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Scientists Invent Ultrasonic Dryer That Uses Sound To Dry Your Clothes (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo: Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have developed a dryer that could make doing laundry much quicker. Called the ultrasonic dryer, it's expected to be up to five times more energy efficient than most conventional dryers and able dry a large load of clothes in about half the time. Instead of using heat the way most dryers do, the ultrasonic dryer relies on high-frequency vibrations. Devices called green transducers convert electricity into vibrations, shaking the water from clothes. The scientists say that this method will allow a medium load of laundry to dry in 20 minutes, which is significantly less time than the average 50 minutes it takes in many heat-based machines. The drying technology also leaves less lint behind than normal dryers do, since the majority of lint is created when the hot air stream blows tiny fibers off of clothing. Drying clothes without heat also reduces the chance that their colors will fade. While the ultrasonic dryer has been in development for the past couple of years, the U.S. Department of Energy explains in a published video that it has recently been "developed into a full-scale press dryer and clothes dryer drum -- setting the stage for it to one day go to market through partners like General Electric Appliances."
Sound is a waveform. In air that results in a rapid change in air pressure... Moving air can dry clothes! AMAZING!
How does this appeal to me as a regular consumer
Depending on the frequency, this should drive your family dog totally insane.
I wonder how my lungs are doing now that I've worn hang-dried clothes with all those evil fibers for decades...
I don't get this. I actually just put a load in the washer, and in three hours it'll be done (says the thing). Then I'll hang it all out to dry.
Now I understand that stateside having clothes hang outside is a sure sign of poverty. While I'm certainly not rich, there is no such stigma here. And anyway, clothing hangs pretty well on an indoors rack too. It just takes a night or so, which is fine by me. I even turn down the spin cycle speed to go easy on the clothes, something dryers very much don't do.
So while this ultranoisy thing is probably wonderful progress and everything, I don't really understand the problem in the first place. Maybe I'm just not first world enough.
They had a commercial with several celebrities showing energy efficient appliances. "Which will be available soon." Jo Anne Worley proudly displayed a washer that worked with sound waves. Hence, not needing a dryer or detergent. Which was funny considering how many different detergents she did ads for. Whatever happened to that 'modern' marvel?
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Step right up, folks, and marvel at a genuine example of a Luddite. Terrified of anything that looks like new technology (nevermind that ultrasonic dispersal of water has been around since the 60s), the Luddite immediately starts screaming about how terrible it is and demanding that everyone avoid it at all costs!
here are no tangible benefits to using a crazy ultrasound dryer.
"up to five times more energy efficient than most conventional dryers"
It's the second sentence in the summary for god's sake. You didn't even have to click the link or read the article to get to it.
Cool... cause it's not hot... Yes, I know. I can't resist, no matter how terrible the joke.
... my clothes are going to be dry any minute now.
It was stated it consumes less energy, does not produce unnecessary heat.. I get you are fine with your current machine, but why shouldn't we improve what we have?
even more efficient. OK: it doesn't work all year round where I live, so in cool months I hang my clothes on a drying rack in a spare room.
AC science in all its glory! This is why we can only have nice things when China starts manufacturing them and selling them to us.
You know, you're allowed to disagree with the poster WITHOUT resorting to name-calling.
It is definitely and objectively better to blow the loose fibers out of the clothes with a traditional dryer and dispose of them
How many of those fibers were already loose, compared to the ones that get broken off by all the friction in the dryer ?
Maybe the green author has some kind green of brain tumour green and doesn't green know about it.
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Haier is a Chinese company that bought GE Appliances last year, they still have plants in the U.S. There might be some American appliance makers left, but they all have foreign manufacturing facilities.
It is definitely and objectively better to blow the loose fibers out of the clothes with a traditional dryer and dispose of them.
