11 hours ago, spotity said:

Couldn't agree more, sort of like eating healthy...

Interested to hear what you have in mind for your water bill, I am also trying to control mine, I like visibility, but have been unable to find any water usage monitors that actually work on our water meters 

I just read the meter everyday, subtract yesterday's reading, and try to correlate my findings to household activity. 

Without much luck. And I would have to monitor activity, which would be a distraction for me. 

The other problem is trying to figure out what's reasonable usage. There is a global average but includes people in Los Angeles and people in Sudan. Britain seems to have good data, but the lifestyle and property sizes don't relate well to my suburban South African life. 

 

1 hour ago, Bobster. said:

I just read the meter everyday, subtract yesterday's reading, and try to correlate my findings to household activity. 

Without much luck. And I would have to monitor activity, which would be a distraction for me. 

The other problem is trying to figure out what's reasonable usage. There is a global average but includes people in Los Angeles and people in Sudan. Britain seems to have good data, but the lifestyle and property sizes don't relate well to my suburban South African life. 

 

My municipality in SA is advocating personal consumption of 50l per person per day (shower, toilets, cooking, laundry). This is in a dought-stricken region, so that does not include watering gardens, pools, or cleaning buildings or cars. A reference is possibly your own municipal tariff structure, ie. at if the tariffs get stepped up for higher usage.

It's not something to do for saving costs, rather as backup for failing infrastructure and natural disasters. The only time I could calculate a return within the warranty period of the tank (8 years at the time) was for the simplest rainwater storage tank with a gravity-fed tap to top up my pool with untreated water, and let the pool's filter and chlorine do the cleaning.

2 hours ago, GreenFields said:

My municipality in SA is advocating personal consumption of 50l per person per day (shower, toilets, cooking, laundry). This is in a dought-stricken region, so that does not include watering gardens, pools, or cleaning buildings or cars. A reference is possibly your own municipal tariff structure, ie. at if the tariffs get stepped up for higher usage.

It's not something to do for saving costs, rather as backup for failing infrastructure and natural disasters. The only time I could calculate a return within the warranty period of the tank (8 years at the time) was for the simplest rainwater storage tank with a gravity-fed tap to top up my pool with untreated water, and let the pool's filter and chlorine do the cleaning.

The thing is that it's hard to save money on your water bill. Municipal water is really cheap. So you need some other motivation for saving. I decided to go with the average for England which is 149lppd - that's for all usage. But then you find out that a large number of houses in England don't have meters, they just play a flat amount a month, so that figure must be the sort of crude one that COJ put out last year - outflow from the reservoirs / population. Anyway, you have to put a peg in the sand.

I have water saving shower heads, flow restrictors on all the internal taps and we try to be careful. I remember a great piece of leadership by the mayor of Mexico City who, during a bad drought, went on TV to show people how to have a shower (he showed this from the waist up). You get in, turn on the taps, get yourself wet, then turn the taps off. Now you soap up, scrub etc, and when you're done with that then you turn on again and rinse off. So I try to do that. We haven't filled our pool all summer - we let the rain do that for us. Now we have the dry winter months ahead and I'm going to have to top up at some point. 

I got a tip from a friend who lives mostly in Belgium with a second home in the UK. They pay more for water, and he's very concientious about reducing his impact on the planet. He told me to max out the dishwasher. He said he tries to never use the sink for washing. The literature says that our dishwasher uses just 9l for a full load on the "eco" cycle (also less than one unit of electricity, which I confirmed with a kill-a-watt). So I took his advice. 

Generally we just try to be aware of our usage. The metered amount per month has come down. Last month we got under 70lppd without anybody stinking. But then it went up again (by a significant amount, not just a liter or two), and I can't see any obvious reason for that, which is annoying. It's come down again, so I don't think there's a leak.

We've hijacked this thread with a sudden change to water-saving related matters. I value the discussion, but maybe there should be a new thread, perhaps on another board.

Edited April 28, 20233 yr by Bobster.

On 2023/04/15 at 11:56 AM, GreenFields said:

Probably most efficient to go for one of the newer heat-pump dryer types. Like the one below that uses 1,1kW.

https://www.miele.co.za/domestic/tumble-dryers-1575.htm?mat=11684670&name=TCB140_WP

But in our climate it's probably cheapest just to get a washing machine with a fast spin cycle and hang stuff up to dry.

