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They're not a uniquely US thing by any means, detergent pods and capsules have been a pretty common format here and in the UK for quite a long time now. Nearly as long as dissolvable-pod type dishwasher tablets have been around. I haven't really heard of any major problem with...

I'll have pictures of mine sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday. A pair of sustainable farmed Nordman firs 8ft and 6ft were picked out and will be delivered on Monday :) I've been too busy to do it sooner.

Samsung Ecobubble: We have one of those machines and it's pretty mediocre. It washes pretty well to be fair to it, but it's default rinsing isn't good enough. You need to do about 4 rinses to ensure the clothes are adequately rinsed, but you can select up to 5 rinses on any wash cycle. The...

Pressure jet oil was (and still is in many non urban areas) the most common form of central heating here. Natural gas only became available here in the late 1970s in Cork and into the 1980s n Dublin after the discovery of gas off the South coast. In most urban areas gas pushed oil fired...

Just had a bit of a heating issue this week. our natural gas boiler (furnace) has had a major PCB problem and the replacement cost is over €400… so, it's time for a new boiler. it's a bit of a beast that can output 42kW (143,000 BTU) There is an efficiency grant worth about $2000 to replace...

£179 in today's money is £2,755.06 or €3292.63 or US$4519.12 Miele prices were pretty steep then too :D But what's amazing is how pricy that twin tub is in today's terms ! £1,292.88 / US$2120.71/ €1545.15...

Clean the fridge down with an antibacterial / anti fungal suitable for fridges. Leave it fully open in a warm dry room for about 2 days. Once you're happy it's entirely aired out and dry, start the fridge and leave it on maximum with the doors shut for about two or three days. Do not open it as...

The company that our city council contracts out its lighting to has started installing LED street lights and the lamps right outside my house were changed recently. I actually miss the old gentle orange glow of the sodium lamps now. The LED street lamps are very harsh looking in comparison it's...

It's not just US detergents that hang around afterwards! Ariel (P&G top of the line detergent in European markets) is very pungent. It's hard to describe the scent as it's not floral and it's not pine, it's just 'Ariel' but it's definitely designed to hang around. Persil (Unilever version)...

Traditional non heat pump condensers are often quite slow!

@laundress The UK's financial services sector's probably a little oversized to put it mildly in terms of its importance to the British economy. The financial service sector now accounts for about 9.6% of UK GDP directly vs about 7.9% of US GDP for the US sector. Ours is pretty high here in...

European dryers (particularly older ones) used to be pretty hot too though. I remember getting clothes out of our old Hoover vented dryer as a kid that were so hot you couldn't touch them. The fasteners and buttons were lethal - they'd actually burn you! Modern heat pump dryers tend to run a...

Our kitchen was designed originally in 1978 and it has some rather over the top lighting. The original setup had 10 X 60W recessed full size reflector spots. So, a total of 600W of lighting which was a bit much to put it mildly. The current setup has the same 10 spot locations but it has LEDs...

That's really not a lot of heat input! My dryer gets it down to well under 1kW but that's using a recirculating closed system with a heat pump.

Looking at those photos, the build quality doesn't look too wonderful.

Yeah, it's certainly an interesting city from a historical point of view. I actually have some direct connections to the place myself. One of my ancestors started their life in Detroit, built their career there and then moved to New York when the city started to decline where she married an...

I suppose what happened was pretty much what happens to any city when you pull its life-blood manufacturing industry out of it. Detroit's just a more dramatic example than most as there wasn't really any alternative to replace it, unlike many other cities of similar scale because the motor...

Mine's a bit complicated! The average home here in Ireland would be heated by a hydronic system - hot water circulated through radiators. We'd normally use natural gas, oil, LPG and possible solid fuel (sometimes as an extra) as the main sources of heat for that. However, alternatives are...

Front loaders are most definitely designed for use with powders. In fact, they're probably more powder-friendly that traditional top loaders as they even come with a dispenser drawer that automatically disperses the powder and adds it to the wash at the right time (and does it twice if you've a...

They were certainly distinctively styled machines.