How many of those fibers are broken off by a traditional dryer in the first place? Seems like previously loose fibers would have come off in the washer, as evidenced by the lint trap located on the drain line. The video in TFA shows this technology using a traditional horizontal drum configuration, apparently with air blowing through and including a lint trap, which should alleviate your concerns. If anything you should be supporting this because of the shorter drying time and lower temperatures, which would produce less lint in the first place.
This will cut down on house fires, which is certainly good.
It's also progress towards something I've wanted for decades: An automatic closet. When I get undressed I want to just toss my clothes at the closet and have it launder, dry, and fold or hang them as appropriate, hopefully doing it quietly enough to not bother my sleep.
I actually don't mind the cleaning and drying part - just a robot to put them away would be awesome.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
So I wash my clothes, then run ultrasonics against/thru them to dry them. And I do this every week (or whatever).
What is the affect on the structural integrity of the fabric? Wouldn't prolonged exposure to intense vibration cause some fibers to break and knits to stretch? Would the ends of fibers tend to fray more quickly?
I don't think I'll be the first on my block to buy one.
In the meantime one could consider a heat-pump clothes dryer. Rather than using electricity or natural gas to heat indoor air, pass it over the clothes, then dump it to the outside in a once-through cycle, a heat-pump dryer uses (as you can guess) a heat pump. The hot side of the heat pump creates warm air that passes over the clothes gathering moisture. The cold side condenses the moisture back out, before passing this de-humidifed air back to the hot side.
Advantages:
Yes, they are more expensive. That is to be expected, considering how dirt-simple the mechanisms of a traditional dryer are. However, depending on your local electricity rates and how much laundry you do, the breakeven should be well within the lifetime of the appliance. Maybe that's not enough to junk a perfectly good existing dryer, but should definitely be considered when purchasing a replacement.
This is very much like the asbestos hysteria. OMG my child is at a school which has an asbestos wall, they'll all die in 40 years!!!!! No. The fibres are inside a sealed bonded sheet. Don't disturb it, don't attempt to remove it, keep it well maintained (reads: painted) and you'll be fine.
Step right up, folks, and marvel at a genuine example of a Luddite.
Errmm... something something Apps! ?
Somebody need to gather up all these marketing morons and hang them from the nearest tree
As long as they use a natural fiber rope, I'm fine with that. Nylon is bad for the environment.
Would you have Rosie get my suit out of the ultrasonic dryer for me? And tell Elroy to pick up his room. I'm going to walk the dog.
Why on earth would you think that if it halves the time for a load that takes 50 minutes, it wouldn't also shorten the drying time for quicker drying fabrics? I don't think there's anything magic about the 50 minute time suggested, it's just a typical length of time for a dryer to run.
As for using electricity, we're coming up with all manner of renewable sources for electricity. Not so much for natural gas. Gas has cost advantages at present (assuming you have a gas line at your dryer location) but they're less likely to be there in the future.
hahaha! LOL
In my area, the AC is more about removing the humidity than cooling the air temperature, but what ever floats your boat..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
AC science in all its glory! This is why we can only have nice things when China starts manufacturing them and selling them to us.
Please, don't buy Chinese-manufactured ACs. Murkin ACs are 50% more A* and every bit as as C, and buying them promotes job growth in the domestic astroturf industry.
* "A" value of Murkin ACs may decrease over time.
Front loader? I thought those all had problems? Mold, seal issues, I don't know what else.
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Lint build-up in dryer vents is a common source of home fires, so maybe a dryer that creates less lint would reduce the chance of a fire, and in turn public safety? Of course dryer vent/lint fires typically occur because homeowners are negligent in cleaning vents out, BUT if this could remove or reduce long-term dryer vent cleaning effort/cost that would be another benefit. I'm just speculating, of course...
The only point I'd disagree with is that Donnie would sign in with his own name. He's proud of his level of stupidity.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
This crap is right up there with Teflon and other supposedly good inventions, that only serve to make you pay more, and let U.S. businesses own more custom by the way of patents.
