[Fred R]

Originally Posted by calgone

The avg dishwasher uses 4-6 gal. The avg hand washing of dishes uses 27 gal.

27 gallons to hand wash dishes! Good God, you must leave the water running as you go to the market!

[Henryk]

Originally Posted by Dr Winston O Boogie jr

I'm interested in why people don't wash their knives in the dishwasher.

My knives (not table-setting knives) were expensive, so I always do them by hand. In addition, some contain high levels of CARBON steel, not stainless. Those would rust.

[kcrazorbackfan]

Originally Posted by calgone

The avg dishwasher uses 4-6 gal. The avg hand washing of dishes uses 27 gal.

Whaaaaaat? 27 gallons of water used hand washing? No way. I just washed flatware, plates and the pots and pans used to cook today for 4 people and by my calculations of the flow rate, used about 5 gallons of water.

[TheDude]

Boogie, I have a Laguiole style steak knife made in Thiers, France and it cost like 200$ and I put it in the dishwasher and I have 40$ Wusthof steak knife and I hand wash. I don't know why, but it is what I do. I think the Wusthof will go in the dishwasher soon. Worst case is they spot and I have to rewash. Not like the knives will get dull as its water not rocks.

[Yung Dum]

Originally Posted by kcrazorbackfan

Whaaaaaat? 27 gallons of water used hand washing? No way. I just washed flatware, plates and the pots and pans used to cook today for 4 people and by my calculations of the flow rate, used about 5 gallons of water.

Unless your water is just trickling out, you're using a lot more than 5 gallons. Water flow is deceptively fast.

[circletrack]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

OK, who cares??? Whatever the difference in water usage (hand washed vs. half full dishwasher), it is miniscule compared to lawn and golf course irrigation. And before someone states the irrigation is "recycled" water, please remember all water ultimately comes from the same place.

Sorry, the recycled water for golf courses is coming from retention ponds. So it is very different. That's often why you will still see the sprinkler systems running, even when it rains heavily. All water obviously does come from the same place, but I wouldn't advise you to drink or wash dishes with the stuff shooting out of those sprinklers.

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by circletrack

Sorry, the recycled water for golf courses is coming from retention ponds. So it is very different. That's often why you will still see the sprinkler systems running, even when it rains heavily. All water obviously does come from the same place, but I wouldn't advise you to drink or wash dishes with the stuff shooting out of those sprinklers.

I guess the post was very poorly worded. For some reason I thought the OP was trying to conserve water for the purpose of the environment. In that case, which was a wrong assumption, it makes no difference whether the water is from the tap or the retention pond. No, you don't drink from the retention pond, but in terms of total water usage, washing dishes is a "drop in the bucket" compared to irrigation. All in all, water is generally a net sum zero game---oceans evaporate, ,forms clouds, clouds rain, water goes to ground. The problem tends to be uneven global distribution.

[circletrack]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

I guess the post was very poorly worded. For some reason I thought the OP was trying to conserve water for the purpose of the environment. In that case, which was a wrong assumption, it makes no difference whether the water is from the tap or the retention pond. No, you don't drink from the retention pond, but in terms of total water usage, washing dishes is a "drop in the bucket" compared to irrigation. All in all, water is generally a net sum zero game---oceans evaporate, ,forms clouds, clouds rain, water goes to ground. The problem tends to be uneven global distribution.

Yep, there's plenty of water in the world, but just not in all the right places. Thankfully it's rained in California recently, but they will likely always struggle.

Anyway, I'm learning a lot of dishwasher use. I was under the assumption running it all of the time was wasteful, so I usually hand wash if there's just a few plates and cups lying around. We don't usually run ours until it is full, though. But it's good to know that in comparison it actually uses less water.

[jalopy54]

Originally Posted by bagboy

I'm not sure why we run our dishwasher, our dishes have to be clean before we load them.

Our dishes are clean too when we put them in the dishwashers...LOL