy them in Canada – what specs should I look for and how do I go about it!
My thanks for any advice!
Lolly,
Just talk to your local plumber. Every single one of them has a good old fashioned Thunder-Flusher in THEIR house, I guarantee it!
They can scrounge up a “nice condition” old style one, retro-fit the guts of it in to your new style crapper, or just build a better mousetrap from scratch inside the shell.
The only ‘Regular” common component you need is a Float Ball valve… so the tank doesnt overfill AFTER you flush…it has no impact on the amount of “whoosh” when you DO. A good plumber can build anything.
My Guy custom built a veritable Fire Hose level of “thrust” inside ours, it was actually TOO much I had to have him tone it down a bit!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate the information!
Best advice? Buy a Toto. It’s legal, and it works.
Installing the old kind is a crime. Yes, a literal crime. As in, get arrested for it.
In some states, it’s a SERIOUS crime.
“Installing the old kind is a crime…As in, get arrested for it.
In some states, it’s a SERIOUS crime”
Yeah, I guess thats true…
But some of us have risked their LIVES before….over PRINCIPALS.
So Mickey Mouse nonesense like that gets laughed at by us, because WE JUST DONT CARE.
Laugh, in their face, slam the door level dont f*cking care.
Frankly, I would be amused to see how far they’d be willing to go over my “felony turd flushing”
A Swat Team after I burn every single piece of paper they dare send me, and give the bums-rush to the geek from the Zoning office when HE shows up with a clipboard?
Who the heck enforces “toilet laws?”
Send them over, I’m bored and have lots of ammo.
I don’t disagree with you, but when someone asks a question about lawbreaking, and obviously doesn’t know it’s lawbreaking, that person ought to be told it’s lawbreaking.
Then that person can make an INFORMED decision.
Totos work well (I have them in all my rental units). You can (at least the model I have) convert them to full flow. You have to extend the pipe that acts as an overflow and bowl filler up an inch or two, you will get over a 1.6 gal flush.
Pop the lid off your toilet tank. On mine, the “water level” line is 4 inches below the top of the tank. So, I knew I could get a bunch more H2O in there. There are two things that limit just how much more though. You cannot have the water go higher than the hole for the flush handle, and you cannot have it go higher than the top of the fill tube. The Fill Tube is the upright pipe in the center of the tank that the Flapper Valve is fastened too. I found a taller Fill Tube. It was for a fancy toilette in the French Country style. That toilette was still a low capacity model, but it had a tall, narrow and tres stylish tank. I put that assembly in my lowly American Standard potty, along with a new Fluidmaster fill valve. Et voila! Adjusted the level up to a quarter inch below the handle hole. Much more juice for the sluice! Works great! Plus, the new Fluidmaster has a leak detection system now. If it detects that the flapper is leaking, it won’t keep filling up the tank.
Oh thank you for the practical advice!
Thanks to ALL of you!
About a year ago the toilet that was installed when my house was built 30 years ago developed a crack and had to be replaced. I bought a $150 American Standard toilet at Lowes and paid to have it installed.
The thing works great. They have obviously designed it to work with the lower amount of water. There is some phenomenal jet action suction that causes all solid and liquid to suddenly vanish. It is kind of silly but now when I use the facilities elsewhere, I miss the instantaneous elimination of my eliminations as the other toilets lazily swirl around instead of disappearing with a quick swoosh.
All good points, but you also missed the “vent less, valved” fuel cans….. I have NEVER spilled so much fuel!!!!! What the can may save in a WHOLE year of accidental evaporation (remember for it to evaporate away, someone must leave the caps off…. assuming the plastic was treated properly to prevent migration of the light hydrocarbons) was HOSED in the first spill. With the amount of vehicles and equipment I fill from these, I will be a superfund site. Great Job. You really fixed something there…. Wohooo!!!!
I used a hatchet on mine to chop the end off. Blasted things are impossible from the factory.
The local hardware store employees (all Obama supporters) hate those gas cans.
To me the scariest thing about the 787 is the aluminum wiring. Notice how it is never used to wire homes and offices? Once upon a time it was used. The reason it isn’t anymore is fire. It was problematic to maintain good tight connections over time with aluminum which led to arcing and fires.
From what I recall (perhaps inaccurately), one of the big problems with using aluminum wiring in homes and trailers was where they connected to switches and outlets. Those switches and outlets were designed to work with copper wiring. When you connected them to aluminum wiring, the dissimilar metals caused issues over time. Also, aluminum wiring has higher electrical resistance and if you tried to draw too much current through it, it’d get too hot.
I strongly suspect (but can’t prove) that if Boeing used aluminum wiring in the 787, all of the connectors were designed to be compatible. Aircraft parts – especially in airliners – aren’t the kinds of things you find at your neighborhood hardware store. In my 8 years of owning a private plane, I’ve found the only inexpensive part is the air in the tires.
Yes, but planes get serviced a fair bit more often than home wiring, which can go 20-25 years without ever being inspected let alone worked on.
In fact, they probably see more servicing than your typical electrical grid segment. What are grid power lines made from? A quick quote, which is admittedly from wikipedia, but they tend to be pretty accurate when it comes to dry factual subjects like this:
“The conductor material is nearly always an aluminium alloy, made into several strands and possibly reinforced with steel strands. Copper was sometimes used for overhead transmission but aluminium is lighter, yields only marginally reduced performance, and costs much less.”
Oh yeah, there’s also the small matter that these cables run at very high voltages and currents… but if you have a powerline fire, it’s probably caused either by tampering or by a lightning strike.
Every old engineer has a personal scar over our societal melt down. Some authority, normally with a political, legal or financial background, has beaten him (normally him) into pencil whipping a design concept that he knows will not work. Or be fired. It will either not work the first minute, or crap out one day after the warranty expires. In ancient times, the thumb screw was owned by management; in the last two generations, it is owned by greens. The result is the same: extremely high costs because nothing works for any length of time. I could give many examples.
The root problem is the evaluation of technology, cost, and risk of loss. The people in power simply do not care about one factor, either due to ignorance, or being power mad. Nobody ever resigns a plush job because he admits stupidity. If you doubt this, consider our US Congress. They boss engineers.
One example: Mercury. It is a trace material in coal, and is normally found in igneous rock, e.g. granite or volcanoes. Like most metals, not all, it is not very dangerous in pure form, but the danger exists if aquatic microbes eat it and excrete organic “methyl mercury”, a known potent neurological toxin. For reasons I do not comprehend, some people hate coal combustion only in the US, and are driving this industry out of business due to coal plants’ airborne releases of mercury. The terror: mercury will fall into water, be changed to methyl mercury, taken up and concentrated in the food chain, and we will eat top predator mercury laden fish and get sick. They site Japanese crooks who dumped tons of mercury into a small bay and babies got real sick from eating bottom feeders. “America screws up the world, again” is the cry. Since roughly half of our electric power plants use this prime cheap fuel, the mercury pogrom will skyrocket our cost of juice.
The sum total of all US coal fired power plants emits some 25 to 50 tons of mercury per year. However, one normal fumarole (volcanic vent) can emit 7,000 tons of mercury per year. There are over 10,000 vents in Yellow Stone.
And science marches on. Parallel to the green war on mercury, government scientists discovered “black smokers” undersea volcanoes, which squirt hot mercury directly into the sea. There are thousands of these in the deep oceans. They have squirted for billions of years before man first burned coal to sustain the industrial revolution. All fish evolved in this water.
I have asked government scientists for a time-mass balance and correlation of aquatic mercury sources relative to the man made combustion product, mercury. I was told it is an excellent question, but they are not funded to study it.