To me, this sentence was a dead giveaway that parent was a parody (that went over a lot of people's heads).
Of course, there's the remote possibility that parent doesn't realize that Teflon is a rare example of a "wonder material" that is virtually irreplaceable for a host of applications including medical devices, scientific research, data transmission, chemical industry, aerospace, mechanical applications,... You never know with Poe's law.
This is better for Space Travel as Hot stuff in Space might not be so cool.
I once had the misfortune of having to work in a room that contained several large ultrasonic cleaners. Even with their covers closed, the noise drove me crazy in short order.
Such a dryer would need a lot of soundproofing.
They ran some small-scale experiments with flat fabric samples on a huge transducer, then they stuck some transducers into a drum and imply that somehow they can make it scale. If this ever works (and that's doubtful), it will take tens of millions of dollars to develop. What a waste of $880000 of public funding.
You want energy efficient drying? That's really simple: hang your clothes up on a line. If you need it faster, wear synthetics.
Has anyone done a study of long term effects of prolonged exposure to ultrasonic waves? We humans have a habit of producing something to sell without consideration of long term consequences to the environment...or ourselves.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
people claiming it flakes off non-stick cookware and causes a whole litany of health problems
Well...it does flake off of non-stick cookware. Eating it is relatively harmless, though.
It also vaporizes under high cooking heat - and that is at least known to kill birds. It's only a literal canary in the proverbial coal mine, but it's a hint that it may not be good for people either.
fiasco like High Efficiency Washing Machines that used so little water they couldn't get soap out of the clothing
You're using way too much soap. HE machines don't need nearly as much to get the job done.
After drying cloths, the next steps are washing clothes and showering people like the sonic showers on Star Trek.
Have gnu, will travel.
So instead 'green pans' and 'copper pans' are all the rage.
To be fair, those green pans where they use a ceramic lining instead of Teflon are actually really amazing. They are wayyyy harder to scratch and just as non-stick. I will never buy a teflon pan again, and I'm not someone who cares at all about the whole fear-mongering.
...I never imagined that even the looniest of loons could come up with such a incredibly lame issue such as the idiocy you are spewing here.
Is this all a conspiracy by some agency to make money off of people who will suddenly be afflicted with Laundry Lung?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Ultrasonic Clothes Washing machine were in Popular Science back in the middle '60s, I think it was the issue that had the flying car on the cover.
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Old-school front-loaders were fine. There have been problems with the HE washers from around 2000-2010. A huge lawsuit was settled about it last year. I currently own one, and I used another one in my previous home. The mold problems can usually be avoided by keeping the door open after you've finished using the washer, which is annoying but whatever. The newest HE washers have added features to resolve these problems, and Consumer Reports says that they no longer detect any mold problems.
Ah, good to hear. My mother-in-law has a front loader that's about 10 years old, and she goes into a panic if anybody even breathes near the machine. She will do our laundry for us if we visit, it's constantly propped open, and she's given me paranoid lectures when I've simply walked through the laundry room on the way to the garage. It's made me wary of them.
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True my washing line cost more like $3 a metre because it's plastic coated stainless steel wire, and I expect it to last at least 20 years.
On the other hand the poles to which it is attached are over 60 years old. Though about six or seven years ago (not long after I purchased the house) I did have to strip all the lead based paint off and repaint them.
Meanwhile most of my washing is dried out side at an extremely low environmental cost. I do dry inside sometimes and occasionally use a tumble dryer, but that is mostly down to washing and reproofing my ski wear.
The only point I'd disagree with is that Donnie would sign in with his own name. He's proud of his level of stupidity.
So proud, he'd trumpet it....
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
There was a story a few days ago about a copper mesh that pulled moisture out of the air to create drinking water in the desert. Sounds to me that could be combined with this to further pull moisture from the clothes, maybe make the drum out of the wunderstuff and use the ultrasonics to shake the water from the drum.
