Now, with new regulations on the brink and CES coming up, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the US market in general.
The current regulations do impose challenges on some machines and manufacturers, but in my opinion, some of them, I don't really understand.
Hear me out on that.
Washers:
Now, the US is in kind of a bad place in general to have good washers.
Low voltage is on issue, but one even bigger in my opinion is the immense discrepancy between regulations and actual market situation.
Your regulations test on a 8 pound load. That is about 4kg of laundry. To put that in perspective, some German manufacturers list a normal size pair of jeans as about 2 pounds. A bath towel is about the same. A hand towel is 1 pound. About 5 T-Shirts are 2 pounds.
So your test loads average 4 pair of jeans, or 2 bath and 4 hand towels. Or something like 20 T-Shirts.
I as a single person have 2 weekly loads of 8 pounds or more. Now, US washing habbits are said to be different, but I think that just as with any country, there are the 3 main types of people: Those who do laundry on a weekly basis, those who do laundry when the basket is full, and those who wash verry irregular (daily to once a week).
Basicly, none of these cases have common 8 pound loads, either far abouve or below.
On the other hand, your washers have 3+cuft of drum size, with 4.xcuft being the norm by now basicly.
These washers - even with US cycles in mind - could easily handle loads of 20 punds or more. So loading them with 8 pounds is grossly underloading them.
Some manufacturers have figured out the ways around that and create good machines for any type of load.
For example, the seperation of the everyday cycle te customer uses mostly from the rated normal cycle has become come place.
Recirculation systems get more common place, and they really are the key to good washing and rinsing perfromance on any size load in a short time with verry good resulty while still using verry little resources.
TLs are apparently dying out, which in my opinion is kind of sad. I whished for some company to find the HE TL system (something like the Calypso) and make it work. These machines were fun and verry good.
But yeah. I hope for more of the good stuff in the coming year.
Dryers:
Now, again, the US faces its own set of challenges.
Huge dryers which need huge heating power to dry loads as quick as they are washed.
Old resistive heating elements just can't keep up with efficency demands anymore. Given you are using 5kWh or thereabouts per hour of operation, these are no longer cost effective nor efficency wise tolerable.
A certain number of US citizens can use natural gas dryers, which are pretty dang efficent, beating out (at least for pure directly produced carbon footprint) heatpump dryers.
However, those who can't have natural gas dryers are out of luck.
There are 2 heatpum dryers on the market, one of them being kind of a wonky solution (LG, requiring venting, which is one of the great advantages of a heatpump dryer), and one being prohibitivley expensive and slow.
The main problem is that the verry well designed heatpump drying technology of the EU can't be ported to the US.
To clarify that: We here now can dry 16 pounds of about US-damp laundry with merely 1.47kWh in about 2 1/2 hours. That is perfectly acceptable for the EU.
The US however would need that kind of load dried in about 1h. Actually, the 2018 regulations for dryer prohibit cycle times above 80min.
This would mean you'd need a heatpump at least twice the capacity, if not 4 times. (The state of the art setup in the EU is inverter heatpump with a max input of about 800W.) Booster heaters are per se a great idea but greatly reduce efficency and inhibit one of the most amazing things about these dryers - their gentleness.
Further, a heatpump dryer is a little more maintanace. The days of several layers of foam filters are gone by now, but still, twice the filters to clean out after each use.
I personaly have an idea for what a US heatpump dryer could look like (and quite honestly I think it would work pretty well, though, it would be pretty different from anything currently on the market in one mayor aspect), but I'll keep that to myself.
So what I am hoping for is an advancment in US heatpump dryers and in general something new.
Washer-Dryers:
Whirlpool teased their heatpump combo a bit ago, and I hope it finaly makes it to market this year.
LGs heatpump combo is prohibitvley expensive.
What the US is missing is a good full size combo. I think if somebody you can actually take serious would develop something usuable (vented or heatpump, for that matter, not water based condenser), it could be a great hit with single milenials and kidless working-class people (I'd imagine - without wanting to be stereotypical though - thatyour average gay couple would love a somewhat quick and modern combo).
Dishwashers:
Now, this is one of the biggest gripes that I have.