Next story: ~ 90% of our levees are in rotten shape because the US Army Corps of Engineers built crap, for generations. A few in New Orleans collapsed, drowned a city and killed over a 1,000 citizens. But ask them about wetland birds; they know everything about habitat. The greens will run the Corps until some hundred billion dollar failure occurs, our societal melt down.
Last story: A Wall street Journal article, years ago, revealed an interview with a retired toilet manufacturer. He admitted his toilets did not work, but he was strong armed by regulators to make low water use units. He told them. The response, “Do it, or live in a court room.” So he changed over, and then retired. Toilets once worked; they were invited by a brilliant man, Mr. Crapper.
My conclusion: Green is an ugly color. It is the color of dumb dictators, and conquered or impoverished slaves.
Well said, sir.
You must really hate forests and football fields.
That’s one thing I like about living in a tiny low-rent apartment in a cheap part of town–all the appliances and fixtures are the good old run-forever dinosaurs from before the greenies got their claws in. The landlord did have CFLs when I moved in, but they promptly burned out and I’ve just been using incandescents ever since. I loathe CFLs; the light they give is always sort of a sickly yellow, and it’s a pain to read by.
The washers are the new-model front-loaders, though, and I’ve never had much trouble with them. Maybe this is just a case of YMMV?
Rosa,
Older is always better! Doors actually “slam” on the office seekers canvasing the neighborhood, don’t they! None of that gentle “whoosh-click” for them at our place.
Part of our house is circa 1750, we have a constant problem blending “modern looking” things (big screen tv?) without spoiling the” charm” or blowing up the fuse panel.
But I love how “Schizophrenic” the Historical Committee here is…typical lefties in an (allegedly) hip college town, they waste money pushing every expensive “sustainable” and “green” initiative everywhere else they sit (busy-bodies on the zoning, AND the school, AND the Historical Committee)
But they FREAKED OUT when I put CFL’s in the lanterns on the “old part” of our home after some (painfully regulated!) approvals to the front door and frame were made.
My “Certificate of Appropriateness” for the overall design was “ re-reviewed”, and it was deemed too “unauthentic” to have CFL’s in the lanterns…although they never specified I COULDN’T when they approved the “material” (metal and glass only, NO PLASTIC ALLOWED) and “historically appropriate” style of the lanterns from the BLUEPRINTS I had to submit. The type of bulb never came up.
They cited “unanticipated inauthenticities” (say that three times fast!) after the work was complete and REQUESTED I change the bulbs, because the Historical Committee has no “enforcement” power once the Building Code officer signs off that the work was finished “as approved”.
I did it just to piss them off, actually, I hate CFL’s and those two I’ve ever bought. I knew they would notice and it would get their panties in a bunch
I just wanted the opportunity to publicly “play dumb” at the Town Council Meeting while re-quoting their published opinions about HOW IMPORTANT CFL’s ARE, and their push to make them MANDATORY throughout The Borough (inside your home!)
“I’m just a little confused here, I need you to clarify this for me, on the record…YOU have aesthetic reasons for not wanting just TWO of them OUTSIDE my home…while I have SAFETY concerns about being forced to put many times MORE than that, INSIDE my home….and your position tonight is, YOUR need to control the aesthetics of someone ELSES HOME, outweighs THEIR safety decisions about what goes INSIDE it?…Am I correct on that? “
Explosions of flabergastery and paper shuffling ensued, like Ralpf Kramden’s “hamana-hamana-hamana” with snickers and clapping from “the peanut gallery”
Shove their face in it every chance you get…let them know youre not “afraid” to be rude and “impolite.”
Amazing how much support you’ll get from neighbors you never even knew, once yoou do.
I like the cut of your jib!..I also like to do things as much to spite the bastards as be practical.They tell me I can’t/shouldn’t catch and eat fish? – I go and catch more!
> Old is better
> House is old
> Fuseboard blows out when you plug in a TV
Iiiiiii’m sorry, run that one by me again?
The front loading machine thing is unfair. I grew up with top loaders. As an adult I’ve had front loaders. I finally retired a 25 year old Miele front loader and replaced it with an LG front loader (bigger capacity, slightly lower spin speed; I’ve got 3 kids now). In both cases the front loading machine did a *better* job cleaning clothes than the top loaders ever did. The only draw-backs are that the cycles are longer and you have added maintenance to clean the tubs and lint trap every so often to avoid the mildew smell–the Miele was a pain but the LG has a tub clean cycle. The best part about the front loaders is that the clothes spin so fast that they are almost dry when they come out, so on 30 minutes in the dryer is required versus 45-60 minutes before.
Of the 3 of these in my house (low water toilet, CFLs and front loading washer), I’m thrilled with all 3. No issues with the toilet flushing or getting my clothes clean, and the CFLs save me a ton of money.
Regarding low flow toilets, note that there are always going to be variations in product quality, especially with the first few generations. Also, you get what you pay for.
As far as CFLs go, the mercury is minimal and I vacuum it up on the rare occassion when one breaks. What, I’m going to get hysterical over a tiny bit of contamination? Sounds like something more suited to a wacky far-left type. Wasting money on outmoded incandescent bulbs makes no sense.
“Also, you get what you pay for.”
In other words, the poor are screwed.
While I’m pretty much in agreement with the points in the article, I want to add a few points:
Low Flow Toilets -
The early models were as bad as claimed. The newer models work as well or better than the
old 5 gallon models. We have 2 in our house, and it’s a good thing since we’re on a septic
tank.
CFL lightbulbs -
Absolutely! That’s why we are leapfrogging the technology and going to LED bulbs instead.
These are spendy, but it’s not likely we will have to replace them in my life time. We’re
hoping to reduce our power needs so we can go off grid.
Clothes Washer -
Yeah, tell me about it. We bought a new top loading model, and it turns out that in order
to be “energy efficient” requires valves which can easily be jammed/defeated by fine,
nearly invisible grit – the kind you might get say, from a well. We ended up getting a
whole-house water filter to accommodate the clothes washer.
Dishwashers -
The house we bought came with a commercial Bosch unit installed. It rocks. If someday
it wears out, I’ll replace it with another Bosch commercial unit.
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree with the 787. Properly installed, there’s nothing unsafe about aluminum wiring. Utilities have been using it forever. The problems with Al in house wiring have to do with improper installation (which tends to happen in homes).
The real green scandal, if there is one, is using Li ion batteries. These are the same battery technology that caused the Chevy Volt fires, and exploding laptops. Using these in an aircraft represent the triumph of hope over experience. This is going to go down in history as one of the all-time bonehead engineering decisions, ever.
How much of a role green mania played in the decision (as opposed to a more general desire to make a more efficient airplane) is something people outside of Boeing may never know. My hunch is that the marketing guys wanted it, engineering resisted it, and marketing won.
You are correct on all points.
No one has ever seen pure aluminum. It is one of the most reactive of metals and oxides (rusts) the instant it is cut. Oxides have resistance, so a the conductor termination heats up as current flows. The thermal cycling is degenerative, and over time, caused fires in average construction. It was code legal for only 18 months for houses, but has been used for generations by utilities. The secret is to use a black goo coating, which prevents oxidation as the terminal screw (normally bigger than copper) cuts into the aluminum. With this correction, Al works fine in static joints. Boeing has excellent engineers but the 787 is wholly dependent on lots of stored juice. Another energy source would be a different plane.