Nullius in verba
so does cooking spray, but i don't see people (read as: Facebook moms) complaining about it.
When an engineer is doing research, you're allowed to call the person a scientist.
Wow, someone else noticed this! It stuck out to me in the Summary so I went searching. According to Google, "green transducers" is not a thing. They're just transducers as far as I'm able to tell. And if someone did invent some new kind of transducer, no engineer in their right mind would name it that unless it needed to be the color green in order to function. Now if marketing decided they want to sell their new appliance as using "the power of Green Transducer Technology(TM)!", then, uh, whatever; that's on them, but science/engineering wants no part of it.
Do you have a cat in your house? How well does hang-drying handle pet dander?
The answer pet owners want to know is how does this sonic dryer fare at removing kitty's mess of fibers.
Don't think that pet hair can lodge itself into cloth pretty well? It's amazing what is floating around the air or well hidden in the pattern on a sofa at a pet owner's house during springtime. I don't need to save 35 minutes on a 55 minute cycle once if I have to spend 5 minutes every day lint rolling everything I wear for decades.
At least I can go do something else while the clothes are in the dryer.
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
She has good reason to: she's probably had too many stupid people not leave the door open, and had mold issues as a result. That's the one Achilles heels of those machines, and it's *easily* avoided by simply leaving the door open. But the problem is that most people are just *too stupid* to do this simple thing. Obviously, too many of your family members are idiots, and can't follow simple instructions: she's surely told them to leave the door open, and they don't, so now she rightfully doesn't trust any of them any more. Those machines work great, with that one caveat. The improvement in performance in many other ways makes up for that one issue (and according to someone else here, the newest machines have finally fixed this issue anyway).
It sounds like she need to make a big sign and post it on the machine. She's probably given you paranoid lectures because of many other idiot family members who "helpfully" go close the door when they walk through the laundry room. But they probably won't notice the sign (maybe she's tried that) and will just close it anyway.
I think it's pretty obvious why your MiL acts this way. Other people are just too stupid. Anyone smart who's had roommates should understand.
For all you know, GP AC works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
The OP is a moron and a lunatic. It seems pretty self-evident to me, even without looking at the link first, that an ultrasonic dryer is still going to use forced-air. Using ultrasonics to "shake" water from the clothes isn't much help if you don't also provide a way of removing that water, so obviously you need to force air through them as well to carry away the water. It's not going to work if the soaking wet clothes are just sitting in a heap. You just don't need heat any more to speed up the process.
"up to five times more energy efficient than most conventional dryers"
WTF does that mean? Does it mean that it uses 20% of the power a traditional dryer uses? Because it can't literally mean the efficiency is 5 times higher. A dryer is pretty damn efficient at turning electrical energy into thermal energy. Even if a dryer were only 40% efficient, the most this could hope for is 2.5 times the efficiency. I hate it when people use "times more;" it is almost never a helpful way to describe the mathematical construct they are trying to explain.
I find this unaccountably negative. It's not "stupid" for people to be disposed close/clean up tools when they're done, or to require special instructions to use basic household gear. By contrast, I'd argue it *is* actually stupid that a device cannot be closed when it's done being used, and actually defaults to *trying* to close itself if left in the default state, and needs to be jury rigged with a home-made propping device in order to prevent a device from self-destructing.
Can't speak to her experiences with my other relatives, but I generally think of them as smart and attentive. Just the knowledge that the device is prone to self-destruct, and that anyone who isn't especially informed of this design flaw would have no reason to suspect it, is reason enough to be paranoid.
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Sure, leave it alone and asbestos is fine. But here's an example of why it is still an issue.
Local shopping center recently got sold. It has been decrepit for decades despite being in a pretty good location with a massive parking lot. It finally did sell and the new owners want to use the land for something else so they kicked out the few stores still open and began tearing it down.