I read somewhere that during talks about regulations that happend during the Obama administration, some company (I think Whirlpool) said that 2gal DW would be doable, but not market ready and probably never would be for the US.
Some on here say that 120V keeps wash temperatures on the low side and thus keep you from having good efficent DW.
Some on manufacturers run DW that get close to EU standards, but do so in really weired ways.
To all that is the US DW market, I call: BULLSHIT! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?
First off: 52dB is already considered mid-range quiet in the US. WTF?!? 55dB is the max you can even get here in Germany. 45dB is midrange, 42dB and less the quiet range.
And with noise on DW, at least in my experience, even if your kitchen is seperate, it is a once you go 45dB you never want to go back. During the holidays, I was abled to use my mums 45dB Bosch again. Versus the 49dB Bosch I currently use, it is heaven. Really.
And it's not even hard to get 45dB. Just a decent cabinet wrap and some consideration when designing the pump layout. Done.
Next, cycle design.
Bosch shows that 50+°C (that is 120°F) for an Eco wash cycle and 140+°F for intensive cycles are verry much doable, even on the US 120V supplys.
All you need for that is a flow-by heater. These allow you to cram all your heating power onto surface virtualy the sice of the palm of your hand (if even). This allows for a higher temperature gradient and thus a quicker and more efficent heating allwing for higher wash temperatures.
You give up a heated dry for that - in theory.
But you could always just add a seperate heater for drying or even in the case of Bosch do Zeolith drying.
And for water usage: Water reuse systems. It is not uncommon to have a storage tanke for your final rinse water which is then used for your prewash. This allows for a Prewash-Wash-Rinse-Rinse cycle with usages of 2gal or less.
I am pretty certain that - if companys wanted - they could make machines tha perform like EU machines.
That is 0.73kWh and just under 2gal for 13 EU plate settings. Given that is 3:45h cycle time, but that dosen't seem to far off from what you currently have to deal with anyways.
So, these are my thoughts heading towards 2018 for the US market. The EU market will be more of the same I suppose, so yeah, looking more towards the other side of the pond for the time coming!
The current regulations do impose challenges on some machines and manufacturers, but in my opinion, some of them, I don't really understand.
Hear me out on that.
Washers:
Now, the US is in kind of a bad place in general to have good washers.
Low voltage is on issue, but one even bigger in my opinion is the immense discrepancy between regulations and actual market situation.
Your regulations test on a 8 pound load. That is about 4kg of laundry. To put that in perspective, some German manufacturers list a normal size pair of jeans as about 2 pounds. A bath towel is about the same. A hand towel is 1 pound. About 5 T-Shirts are 2 pounds.
So your test loads average 4 pair of jeans, or 2 bath and 4 hand towels. Or something like 20 T-Shirts.
I as a single person have 2 weekly loads of 8 pounds or more. Now, US washing habbits are said to be different, but I think that just as with any country, there are the 3 main types of people: Those who do laundry on a weekly basis, those who do laundry when the basket is full, and those who wash verry irregular (daily to once a week).
Basicly, none of these cases have common 8 pound loads, either far abouve or below.
On the other hand, your washers have 3+cuft of drum size, with 4.xcuft being the norm by now basicly.
These washers - even with US cycles in mind - could easily handle loads of 20 punds or more. So loading them with 8 pounds is grossly underloading them.
Some manufacturers have figured out the ways around that and create good machines for any type of load.
For example, the seperation of the everyday cycle te customer uses mostly from the rated normal cycle has become come place.
Recirculation systems get more common place, and they really are the key to good washing and rinsing perfromance on any size load in a short time with verry good resulty while still using verry little resources.
TLs are apparently dying out, which in my opinion is kind of sad. I whished for some company to find the HE TL system (something like the Calypso) and make it work. These machines were fun and verry good.
But yeah. I hope for more of the good stuff in the coming year.
Dryers:
Now, again, the US faces its own set of challenges.
Huge dryers which need huge heating power to dry loads as quick as they are washed.
Old resistive heating elements just can't keep up with efficency demands anymore. Given you are using 5kWh or thereabouts per hour of operation, these are no longer cost effective nor efficency wise tolerable.