The energy density of batteries (stored juice) is lousy, Li-on is less lousy. Li-on batteries are the victim of the impossible push to store oceans of juice in a finite battery. And, with large draws, they get real hot. And they are hideously expensive. They make sense for small loads, e.g. electronics. I remember a quote from a Special Opps officer who slipped into places I would never go. He struggled with his priorities, his order to his warriors, what to hump: “Ammo? Water? Batteries?” A little juice can be a life saver.
What to hump?
Well, I wasnt Spec Ops but I’m guessing:
All three, PLUS:
More ammo.
Plasma bottles for the doc, and more ammo.
Spare barrel for the M-60, and more ammo
Couple of Mortar Rounds each for the Weapons Platoon attachments.
(the Mortar Baseplate too, if you pissed off your squad leader)
And more ammo.
Batteries (the big PRC-77 type) and more ammo.
Then, you keep ADDING more ammo and gear, until you reach a certain, weird “equilibrium” through MOVEMENT….There is probably a mathematical formula to explain the physics of “humping the gear”, but I’m not an Engineer, just a “technician” so in Laymans terms it works like this:
You lean forward slightly in a desperate attempt breathe… and to keep from toppling over onto your face, your feet automatically move forward a step…
And stumble onward, falling into in some perpetual, but strangely offset, type of “balance”…falling forward whilst trying NOT to… about to topple face down, but somehow you DON’T, while neither can you actually “recover”…, and thus, this crazy “tailspin of the Infantry” somehow keeps moving you forward, “stabilized” by the perpetual “ instability” such a ridiculous amount of gear (that no human can carry on paper) creates upon on two-legged young man
Its rather like balancing a broomstick on your palm that becomes slightly askew… and how you “naturally”, impulsively and without conscious thought, “Move” to keep up with it.
Someone smarter than me will have to plot the equation to explain it better…or arrange the politics to make it unnecessary for my son to experience the gyroscopics of “humping the gear”
The military, and some engineers, have spent an enormous amount of effort in reducing the weight of stuff that a poor soldier carries, through swamps, deserts and over mountains. My involvement was primarily not-yet-seen batteries (and substitutes), body amor, and weapon(s). A lot of concepts do not pan out; it is vital to keep junk off their back (equally true for tax payers.)
Our warriors have my eternal respect. I do not know how they do what they do.
I work with expanded PTFE for the filtration industry…for a while we were also dabbling into the “gortex-type” market of military (ECWCS) fabric…
How do you build a “simulated” arm-pit or sweaty crotch, to test “breathable” fabrics in the lab?
What the heck is “sweat, synthetic, mixture 237” I can tell you!
The “air flow” or “Breathability” measures always fluctuated within the statistical capability of our instruments, meaning, our MATERIAL didn’t change with the torturous test variables applied to it, (an there were HUNDREDS of test combinations) but it was never “ good enough”
Being a former infantryman I had to laugh over the subtleties of each ”new” camo pattern we had to “qualify” though our (agonizingly long) testing regimen…because the government decided THIS one made troops utterly invisible to the enemy, while the LAST one will get them KILLED IMMEDIATELY, so scrap ALL your old data and start over with THIS pattern. And how a “moisture vapor transition rate” of 2.0001 will allow them to survive 140 degree 99% humid Iraq with total comfort, but value of 1.99999 would cause immediate lethal heat stroke…because the FABRIC is the main contributing factor, right?
When the project Team Leader (a non-veteran genuinely concerned for the troops “safety”) got worried or discouraged by all this nonsense, I’d say “you know, the Germans did pretty well wearing GRAY, didn’t they?” and “you do realize NOTHING they wear on TOP of this…body armor, packs, helmets, gas mask carriers, canteens, knee and shim pads..NONE of that’s breathable, right?” and he eventually began to see the light.
The final blow came when Hamas was over taking Gaza, and hundreds of their fighters were seen (in news images) sporting the same identical, homemade black ski-masks….
Our Team Leader did a Power Point Presentation, using THOSE images, to sarcastically tout the superior Hamas “design and testing” regimen in Gaza, that obviously fielded a complex and advanced “new military device” much faster than anything we’d gotten accomplished in several years…and he recommended we drop that “endless government black hole” of a market, and get back to MAKING MONEY.
Took guts but it was the right thing to do for the company.
All that fear over the Li-Ion cells installed in the plane to keep its AC running without having to uprate the engines, but you’re not bothered by all the various far less carefully regulated and vetted batteries in all the devices brought on board (in the cabin and in the hold) by your fellow passengers, or the fact you’re sitting a bare few yards away from between 2 and 4 high powered jet turbines, running off many thousands of gallons of volatile fuel stored in the oh-so-flimsy wings that are the only things keeping you in the air.
Never mind that the one incident where the cells DID light off, the plane got down perfectly safely. And Boeing planes haven’t exactly got the best track record on safety and build quality when you look back over 50 years, even when everything was so much simpler (which, for some reason, seems to be synonymous with “better” around these parts, but stops at an arbitrary point roughly confluent with the comment/article author’s teenage years instead of going back to the days when we swung from trees and were terrified of fire). Wasn’t the 737 once nicknamed the Widowmaker…?
Have to agree with everything you wrote however…I have a top loader and a front loader and the front loader beats the top loader hands down. Plus the clothes aren’t beaten to death and seem to last longer and suffer little or no damage. I can wash clothes in the front loader that I could never wash in a top loader because the top loader agitated the crap out of them and would cause damage. I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe it’s the brand of machine that is the problem.
Four years ago my wife and I had to buy a new washing machine. Our old top-loader broke down after over 10 years of use. It did a good job cleaning our clothes. Our new model, a top-loading one made by Obama’s buddy Immelt, is one of those environmentally friendly ones that is supposed to be high efficiency. On some occasions the laundry comes out barely clean, causing us to rewash the clothes. That does not save water or detergent, costing me more money in water and soap and my wife’s time. It does not deliver on its promises of being more efficient. And since the clothes come out wetter from the slower spin cycle, our dryer works longer, burning more natural gas. The only deal we got out of it was a $40 rebate on the new washer and free recycling of the old one.
Your 1st few words hit on what may be the ‘greenest’ solution of all. “my wife and I HAD to buy a new…” Products used to last much longer and people usually only replaced them when they had to. Now many products are made to fail by uing inferior materials and many of my friends change appliances more often than I change shoes. Every time a new model comes out people seem to think they HAVE to have the latest. iPhones are a perfect example. Washers and dryers are the same to a point. I know several people who had to replace a washer or dryer only but rather than buy the classic white version of one or the other they just had to go with a bright red frontloader and of course that couldn’t set next to that perfectly good but out of style, plain white dryer! What would the HGTV crowd say if they came over for dinner and ended up in the basement doing laundry!
If you purchased any high efficiency top loader and it spins slower then your old machine, you got a lemon- return it. All the models from every manufacturer I know the specs of spin from 100-500 RPM higher then the old top loaders- though none of them spin as fast as the slowest front loader.
The size of the (hidden) reservoir has been made smaller for your new machine, but it is easy to increase the cleaning performance by turning up the fill level to the next notch, or if you were running full loads, running smaller loads.
But most classic toploaders are very modular machines and easy to work on. All of the parts likely to cause problems are easily available locally and cheap. It might seem like false economy to spend a few hundred dollars on servicing a machine that is already a decade old, but it is the greener thing to do.
I think the problem is not related to top loading or front loading but rather the company that made the appliance.
I have had a number of GE appliances over the years and I will never buy another.
Add my endorsement to the other people singing the praises of the Samsung front loading washing machine. It works great, cleans the clothes, doesn’t take too long, it is quiet and the clothes come out almost dry before they go to the dryer.