I stand to be corrected but commercial and some residential machines these day spin just a bit faster as it dramatically decreases drying time. The savings were something like 40% just with a faster spin.

There are spinners on Takealot that so just this for a few hundred ront

I have never been a fan of dryers, sinc eit just didn't make sense to waste energy when the sun does it for free. However, during black friday this year I bought a dryer and washing machine to replace our old titan, and caved to the wife wanting a dryer for cold mornings etc for the kids clothes.

I opted for the Hisense S5 series, the dryer specifically is the "Hisense 10kg Series 5S Heat Pump Dryer", and uses 500w. I can highly recommend it, after seeing the difference it makes to the quality of a wash as well, and the texture of the clothes, I will never go back to sun drying.

3 hours ago, Pho3niX90 said:

caved to the wife wanting a dryer for cold mornings etc for the kids clothes.

don't you have a microwave? :-)

As for high RPM spin cycles, my Miele from the mid to late '80s was doing the spin cycle at 1100 or 1200RPM, now everyone else seems to be waking up as well, more than 30 years later.

Edited March 30, 20251 yr by Kalahari Meerkat
screwed up quoting

I opted for the Hisense S5 series, the dryer specifically is the "Hisense 10kg Series 5S Heat Pump Dryer", and uses 500w. I can highly recommend it, after seeing the difference it makes to the quality of a wash as well, and the texture of the clothes, I will never go back to sun drying.

6 hours ago, Pho3niX90 said:

I opted for the Hisense S5 series, the dryer specifically is the "Hisense 10kg Series 5S Heat Pump Dryer", and uses 500w. I can highly recommend it, after seeing the difference it makes to the quality of a wash as well, and the texture of the clothes, I will never go back to sun drying.

Heat pump! Always efficient.

My solar clothes dryer works incredibly well.

On 2025/03/30 at 3:05 PM, Bobster. said:

I opted for the Hisense S5 series, the dryer specifically is the "Hisense 10kg Series 5S Heat Pump Dryer", and uses 500w. I can highly recommend it, after seeing the difference it makes to the quality of a wash as well, and the texture of the clothes, I will never go back to sun drying.

Heat pump! Always efficient.

Worth a watch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn03N3b0-lE

2 hours ago, hilt_ctn said:

Worth a watch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn03N3b0-lE

If... if pigs could fly... this berk assumes compressors fail after 5 years... I've got fridges 25 years old with their original compressors and no re-gassing, aircon in CPT without issues also dating back to early 2000's, so, this berk is slagging off equipment he has no long term, history with, it seems and his wear and tear on clothing being more in the heat pump drier is also bull, I reckon, the heat pump drier runs cooler, which might actually equate to less wear and tear on the clothing even though the drying cycle takes longer...

28 minutes ago, Kalahari Meerkat said:

If... if pigs could fly... this berk assumes compressors fail after 5 years... I've got fridges 25 years old with their original compressors and no re-gassing, aircon in CPT without issues also dating back to early 2000's, so, this berk is slagging off equipment he has no long term, history with, it seems and his wear and tear on clothing being more in the heat pump drier is also bull, I reckon, the heat pump drier runs cooler, which might actually equate to less wear and tear on the clothing even though the drying cycle takes longer...

They don't make them like they used to ;)

51 minutes ago, hilt_ctn said:

They don't make them like they used to ;)

This is the correct statement. Life cycle of a lot of this are much shorter. Yes those 10-15 items might go on for many more years.

There is a good reason why some appliance workshops don't even want to work on modern fridges🤔

7 hours ago, hilt_ctn said:

Worth a watch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn03N3b0-lE

It's an interesting watch.

From my experience thus far with the S5, with a family of 4, average drying cycle takes about 30-60mins. It expels no heat into the room as he mentioned. For the current week, we have used 4.26kWh drying clothes.
Then, there are the additional moisture/humidity and temprature sensors to make sure things do not get damaged, or a cycle doesn't run longer than needed.

Whilst one thing is true for a certain model, it might not be for another.