Ah, but this shopping center was built with asbestos everywhere. That's why nobody wanted to redevelop it for so many years. The buyers have deep pockets and own some land next to it so they had a motivation. Nobody else would have ever touched it and this rotting, decrepit shopping area has been blighting this town for years. It really looked like something out Walking Dead and not only made the town look bad, it also made new stores think twice before wanting to open here. Look at THAT place! This town can't support retail.
We can. We finally got a SuperWalmart recently, which everybody wanted and nobody protested, and it is doing very well. But nobody wanted to open shop in the asbestos mall. The new owners finally threw money at it and the entire shopping center is wrapped up in plastic sheets as an asbestos remediation crew slowly clears the stuff out. It is a huge undertaking, going very slowly and probably costing a lot.
They are having to do this because everybody before them said "ah well, just leave it alone!" which is good and all, but someday somebody has to actually get rid of it. And thus we have a shopping area equal in size to our new SuperWalmart now wrapped up in plastic sheets.
Sig for hire.
Agreed. If the thing needs to air out, then have a discreet vent panel that stays open when not operating, possibly even unbeknownst to the user. The open door obstructs the flow of traffic in small spaces.The original HE washers didn't even say anything about needing to leave the door open in the manual. They screwed up, and that's why they lost the suit. Needing to keep that large swing-out door open represents a massive failure in UX design. But again, it's supposedly no longer an issue on the more recent models.
You should be venting your dryer outside, especially in summer
No, you shouldn't; you should only be venting your dryer outside in the summer or other warm months. In the winter when it's cold and dry inside, you should vent your dryer inside to give you a little more humidity (which makes the air feel warmer) and to recover that heat and lower your heating bill.
It's funny how you have to waste so much time and energy washing clothes 3-4 times to get the soap out, all because you're so stupid that you don't use the proper amount of soap for an HE machine. It's been common knowledge for over 15 years now that HE machines use a different (less sudsy) type of detergent, and use a lot less of it. Any idiot can understand: less water = less soap.
A conventional heated clothes dryer is the first step in bedbug eradication. Guess you can just trash the clothes...
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and actually defaults to *trying* to close itself if left in the default state, and needs to be jury rigged with a home-made propping device in order to prevent a device from self-destructing.
What are you talking about? Front-loaders don't need any devices to leave the door open, just like most of the doors in your house also do not close themselves. If you want to leave the door open, you just leave it open.
It's not "stupid" for people to be disposed close/clean up tools when they're done
When someone who owns and uses a machine regularly tells you plainly: "leave the door open when you're done so that it airs out and doesn't get moldy", and you don't, then you're stupid. Failure to follow simple instructions is indicative of stupidity.
Just the knowledge that the device is prone to self-destruct,
It's not self-destructive; it's a long-term problem. The mold builds up in the "bellows" seal between the front and the rotating drum if it's kept moist for too long, then you need to use a bleach solution to kill the mold and clean it, and worst case is you need to take the machine apart, remove the bellows seal, and thoroughly clean it with bleachy water. It's a PITA, but it's not like the machine will be completely destroyed if you don't leave the door open one time, otherwise they would have fixed it better. It's a long-term thing, much like keeping your car tires properly inflated. Running them under-inflated decreases the lifespan but doesn't cause catastrophic destruction after a single drive.
It IS a failure in UX design, I agree completely. But that's the model this person has, and that's what many owners of these machines have if they were made during that period before they finally fixed the issue. What makes more sense: keeping the machine you already have, which works great except for this one annoying flaw, or throwing it in the trash and spending another $1000-1500 on a brand-new machine because some people are too stupid to leave a door open?
Do you take your car to the junkyard and buy a brand-new one every time automakers fix some annoying little issue?
My mother had 4 children (and a husband) so loads of wash per week, and used a drying rack for years. You can get one for extremely cheap, and yes you can leave it out or in as you have place. But it definitively made it easier for her to have an electric dryer.