How much water and electricity does it use? I don’t know and I don’t care.
Given how much I like my Samsung washer and cell phone, I think that when my TV or any other appliance eventually craps out I will replace it with a Samsung.
Any “improved” product should sell itself. If its more efficient, saves energy or whatever there will be a demand for it and the less desirable products will fade away. Newer 1.6 gallon toilets will save money if only one flush is needed, the better ones do.
At the root of the problem is that our culture have been deceived into accepting the opinions and demands of the kooks, nuts, oddball, crazies, and misfits.
The “environmentalists” blocked energy extraction that would help make us energy independent from ANWAR. Their reason was that “it would harm the caribou”. Not only was this false, but ask yourself, what has a caribou ever done for you? And for that matter if populations of other wildlife like polar bears and tigers are reduced what then? Can we live without them? can we like with eco-whacko’s imposing their baseless theories and false claims like man-made global warming?
We need to tell ‘em to take a hike, take a bath and get a productive job…
Regarding your comment about ANWR, most of the north Alaska coast line has been leased. ANWR represents about 5% of the total coastline in Alaska. I’d think that getting up to 95% should be sufficient for the energy companies, especially since there isn’t enough resource within ANWR to give us “energy independence.”
Re your thought about “what has a caribou ever done for you,” maybe there are other values besides just stripping out all resources from a patch of land. Most Republican presidents, from Abraham Lincoln through G.W. Bush, have been active in protecting special places for values other than exploitation.
Regarding “eco-whackos” and their theories……since the Wilderness Act was signed in 1964, the president who signed more wilderness bills into law than any other was Ronald Reagan. From your standards, I guess that makes President Reagan an “eco-whacko.” Last May, Jeb Bush offered that, in today’s Republican party, Reagan could not be nominated. I think he’s got a point.
Both of you are wrong.
The key to extracting any thing on earth is to go where it lies. ANWR is an example in which politicians lied and double crossed each other, to push their own agenda (garner contributions from like minded powerful people) but destroyed entire industries.
When the late Ted Stevens, not the nicest guy on earth, was a young Senator, he was log rolled. He endorsed the creation of ANWR, on the proviso that exploratory drilling, by private companies (his guys) would later be permitted. Preliminary government exploration indicated vast hydrocarbon deposits. For over thirty years, he sought and lost bills which would allow the drilling. Why? Because the native porcupine caribou might be frightened by truck tracks in the vast snows in an area the size of South Carolina.
Two vital things were lost. The first is trust, no one now believes the other side. From climate change to soot in the air, we now have EPA science and Exxon science. Scientists now lie using non linear regression analyses. The second loss is our technology. Fracking, the ability to drill miles in any direction and seek out, “the mother lode” is now argument N+1. It is a miraculous wedding of electronics and drilling technologies, a new form of robotics, an engineering advance which has the potential to revolutionize many industries.
But I would never recommend any bright teen enter any engineering field involving energy. Why? Because truck tires in snow may frighten caribou. This insanity has destroyed thousands of careers. Environmentalism has so destroyed our society, to the extent that well meaning people want to kill caribou, spotted owls, and defund the EPA. Why should the rate of unemployment for government workers be a trace of that in private industry? “I am from the government and am here to help you.” is now universally considered a lie.
It is ubiquitous.
Just keep this hard, cold fact in your mind: the New Green is simply the Old Red operating under a different storefront. They might stage photo ops hugging trees but they really intend to strangle liberty like a boa constrictor.
Actually they’re more a mix of the 2 ie “watermelons” green on outside, red on the inside.
I’m in agreement with you on _almost_ everything (to summarize Megan McArdle, “One suspects that when the marketing is ‘Green’, it means it’ll work less well and cost more”).
That said, I’m not necessarily sold on the dishwasher thing. Replaced our old Whirlpool with a new high-end LG and the glasses absolutely sparkle, the unit is near silent, and the cycle teams are no longer than before. That one seems like a triumph of technology over noise and grime (I couldn’t care less about the energy/water use).
There should be a monument to George Bush the Elder, and every Congress member who voted for the energy bill that gave us the non-flushing, 1.6 gallon per “flush”, toilet. A big marble water fountain in the form of a giant overflowing toilet and a large bronze plunger next to it.
The energy saving dishwasher and front load machines are fine. Like others have said, it is the detergents. Stick with Cascade for your dishwasher. I tried other cheap stuff. Does not work.
For washing machine. You can use the non HE detergent, just reduce the amount you use. It actually saves you money if you use regular detergent. Also, do not cram the washer slam full. The clothes have to be able to move around. I can wash 5 or 6 pairs of jeans with no problem and they come out spotless. If the clothes are really bad, put fewer clothes in, spot treat prior and add a booster with the detergent.(Small business owner of a shop and get greasy dirty)
The light bulbs suck. There is nothing more to say on that subject.
Another topic should have been the new cars, not just the Volt. CAFE standards have caused more issues with deaths and disabilities than the supposed monetary savings to owners and energy savings to environment are worth.
It would be interesting to know how many more people are now on SSD as the result of the implementation of CAFE standards and vehicle accident debilitation.
I will stick with my very old V-8 FORD F150 thank you very much.
I worked for some years in social security disability, in another state. The majority of the workload seemed to be what I called the “big three:” back ache, obesity, situational depression. I recall very few car wreck victims that actually got allowed, at least in my caseload & the loads of those in my section.
I would love for you to produce one single shred of documentary evidence for that wild CAFE SSD claim. I’ll bet you find it’s actually the reverse.
that if I want to do whites only (I do my laundry in laundromats so maybe at-home models are different) given the little compartments for detergent, softener, and bleach, the bleach compartment’s capacity isn’t sufficient for the amount of clorox I prefer to use, while the front loader does, of course. I also like to dilute the cup and a half of clorox with water in a half-gallon container, which can’t be done in a front loader, where it’s flushed in when the wash mode begins.
while the top loader does, of course
american standard champion 4 series with the 4″ flush valve is only toilet I have never had to double flush.
its noisy, the tank is hard to install, but it takes any crap you give it.
and I am a….power user….lets leave it at that.
Lets hope King Obama doesn’t require a background check and a waiting period before purchase of STP. Clean dishes can wait, but not his!
I bought cases of dishwater powder online that still has TSP in it. What a difference. The paint strippers today SUCK! All the green detergents suck. All the lime and scale removers suck.
Green SUCKS!!!
You forgot the biggest con of them all: ethanol in fuel. It makes no sense economically or thermodynamically. And like the quinoa mentioned above it has had the perfectly foreseeable side effect of raising food prices in the third world. Way to go eco freaks and midwest corn lobby!
And I agree with the post about the new idiotic gas cans. Clearly designed by someone who has never used one. Got to find an old Jerry can from a surplus store.
Gods save us from idiots.
Thank you for reminding me about these stupid new gas cans! I loathe them. I finally had enough and drilled a proper vent hole into mine and put a barbed pipe union into it with little removable cap to keep moisture out. Now they work like they should.
I have to take exception with one of these I’ve had experience with. The low flush toilet. In my 10 tear old townhome I have an older, Koehler, standard flush toilet. It stops up on a regular basis with the normal waste all we humans eliminate. A plunger remains on standby and is needed far too frequently in my view.
On the other hand, friends who live in Florida have new, Kohler, low flush toilets. Flushing approximately the same waste, as best this can be judged, as in my home toilets is followed by a very minimal rush of fresh water and a complete elimination of the waste…..every time.
