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Wash only full loads of clothes.

Last comment by user_2 on 3 Sep 2009:
A calibrated flow sensor would do the trick. You could fit one yourself on the inlet pipe.
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Description

When doing laundry, wait until you have enough dirty clothes and linens to do a full load rather than filling the washer partially. Most washers use the same amount of water for a given cycle, regardless of how full the basin is. Even setting the controls to a small load, if an option on the machine, uses a set amount of water that might be too much for a partially full basin. If you are washing clothes in hot water, doing a full rather than partial load saves the energy needed to replenish the hot water used in a wash cycle. Waiting until you have a sufficient volume of laundry to wash also means saving time doing fewer loads.

Tags

  • behavior
  • hot water
  • individual
  • laundry
  • repeatable
  • residence
  • year round
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Assumptions We Made

Assume you are replacing a half load with a full load Assume 0.23 kWh/cycle for a 3 ft3 capacity machine (not energy star).

Impacts

Initial Impacts

Each time you carry out this action, the immediate impacts are:

  • Saves 0.02 dollars
  • Saves 0.23 kilowatt hours
  • Saves 0.31 lbs of CO2

Ongoing Impacts

Some actions also have additional impact over time. For this action, these are:

  • Unknown

Potential Annual Impact

We assume that this action will be carried out weekly (about 52 times a year). In this case, in a year you could save:
  • 1.19 dollars
  • 11.96 kilowatt hours
  • 16.27 lbs of CO2
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