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I don't know how you got the idea that I think people should trash their washer. I own one of these style washers and I have no intention of replacing it any time soon. My point was that it's perfectly reasonable for a person to not know that HE washer doors should remain open until dry. It doesn't make _them_ stupid/idiots, it makes the product stupid. You went and inferred a heck of a lot out of a guy's mother-in-law and his family just from two short sentences, and you shifted the fault to them when it wasn't deserved. Sure, she could install a sign saying "do not close", but it would only serve any benefit on the few times that people come to visit. Their current system of the lady just being vigilant sounds like it works fine. The important part of the dialog is that the guy shouldn't be afraid of all HE machines based on that experience. There's no need to go insulting the intelligence of a person's family, or humanity in general on this one.
Not under normal usage - unless you burn it. But I don't understand why anyone would use cooking spray instead of an oil for cooking. But the (especially underside of a) teflon coating can overheat during normal cooking.
Seriously, it's 2017 and I still have to drag my clothes all around the house to wash and dry them. What can't that just happen in my closet? On hangers?
Same thing with dishes -- why do they have to go into the dishwasher? Why can't I just put them back into the cupboard and turn it on?
Come on, science, I'm inconvenienced still. Make it so.
Better use a 100 ton hydraulic press and liquid nitrogen !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
aaaaaaa
Ultrasound transducers produce ultrasonic waves by changing size in concert with an electrical signal oscillating at ultrasonic frequencies. This creates compression waves in the liquid which 'tear' the liquid apart, leaving behind many millions of microscopic 'voids' or 'partial vacuum bubbles' (cavitation). These bubbles collapse with enormous energy; temperatures and pressures on the order of 8,000 F and 20,000 lbs per square inch. The implosion of the cavitation bubble also results in liquid jets of up to 900 feet per second. Granted the bubbles are really fucking small and only last for a tiny fraction of a second, they still wreck shit with authority. Any item you put in such a machine that was made of a petroleum byproduct could or WOULD degas toxic, flammable and/or explosive compounds and ruin your day in a big way! Who are these people foisting this baloney on the world?
Presumably it means it can dry five times the laundry use the same amount of energy.
Isn't the washer supposed to do that?
You know we have had the technology to make ultrasonic clothes and dish washers for decades now (same tech as jewelry cleaners). You know why we don't have them? Because they work so well, they don't even need any detergent, and so all the detergent companies would go out of business. Oh, and they are also much more efficient as well (less water, less hot water, less electricity, etc.).
Maybe this has a better chance, unless the fabric softener cartel hears of it....
-RoS
P.S. - I was looking through the thread about the indoor vs. outdoor clothes drying argument. Has anyone brought up the problem of the damage UV rays will do to some clothing? I don't know, maybe the EU people like lighter colored clothing.
Dryers are not that efficient at converting electricity to heat. A heat pump, for example, is far more efficient than a resistive element. Basically yes, it is saying that it takes 20% of the power of a traditional electric dryer.
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My own experience is that washers don't get the pet hair out of clothes very well. All of the pet hair ends up in my dryer filter.
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I've never had a problem with my Samsung front washer that I've been using for years. First of all, I leave the door open so it can dry out when not in use. Second, my particular model injects a tiny amount of silver into the rinse water that sterilizes clothes and prevents any mildew or mold from growing. The only issue I've had is the useless LED light doesn't work any more.
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That's a nice story but:
a) That wasn't a panic situation, that was an end of life situation and completely not relevant in a functioning building.
b) The process here is the same. You're only debating about *when* your SuperWalmart sized centre gets wrapped up, not *if*.
What kind of crappy front-loader were you using? I've never had this kind of problem with the two front-loaders I've owned, and most other people don't either. They've both worked just fine (great, really, except for those damn mold issues but the first was a late-90s model and the second a mid-2000s so it's to be expected). They've cleaned clothes wonderfully, and I've never had trouble with them not rinsing the soap out.
It sounds like your machine was either some horrible POS model, or maybe it just wasn't working right.