This low flush Kohler model is at the high end, which may be what’s required if anyone is thinking of going this route. In this case it’s the old, tried and true story, you get what you pay for.
You might need to have your drain lines cleared. If there’s any sort of restriction in them, it won’t matter if you have one of the old 3 GPF toilets or the newer 1.6 GPF, you’re gonna have frequent back ups.
You can’t spell environmentalism without EVIL, and you can’t spell liberalism without LIES.
I agree with the front load washers! I repair them, and they are not a efficient as top load washers.
Front-loaders don’t clean? Thanks for saying it. I simply stopped using the “regular,” or “normal” setting, and wash everything with the “heavy duty” setting. With whites, I use the longer “whitest whites” setting. Only way to get the damn cloths clean. I once saw a TV spot that said to trust the “normal” setting, and gave a few tips. I checked the manual to make sure I was clear, but it still was not effective. And the light bulbs. I hate to make a green argument here, but won’t selling a product with mercury in it, in mass, contaminate our ground water? I know one is suppose to dispose of them in a green way, but do you? Even if one is compliant with disposal, will the government be? What do you think? China is the big polluter on the planet now, because rules are for peasants. Just ask the EPA, Obama, Hollywood stars, and your friendly neighborhood dictator. I’m not usually too worried about ground water, but on this one I am. What’s more, half the things I’d like to haul to the dump, I no longer can. Now it costs an arm and a leg to get rid of junk. Like used tires. Repair garages, and even tire places, no longer take them! We all know environmental regulations have decimated the auto industry, but it has also decimated related industries. Like sandpaper. With less metal in cars, the auto industry no longer needs heavy grits in coated abrasives. And now they want to use even less metal. Expect highway deaths to go up as a result. And I know I should have realized this could happen, but I thought one of the advantages of an electric car, would be zero chance of dying in a car fire.
A lot of us have had to cut back due to the economy on things like cable TV. Those darn boxes we have to use to get any kind of reception are just awful. They scramble everytime a plane or helicopter goes over & often we lose stations because the antenna can’t be placed just right. Whose brilliant idea was this?
Digital TV is actually a very good idea, It uses a LOT less radio spectrum and while it has shorter range delivers a higher quality signal within its range. It does have the drawback of digital vs analog in that you either receive a perfect signal or you receive nothing. However radio spectrum is a finite resource and with more devices using radio spectrum space needs to be cleared up to accommodate the increased usage. The old TV broadcast format was horribly inefficient at using spectrum and could not be easily upgraded to allow for new formats or added features. Digital allows for future broadcast upgrades to be seamlessly introduced to take advantage of new technology and more advanced encoding techniques as they become available.
On cleaners and solvents, I have a friend who put it about right. “If it doesn’t destroy your kidneys or liver, pollute the environment, or destroy the ozone layer, it probably doesn’t work.”
On everyone complaining about washer performance, front loaders really do beat out top loaders, regardlesss of the author’s opinion. Several factors I’ve seen affecting wash performance. Are you washing everything on cold? Stop doing that. All, and I mean all detergents, including the cold temperature formulas, perform better with higher wash temps. Have had some customers tell me they’re not satisfied with wash who then go on to say that to save energy, they haven’t even hooked up the hot water line to their washer- and are complaining. Maybe, maybe you can get away with that in Baton Rouge. Ground water from wells in my area comes out below 50 deg F in summer; way too cold to wash clothes. In winter, both municipal and well water supplies are even colder. Are you a clean freak? My daughter-in-law is. She washes everything on the SANITARY CYCLE! 160 deg F water combined with soap, and the sheets are not only clean but shiny according to my son. Deosn’t save energy, but use only the hot water cycles if you want really clean. If you have your water heater set to government specs, it’s only 120 deg. (Mine is set at 150- I like hot water.) And if you can get it, TSP added to the soap improves things.
And, filter your water, all of it, as it enters the house. I filter mine to 5 microns. doing that will improve your clothes and dishwashing, as well as help your water heater last longer. You’d be surprised just how dirty, as in actual particulates, most municipal water supplies are. I know what’s in my well water. It’s cleaner then town water. And no chlorine. Every 3 months I change the filters.
About ten years ago I replaced a workhorse of a stove (an old 60s model) with a new gas Maytag range. Three years in, the electronic ignition died. The repairman put a new one in, at 160.00 cost. Three or four years later, it happened again. But this time, it took 2 weeks to track down a part, and the bill was 250.00. In December, that sucker went out again. I didn’t even try to fix it; instead, I bought a 60 year old Chambers range off craigslist. It’d sat in a garage for five years, but we hooked up the gas, checked the connections, and that baby fired right up. I did have to pay a man to recalibrate the oven (stuff needed valve grease and would not adjust without it) but you know what? My “new” old stove holds temp perfectly, and works like a champ. No obvious hot or cold spots in the oven, either, and my insulation must be pristine- the whole stove stays cool to the touch when the oven’s on. (Never had that on the Maytag.) And there’s no stupid electronic ignition to burn out, because I light the oven on a match. Why does a stove need electronics, anyway? It’s a box for fire, for heaven’s sake. The “Technology” for stoves was perfected a century ago. The more bells and whistles an appliance has, the more bell and whistle repairmen you’re going to need.
You will thank yourself if you get a barbeque lighter to keep in the drawer next to the range — it is much more convenient to press a button on a magic wand and spark the gas to light, than to play with matches.
Goddamn, you been ripped off, boy. I’ve just had a quote for an equivalent type unit for my central heating system. It was less than a fifth what you paid. I’ll bet at least three of the missing fifths went into pure mark-up.
Conservatives will moan all day about keeping budgets sustainable and the efficiency of the private sector, but somehow they’re all still chafing over measures that, despite enduring design hiccups in their first couple decades of existence (which is nothing in the big picture), are created to SAVE energy, SAVE money, and SAVE resources.
Just how again does this actually clash with your views? Is it that these things are proposed by people you don’t like? It’s quite conservative to want to preserve resources for the long term. It’s quite conservative to not want to use resources up quicker than we can deal with. Why is no one willing to give any of these things even a nod? Makes no sense.
Sir,
I have little interest in what, specifically, you might want me to do. My concern is with *how* you propose to get your way. You have two choices: Force me, or persuade me.
Put another way: A free man has the right to be wrong.
I’ve got to say that I hate the idea of the incandescent light bulbs being phased out so that China can produce the CFL’s we will be forced to use.
That being said, I screwed a CFL into my front porch fixture on July 14, 2010, and it has burned 8 hours every night since. I was hoping it wouldn’t last, but now I think maybe I’m just being stubborn…
Who do you think produces the vast majority of incandescent bulbs, bub? Here’s a hint: the ban is on the -production- or -IMPORT- of them, not on their sale or use.
Also, you still have a choice; multiple lower-wattage heatballs (until they’re entirely phased out, anyway), xenon-quartz halogens – either in traditional edison screw or bayonet (mini or full size) fittings, or GU10 / GU5.5 / etc, LED-based solutions, EL wire, strip fluorescents, compact fluorescents, fancy pants experimental plasma capsule stuff, arc lamps, wax candles and paraffin or gas lamps. Or if you’re a diehard, you can buy up a load of 25w oven lamps and jerry rig some chandeliers to hold them.
Oh, and rugged-duty and other “specialist” incandescents are still legal as far as I know. It’s just the household ones that are going.
Many of the above types are available in some form or other from American or other non-Chinese manufacturers, but as with almost every non-food or non-automotive item in this world at the moment, including tungsten-argon light bulbs, most of them are from China, especially the cheaper ones.