A certain number of US citizens can use natural gas dryers, which are pretty dang efficent, beating out (at least for pure directly produced carbon footprint) heatpump dryers.
However, those who can't have natural gas dryers are out of luck.
There are 2 heatpum dryers on the market, one of them being kind of a wonky solution (LG, requiring venting, which is one of the great advantages of a heatpump dryer), and one being prohibitivley expensive and slow.
The main problem is that the verry well designed heatpump drying technology of the EU can't be ported to the US.
To clarify that: We here now can dry 16 pounds of about US-damp laundry with merely 1.47kWh in about 2 1/2 hours. That is perfectly acceptable for the EU.
The US however would need that kind of load dried in about 1h. Actually, the 2018 regulations for dryer prohibit cycle times above 80min.
This would mean you'd need a heatpump at least twice the capacity, if not 4 times. (The state of the art setup in the EU is inverter heatpump with a max input of about 800W.) Booster heaters are per se a great idea but greatly reduce efficency and inhibit one of the most amazing things about these dryers - their gentleness.
Further, a heatpump dryer is a little more maintanace. The days of several layers of foam filters are gone by now, but still, twice the filters to clean out after each use.
I personaly have an idea for what a US heatpump dryer could look like (and quite honestly I think it would work pretty well, though, it would be pretty different from anything currently on the market in one mayor aspect), but I'll keep that to myself.
So what I am hoping for is an advancment in US heatpump dryers and in general something new.
Washer-Dryers:
Whirlpool teased their heatpump combo a bit ago, and I hope it finaly makes it to market this year.
LGs heatpump combo is prohibitvley expensive.
What the US is missing is a good full size combo. I think if somebody you can actually take serious would develop something usuable (vented or heatpump, for that matter, not water based condenser), it could be a great hit with single milenials and kidless working-class people (I'd imagine - without wanting to be stereotypical though - thatyour average gay couple would love a somewhat quick and modern combo).
Dishwashers:
Now, this is one of the biggest gripes that I have.
I read somewhere that during talks about regulations that happend during the Obama administration, some company (I think Whirlpool) said that 2gal DW would be doable, but not market ready and probably never would be for the US.
Some on here say that 120V keeps wash temperatures on the low side and thus keep you from having good efficent DW.
Some on manufacturers run DW that get close to EU standards, but do so in really weired ways.
To all that is the US DW market, I call: BULLSHIT! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?
First off: 52dB is already considered mid-range quiet in the US. WTF?!? 55dB is the max you can even get here in Germany. 45dB is midrange, 42dB and less the quiet range.
And with noise on DW, at least in my experience, even if your kitchen is seperate, it is a once you go 45dB you never want to go back. During the holidays, I was abled to use my mums 45dB Bosch again. Versus the 49dB Bosch I currently use, it is heaven. Really.
And it's not even hard to get 45dB. Just a decent cabinet wrap and some consideration when designing the pump layout. Done.
Next, cycle design.
Bosch shows that 50+°C (that is 120°F) for an Eco wash cycle and 140+°F for intensive cycles are verry much doable, even on the US 120V supplys.
All you need for that is a flow-by heater. These allow you to cram all your heating power onto surface virtualy the sice of the palm of your hand (if even). This allows for a higher temperature gradient and thus a quicker and more efficent heating allwing for higher wash temperatures.
You give up a heated dry for that - in theory.
But you could always just add a seperate heater for drying or even in the case of Bosch do Zeolith drying.
And for water usage: Water reuse systems. It is not uncommon to have a storage tanke for your final rinse water which is then used for your prewash. This allows for a Prewash-Wash-Rinse-Rinse cycle with usages of 2gal or less.
I am pretty certain that - if companys wanted - they could make machines tha perform like EU machines.
That is 0.73kWh and just under 2gal for 13 EU plate settings. Given that is 3:45h cycle time, but that dosen't seem to far off from what you currently have to deal with anyways.
So, these are my thoughts heading towards 2018 for the US market. The EU market will be more of the same I suppose, so yeah, looking more towards the other side of the pond for the time coming!