And why would you need to "crack open" a washer to watch it work? All newer front-loaders I've ever seen have glass front doors. The ones that didn't, offhand, were the old Maytag Neptunes from the late 90s to mid 2000s. My first front-loader was the first model Neptune, and again it worked great, mostly, except for the mold (which they partially fixed with a recall after a couple of years) and also after it got old (over 10 years) it had corrosion issues on the top detergent compartment, the belt fell off once, and the drain pump failed. It finally was retired because the main bearing failed and it cost more to replace than it was worth. But even with that old model (really the first mainstream front-loader in the US sold by an American company), I *never* had problems with it not rinsing the soap out, or not getting the clothes clean.
No, not every tiny fiber. People who work with asbestos on a regular basis have a significantly inflated risk. Most of the time, what you breathe in comes back out. The odds of getting cancer from one-time exposure to asbestos are, AFAIK, very, very small.
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It needs more than a discreet vent panel to fight the mold. I recently got rid of a front-loader which I inherited and it was awful to keep cleaning the gasket and the mold never really died nor dried. Switched to a modern top loader and am so much happier, we can even soak a load of clothes now - which could never be done in a front loader.
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Are you using the gentle cycle when you wash the pets? Don't.
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On what models? I've never seen a front-loading washer with a self-closing door. In fact, such a feature seems stupid and counter-productive to me: how do you leave the door open so you can pull the clothes out and put them in the dryer? You'd have the stupid door constantly shutting on your arms while you're reaching in to pull stuff out. This is the most idiotic feature I can even imagine on a washing machine.
I'm not an expert on front-loaders, but I've had two now, and I've seen them in stores, and I've never seen one with a self-closing door. The one on my current Duet (mid-00s model) has no trouble just sitting open.
Single device washer-dryers exist. They cost a lot. LG makes one that costs $1700
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It's perfectly reasonable for a person to not know this IF they've never been told, I agree.
However, if they've been told, and do it anyway, then they're idiots.
I could be wrong: maybe this lady is just overly anal or crazy. But I believe it's quite possible she got this way about her washer because she became frustrated with stupid people closing the door on it, despite her repeated warnings not to do so. I can easily see how someone would get that way, because I've seen it with people with other things, especially in shared living situations or shared working situations: one person has a particular reason they want something done a certain way, and another person decides they know better and does it their way instead, and it predictably causes problems which the first person knew would happen. There IS a need to insult people when they do stuff like this: they deserve it. Now again, I could be wrong in this situation, but my contention is that maybe this is what happened, leading this lady to act this way, in which case it's perfectly rational on her part, due to the stubbornness and idiocy of others. Remember, the OP wasn't saying that she merely told people, "please don't close the door on the washer", she went to ridiculous lengths, insisting on doing all laundry herself and giving people insane-seeming lectures if they went through the laundry room. That, to me, indicates a very high level of frustration on her part with people not listening to her.
As for trashing the machine, my point there is that these machines have this known weakness, which is pretty easily worked around if you're diligent about leaving the door open to dry them out before the mold sets in. You can complain all you want about the UX being poor, but that doesn't fix the machines. The manufacturers aren't going to fix or replace everyone's older machine (supposedly the newer ones don't have this problem), so for someone like this lady, her choice is to either trash the machine and buy a brand-new one because her idiot relatives won't follow her simple instructions, or to resort to the interpersonal measures she has so she doesn't have to shell out $1k+.
Yes, the product is stupid, but most products have something stupid about them. The more complex the product, the more likely you'll find something stupid or poorly thought-out, or at least not meeting your needs as well as possible. That's why we work around these problems, instead of just blaming the manufacturers. (Many people with cars with built-in nav systems likely still use their phone for navigation because the car's built-in system isn't as good, for instance, which means they need to get some kind of smartphone mount, like one that clips to a vent.) But what do you do when your housemates or visitors refuse to listen to you and implement your simple workaround?