As stated in my other post, I have a small number of CFLs in my home, for specific uses (including a “dimmable” one that I’m far from impressed by), but I’ve found that LEDs compete quite nicely on the low power side of things (backup lights or part of a multi-bulb fitting), and Xenon-quartz halogens (in various fittings) are quite simply fantastic as high-power substitutes. If someone now tried to replace the 105w halogen in my lounge with a 150w incandescent (or more likely, two to three 60w’s) they’d quickly find themselves being booted out the door, as it’s the best illumination I’ve ever had in there. Just the right brightness level, nice colour tone (just very very slightly on the yellow side of neutral, avoiding both the dirty yellow of a typical incandescent or CFL, and the clinical blue of a “daylight” CFL; approximately similar to a blue-tint incandescent craftlight, in fact, but much much brighter per watt), and non-insulting power consumption. Sure, it’s not quite a 4/5ths saving, but I’ll take a roughly 1/3rd saving over paying 100% any day. Still equivalent to a few bucks per year, which easily covers the slight price premium for the bulb itself. Also, that technology is pretty much the only practical choice for the 12v system in my bathroom, and it’s the only one that really plays nice with my trick dimmer/timer switches (all of which were “inherited” when I bought the property, except for a “sunrise” type alarm clock I bought myself). Hopefully one day we’ll get LEDs or some other much-lower-consumption choice that can cover the same niches without costing silly money, but it’s going to be a good few years coming.
There is one area that I embraced the CFL lights, and that is my bedside reading lamp. I can use a 100W-equivalent bulb that doesn’t get nearly as hot as an actual 100W incandescent. Recently I decided to try one of the new LED bulbs, rated at about 900 lumens. It generates very little heat, so little that you can easily lay your hand on it.
I also don’t mind the CFLs for fixtures that are a PITA to change, like my outdoor floods. I was having to replace the incandescent flood bulbs every couple months. Now I have two sets of CFLs that have been running all night every night for a few years. The key with CFLs is to leave them on for extended periods. Frequent on/off cycling wears them out, so stick with incandescents for those applications.
Regardless, the choice should always be the individual’s. I resent being told from on-high what sort of light bulbs and turd flushers I can have in my own home.
My biggest gripe is about the lack of quality control in foreign made products. For example, down at the local auto parts store I was told to never buy foreign made brake parts as they were poorly made and not safe. Then there was the contaminated sheet rock from China that caused copper pipes to corrode. A plumber friend told me foreign made black pipe was poor quality.
I’m sure, too, that many workers in foreign countries work in unsafe conditions and have no recourse when injured on the job.
I try very hard to BUY AMERICAN but it gets harder to do every day.
piss in the sink and run water down the drain after it it
todays green movment ussed to be the old USSR KGB no joke they hijacked the green movment here in America in 1993 after the Berlin wall fell. No joke folks wake up then they got control of the U N as well. Just Follow the money.
> USSR
> Follow the money
Your comment, no sense it makes, komerad.
I can’t disagree with most of the list, but the Volt is hardly a crappy product. 92% of Chevy Volt owners would buy or lease another one. That level of loyalty is unheard of in the automobile market and speaks to how well developed the Volt is. As a car, it’s a great car. Politics and finances and sales figures aside, GM did a great job on it. I write about cars, including for this site, and I’ve never seen anything like how Volt owners love their cars.
I don’t like the idea of the government playing favorites and picking technology winners and losers, but taken on its merits as a car, the Volt is a good car. A neighbor of mine indeed liked his so much, he got his wife one.
Now that Cadillac has introduced the ELR, based on the same drivetrain but with a gorgeous coupe body and an upscale interior, GM’s luxury brand will have something that Lexus and Audi and the rest of the luxury brands don’t have – a genuine luxury car that’s got green cred.
Ronnie Schreiber
Cars In Depth
If they did a great job on it they wouldn’t need a $7500 taxpayer subsidy for every buyer. A genuinely successful and innovative product creates its own market.
A great product is not necessarily a cheap product, and how else might you promote, in a time of austerity, the idea of more environmentally friendly transport (that is also cheaper to run, but more expensive to buy upfront) that otherwise works just as well if not better than the (cheaper) conventional alternatives, other than helping to bring it down to a more affordable price for the everyman? Otherwise such things just become another rich kid’s toy, like the Prius, and never sell in large enough numbers for the tech to become cheaper on its own. At least, not in the sort of timescale we sorta -need- it to. If you follow the development of most other “luxury” type features, they took a decade or two (or even a full 50 years) to start appearing on mass market vehicles…
LOVE the article!!!
Hate ALL these things,especially having to plunge the toilet at work almost nightly.
We sold our front loader for CHEAP,and got a USA made top loader (NOT “Energy start certified”) instead,which,according to the label,will set us back an astonishing $53/YEAR to operate.
Our “high efficiency” dishwasher is as bad as the gone washer, taking well over an hour to do a crappy job washing dishes, and the darn flimsy flatware holder’s crappy hooks that were supposed to hold it upright BROKE OFF,so I am using a flatware basket from an old dishwasher in it,and we have to rinse the dishes clean before we load the washer. Also, with our UN-certified wood stove heating our house,we are actually BREAKING THE LAW whenever we light it during a burn ban,since we don’t have an official permit from the state to allow it. The state busybodies drive around looking for violators,we could get hit with a $1,000 fine. They’d want us, even WITH a permit, to keep our damper open,which means that a pile of logs that would take 3 hours to burn up with the damper closed would burn to red coals in about 20 minutes,causing our use of firewood to skyrocket (we currently use 2-3 cords a year). Also, the permit is only valid for one heating season at a time, and we have to RE APPLY every year,which means that the greenies at the top can, at any time, REFUSE our current application and FORCE us to either buy a “high efficiency”, “certified” wood stove, or a whole central heating system. And we’d have to knock down LOTS more trees, then.
I have finally figured out that “high efficiency” is a phrase meaning, “It’s horribly designed, MASSIVELY overpriced JUNK from China,that the GREENIES like, who are a bunch of insane libtards with no grasp of reality or practicality,who love to make life’s every chore miserable for their fellow human beings”. THEY have MAIDS,I guess.
At least, with the coming collapse,the Greenie movement will collapse,too.
Yes, the new gas cans are terrible. But at the Farm & Ranch store I found a replacement spigot that doesn’t have the “automatic” (i.e., doesn’t work) shutoff. Guess they got it past EPA by saying it’s just for older cans. (But screws onto new ones fine.) Still best to use an old can, though, because they have vent holes.
I’m late to the party but I do have one point about the bottles.
At my house, my son drinks Powerade by the bathtub, my sweetie drinks bottled water pretty often and I drink Lipton Iced Tea. The Powerade bottles are heavy, the water bottles very light and the iced-tea bottles in between.
So my point: it’s a lot easier to crush and dispose of the water bottles and the iced-tea bottles than the Powerade tanks. I crunch the bottles and aluminum cans to make disposal easier but the Powerade bottles are more than I can usually reduce. It’s a little scary that sometimes my son can reduce them.
I hadn’t thought about the squirt/spill problem of the lighter containers, though.
On a related note, you can cut the water bottles or iced-tea bottles in half and use them as scoops when walking your dogs.
I LOVE my front loading washing machine. I think it depends on which model you get. I have compared clothing side by side when I first got it.. towels were MUCH cleaner.. twice as much loft and nearly dry when coming out of the new machine. It cut way back on the time for drying. Best advice.. research what you buy and buy the best you can.