That might explain why my dog always runs around at high speed going clockwise.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
And besides, screwing that sort of thing up, even screwing it up repeatedly doesn't necessarily make someone an idiot. Kids are trained at an early age not to leave doors open. This can get ingrained pretty deep, such that when you see an door hanging open; particularly when it's potentially hanging out like a potential safety hazard, and you're walking by it anyway, you may be compelled to close it. And if you happen to be distracted with something else at the same time, like being in the middle of a conversation, then it's not idiotic memory of the newer, less inuitive instruction may fail to signal. FWIW, thanks to the class-action lawsuit on the matter, if you owned one of these, you're entitled to a $50 check, and up to something like a 30% reimbursement if you did indeed end up replacing the washer.
My electricity costs are 7.6Â/Kwhr. We live in an all electric heated home in an electricalâly abundant province, where electricity is less expensive than gas and less polluting. I think that the clothes drye will cost me 0.50Â instead of a dollar. With three grandchildren, a daughter, a son-in-law, my wife and me, it could save me around 5$/wk. If the dryer is in the 500$ price range, we would go for it. We could even stop venting the dryer exhaust to the outdoors.
Sure, you'd either want it to have some clever method of utilizing risidual heat to force the moist air to rise up and out of such a vent, or you'd want to build in a dinky exhaust fan to circulate the air between the washer and the ambient air, and maybe a hygrometer or two to know when to shut off. You might even be able to pipe the moist air out through the dryer exhaust. My washer is one of the moldy models, and I've never had any problems with doing a pre-soak. So long as I leave the door open after the wash, everything is mold and odor free. You may have had an even worse washer design than mine, or there's a slight chance you had a damaged gasket. Oh well; I'm glad you're happy with the new washer!
But why would you want thermal energy specifically? We're looking for "drying energy". Sometimes, waiting for water to fall out of a shirt and the rest of the moist to evaporate while at room temperature works.
We could also throw our clothes in a large electric pizza oven at around 300C (I know, this is not a good enough oven for making "real" pizza). I'm sure the pizza oven is better at trapping heat in. But hope your clothes are rugged enough.
What about hanging clothes in some fridge sized unit, with fans, exhaust somewhere, ultrasound and no rotating drum at all?
I wonder if getting rid of the drum entirely would hurt the clothes even less, while I wonder if that'd be effective still.
Let's say we're using a drum dryer with ultrasounds, though. Will it be cheaper to build than an old fashioned heat dryer?
No idea what the transducers cost but they're not exactly doing hifi or a womb scan. Might be expensive but if you make a hundred million of them a year with a cheap patent license (dryer apparently has a few dozens of them) then hopefully that's the kind of thing that can come crashing down.
Somebody's got to have complaints about this, plausible or imaginary or deliberate B.S. I'm not creative enough to think of what will come, but here's some possibilities to get you started.
Ultrasonic dryers will damage dogs' hearing.
Ultrasonic dryers will be annoying to dogs, and set off a wave of barking in the neighborhood.
Ultrasonic dryers will damage human hearing.
Ultrasonic dryers will be marginally-detectable by children and teens. They will flee the house when laundry chores are being done.
Ultrasonic dryers will cause autism.
Ultrasonic dryers will cause vaccination.
Ultrasonic dryers will be too expensive for the poor, leading to an "ultrasonic dry gap". Press conferences, marches, and legislation will result.
Ultrasonic dryers will not be recyclable.
So, what'd I miss?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
This new device can also alleviate kidney stones.
And, also cleans dentures well!
Just another move forward toward home medical appliances!
I wonder if cottons will still shrink?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
I have a couple of those "ceramic" pans too, and I just can't help wonder what sort of nasty chemistry that involves--especially after reading this: http://www.salon.com/2016/01/0.... Did they just switch to another just-as-toxic or even-more-toxic chemistry?
That said, I will just stick to good 'ol cast-iron or tri-ply from now on.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head