The author sounds like someone’s old uncle. “In my day cars had big giant inefficient engines, and toilets wasted 20 gallons of water per flush!” Tell me, what do you have against saving water, reducing plastic waste and burning less fuel? Would you prefer to go back to the bad old days of gas guzzling 8 cylinder engines too? The fact is bottled water is completely unnecessary and wasteful. And I own a front loading washer and dryer and they’re much better than the top loaders I used to have- if they weren’t people wouldn’t buy them. You and the rest of the “freedom” lovers won’t be happy until everyone is “free” to pollute our air, our soil, our lakes and rivers as much as they want. In your simple little brains that what makes you a man’s man and makes you “free”. You know what? There is a society like that- it’s called China. No environmental controls whatsoever. And they have horrible pollution problems. Their “freedom” to pollute is killing them. That’s the “freedom” you want for America?
And low flow toilets are not crappy- pardon the pun. The first generation models may have been but the new dual flush toilets are excellent. They’re an example of government setting the standards and industry working hard to produce better products.
And DDT? Are you serious? You couldn’t have picked a worse example in making your point. DDT is a horrible, destructive product that didn’t even solve the problem it was meant to solve- killing insects. In fact, it made things worse as insects inevitably became resistant to DDT and DDT obliterated any natural parasites that may have existed to control insect populations. Why don’t you do a little research before your next rant?
Perhaps you should do your research. Scientists (and the millions of people dying from malaria) think DDT should be used to combat the disease. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ddt-use-to-combat-malaria
Did you even read any of that article before linking to it? It actually states the polar opposite of the point you’re trying to make.
Let me quote the first two paragraphs verbatim to highlight the depth of your failure.
“A panel of scientists recommended today that the spraying of DDT in malaria-plagued Africa and Asia should be greatly reduced because people are exposed in their homes to high levels that may cause serious health effects.
The scientists from the United States and South Africa said the insecticide, banned decades ago in most of the world, should only be used as a last resort in combating malaria.”
Yyyyyyyup. Even in these largely unregulated, unlegislated parts of the world where the “law of the jungle” is exactly that, the consensus is that this exceptionally potent, nonspecific poison (let’s not fanny about calling it an “insecticide” – it’s a POISON) is A Really Bad Idea in almost all cases, and should only be used on a case-by-case basis as a desperation measure when every other angle has already been tried and seen to fail.
We have so, so many better ways of dealing with malaria and other insect problems these days it’s hard to wrap your head around why anyone would bother with the stuff. Hell, I’m amazed anyone even still MAKES it. But then again, in said poorly regulated environment, they’re happily using leaded petrol and other such wonderfully deadly environmental pollutants, then wondering why people are getting so sick…
Crumb – dropped in the wrong link.. I find it sad that you care so little for dying children. There are not “many better ways”. The alternative to DDT is a net.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Fall02/DDT.html
“Boeing jettisoned efficient copper wires, replacing them with lighter aluminum wiring.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t aluminum wires better conductors than copper? As I understand it, aluminum provides less electrical resistance. Copper is the safer option but aluminum is the more efficient option. If Boeing is using battery power it would make sense to use a more efficient conductor. Also it would be cheaper and smarter to use wires which are as thin as possible. Unfortunately a thinner wire wire will produce more heat. I’m completely against government mandating efficiency standards, but chastising Boeing for failed innovation is the same as chastising Boeing for innovation. Same goes for all these products.
Copper is better. Corrected.
The hyper-partisan nature of these comments- and the article itself- just make me laugh. If there was an overriding message to come out of the Green Movement or environmental movement it would seem to be “How do we as a species maintain a reasonable standard of living in a world of finite resources and increasing population?” That is not a political question. The answer, once again not political, is higher efficiencies and conservation of resources.
Politics inevitably get dragged into the debate whenever government mandates something, as in the case of CFL’s or CAFE standards or energy efficiency ratings on appliances. I understand this. I’m not a fan of government intrusion in a free market or limiting consumer choice. Let products fail or succeed on their own merits. And here is where the hard right backslash gets it completely wrong. Many of the horrible green products supposedly crammed down our throats by a “libtard government” would indeed succeed in a completely free marketplace absent any heavy hand of government. The simple reason being that they are more efficient and save money- very traditionally conservative principles.
I’ve been off the grid for almost 40 years. I live in a passive solar house I designed and built. I’ve used 12v CFL’s exclusively since 1984. Many of the originals are still in use on a daily basis. I grow as much food as I can and buy as much locally produced food as I can. The decision to do that was not because I’m a “libtard” or trying to save the earth. It was purely financial. How can I have a standard of living which is considered “normal” in this country and “high” by world standards and spend the least amount of money. Politically a conservative ideal.
The population of the earth was 3 billion in 1960; now it’s 7 billion. The resources that support the population are finite, with the exception of the sun, wind, tides, geothermal and other renewables. The writing is clearly on the wall here and anyone can read it, if they choose to. To discount any efforts at some sort of sustainability while preserving the current standard of living as being socialistic or Marxist or coming from “red-hearted greenie libtards” is missing the point entirely. You can put your blinders on and bury your head in partisan politics, but that won’t change the reality of the situation, or make your life and those of your kids and grand-kids any better.
I’ve got a 1.6 gal. flush Ifo toilet. A quick calculation shows I’ve saved 1,314,000 gallons of water since it was put into service. That 1.3 million gallons was water that would have had to have been pumped by my photovoltaic system had I used a 5 gal. flush model. The decision to use a low flush vs. standard was purely financial- no politics involved. And it was an absolute no-brainer.
So if you are making comments on “Green” products from a purely partisan perspective, I doubt that it contributes much of anything to a serious discussion on survivability on this planet- which is the real issue.
The fact that you used the term “species” to refer to humans tells me everything I need to know.
Regarding “partisan” you’ll note three politicians I criticize are all from the same party and it’s not the one you presume.
Er, it means he has at least a shred of scientific or at least taxonomic knowledge, I guess? Or do you have some late breaking news that casts doubts on the validity of our being “homo sapiens”?
Christian- since when were Homo sapiens not a species of the genus Homo? And how could the correct use of that term tell you everything you need to know? If that’s all you need to know, you are a lucky member of the species indeed.
My point was that judgements coming from partisan politics have very little merit concerning the usefulness or efficiency of products.
I think what he was trying to say is that only left wing crazies talk that way. The rest of us say people.
Wow, trolling your own comment section. Was this written by a middle-school kid?
Am I living in some alternate dimension then?
One where washing machines have ALWAYS been front loading (I am, incidentally, thirty-one) and top-loaders were relics of a bygone age where everything was shit, didn’t really work right, and washers tended to figuratively mangle your clothes (doing it literally would have been find) when they weren’t busy swallowing curious children or catching on fire. One where front loading washers work A-O-freakin’-K and cause people like myself to wonder if you’ve just bought a series of ultra cheap, really crappy ones.
My own one isn’t very good, it was left behind by the previous resident of my apartment, but it does an outstanding job of cleaning my clothes (all dirt, stains and funny smells removed, and a nice fragrance left behind without needing a great amount of soap or conditioner) and will do so in a few seconds less than 90 minutes, using a few watt-hours shy of a single kWh when set to 40′C, and a surprisingly small amount of water. Which is good, because the outflow pipe is comically small but the rubbish design of my kitchen pipework means it still tends to backup into the sink, and its dryer function isn’t particularly brilliant, mainly because it’s a washer dryer rather than two separate units, because it’s a small place. (It does still get things dry if you let it run 2-3 hours…)
It is, of course, a frontloader, because this isn’t the 1950s any more, and we don’t find it acceptable to run the lives of six billion people on a heaped bucketload of high-smoke coal per person per day. Just as we don’t any longer find it acceptable to use leaded petrol or use internal combustion engines without catalysers. I remember the 1980s. They STANK. You can tell when a car from that period has been in the area recently, these days, because you can smell it. Even if it’s just one. Similarly if someone in the area is using a coal fire. Just one coal fire, just one pre-90s car. Not the millions it would have once been.
A dimension where dishwashers have never done that great a job, but do seem to at least be maintaining that level of barely-acceptable performance, and sometimes improving in small ways, and are still very much worth having because washing dishes by hand is a nightmare. I’m still having to do that, but am waiting on an appointment date for an installer to squeeze my mother’s old (and now surplus, as she’s moved in with her long term partner) dishwasher into my kitchen somewhere. I found that, when I was last living with her, that the “normal” programme she used gave the same old “barely acceptable” output, because things tended to hang around for days in the basket, allowing residue to dry and harden, instead of either being quickly rinsed off/soaked before being put in there for a proper wash, or put in fresh from the table after a big get-together meal. But when I tweaked the setting down one notch (to “intensive” or something, not even going for the full-bore “super”), everything came out just right, with only the occasional problem fork or knife needing a wipe with a dishcloth to remove a stubborn bit of rice should the basket have been overloaded.
A dimension where buying plastic-bottled water in the first place is a sign that you’ve got deep seated mental problems, unless you’re out-and-about and it’s the healthiest or cheapest option. And none of us are so hamfisted and clumsy that we end up squeezing a lightweight container so hard that it spills everywhere on opening.
A dimension where some teething issues with the notoriously fussy technology of Lithium Ion battery packs (it’s far from the first time that we’ve seen these things spontaneously light off when either mishandled or poorly made… maybe Boeing was using an old batch from the era when iPods and Sony Vaios were regularly combusting apropos of nothing?) in a new setting doesn’t immediately cause a reaction of OMG TRYING TO MAXIMISE PASSENGER-MILES PER UNIT FUEL = BAD MMKAY.
A dimension where I have a dual flush low-consumption toilet… that works just fine. Just like the dual flushers that have existed for the majority of my lifetime, and certainly my entire adult life. Just how much food are you people troughing on a daily basis, and how low in fibre is it, that you regularly suffer things not going down the pipe when you press the handle or button because there’s insufficient water to whisk the mess away?
(It’s easily the second or third biggest consumer of household water after washing yourself and your clothes/dishes, btw. Fourth, if you wash your own car. There’s a (slight) saving to be made, especially if you’re on a metered supply)
One where I’m not entirely sure what your problem is with the Volt. It was never designed, built or marketed as a car that was entirely gasoline-free. It’s a plug-in, range-extender style hybrid; basically a latest-model Prius but without ANY mechanical connection between crankshaft and wheels. The battery should be sufficient for most normal commutes (certainly, as rated, it’s enough to easily round-trip my 35-40 minute) to be made entirely using grid (or self-generated renewable!) electricity. The gas motor is there in case you need to suddenly make a significant detour without either getting stranded or finding some way of topping up, and so you can use it for longer road trips just like you would a “normal” car (the engine may not be a V8, but it’s certainly powerful enough to allow a 100+ mph cruising speed and good hill climbing performance, with the battery providing some additional backup for e.g. towing a heavy trailer over a mountain pass). If the fact that it had a 1.4 litre gasoline fuelled engine on board was a surprise for you, the problem is with your own comprehension and attention span, not with GM or their product.
Compact Fluorescent lightbulbs, I’m not a huge fan of, but they have their place (e.g. I have a 5w one as a nightlight and mood lamp for my lounge, and a high-output 30w one as a combination reading and wake-up sunlamp in the bedroom, both on mechanical timers, in places where their shortcomings in terms of warm-up time, light quality and incompatibility with dimmers and digital timers is minimised; otherwise I prefer LED or high-efficiency paper-white halogen bulbs… from 5 all the way up to 105 watt – incandescent is definitely a dead tech in my household) … and although they have a bit of mercury in them, it’s a vanishingly small amount, one that isn’t even considered harmful if you smash it and can be dealt with safely if you send them for recycling instead of just to landfill, and if your electricity comes from what would be considered a standard mixture of sources in north america or europe, it actually has the effect of removing far more mercury and uranium from the environment (in the form of coal soot…) than it could possibly contain.
What exactly is your agenda here? I’m very confused. Do they save all the decent examples of these products for Europe and shuck off all the unusable crap to America, on the basis you’re too dumb to know any better, or something? Or have you some other chip on your shoulder that means you’re happily taking the example of that one time you had a problem with a poor example of item X/Y/Z and have extrapolated that to mean they all suck?
And, dear lord, I hope the opening passage about the Camaro, wood stove and particularly DDT was in jest. The first two are style icons, but you really wouldn’t want to use them every day any more – we can do so much better, not only in terms of efficiency but also performance and ease of use. DDT, you don’t want to get within 100 yards of, especially if you think the amount of mercury in a CFL is a bad thing. You can’t have it both ways.
(For the record, I drive a small hatchback with an 80hp turbodiesel engine, which hasn’t yet registered less than 50 MPG across a full tank in a year and a bit of not particularly sympathetic ownership. It looks quite nice, gets me and my passengers around about as quickly as the roads allow, and – so long as we’re not overambitious about how many people or how much cargo we stuff into it – in good comfort. Sure, it can’t compete on raw 0-60 time, but I’d be interested to put it up against a stock Camaro on the roads I use every day and see which is actually quicker, better handling, or gives the occupants a better ride. I sure know which would be quieter (even at 80+ mph), have the most additional comforts and electric toys, better radio, better crash safety and would actually be able to get from A-B in the recent snowy weather we had. It might even have a similar top speed depending which exact model Chevy it went up against… And I’ll take my electric induction hob and gas fired central heating system over that wood stove any day. Wood’s expensive and I am SO uninterested in adding “raking out the grate” to my list of weekly chores.
Plus, let’s couch it in electronic terms. The Apple II, Sinclair Spectrum, C64, Commie Amiga were all style icons in their way, and classic machines whose usability and effectiveness for the simple tasks to which they were designed and put could nary be faulted – at least, that’s the case with the rose tints fully applied. But would you use one today, even with enough valid arguments about how all the bloat in recent versions of Windows/etc has “ruined” the computing experience? The hell you would. A typical ultrabook, tablet or smartphone is a far more useful device, and can even emulate those old machines if you need it to. Only a nutter would waste their time, effort, and money (for electrical bills, accessories and servicing) on those machines as anything other than an entertaining hobby.)
Yes
Wow, so sorry your life is made a living hell by having to pay the slightest attention to being a responsible earthling. This is one of the most snarky, selfish, childish articles I’ve seen – maybe the reason Americans are viewed so poorly in the rest of the world.
Score for you earthling! You just topped the guy that refered to people as species.
Wrong, wrong, wrong about front-loading washers. We broke down and bought some higher end LGs a few years ago and they were a marked improvement over old Maytags. Don’t get me started on the dryer though. I’ve taken it apart to replace thermostatic parts (a chore that I wish on noone seeing as I had to drill out the stamped connective tissue to get in) and the new parts promptly failed. Apparently there is a problem with the motherboard which would cost as much to replace as buying a new unit. I tried my best but everything has gone the way of the shade tree mechanic… On another note, I do hate those new bulbs. Until two years ago I never needed reading glasses but now I can’t be without them.