I've said it for years warmsecondrinse
and have been taken to task because of it. I share your observations to a T.
And I'll add a few of my own.
*wow, it uses less water. What a bonanza! After all, I've been force fed from all angles that we're running out of water so a machine that uses 2 cups has GOT TO be good because the "authorities" knows. (and I' don't know my ass from my elbow so I'll just be stupid/lazy and let others thing for me)
*Sanitize, steam, and the like. Overwrought mass complication due to manufacturers running out of hooks to convince the gullible shopper that he/she needs this. Never mind that Aunt Mabel did thousands of loads in her Maytag wringer and no one got sick from it. Come to think of it, I never go sick from laundry either.
*A plethora of cycles that will amaze and impress at the same time. Has anyone grown a brain, anyone, and realized that garments are made today mostly from cotton (same stuff that existed in biblical times)with a few cotton/poly blends? Now we have kid dirty, adult dirty, mother-in-law dirty, kitchen dirty, sorta, kinda dirty and well, just plain dirty. Is this really necessary? What, pray tell, is the difference in a ragged cotton shirt that was used to clean the floor vs one that was worn by a kid playing football in the mud? And how has cotton changed from way back when to today that we need all these cycles to clean it?
*I laugh to the point of blowing my lunch when co-workers brag about their shiny new, government approved DW that has......wait......wait........a SANITIZE cycle! Whooopeeee! As in point #2 above, what happened to our brains? Did we turn them off?
POP quiz time;
Q. what exists in every home and on every person's hands?
A. Germs. Some are quite nasty, some are benevolent. But they DO exist.
Thus, you have your algore approved appliance, happily churning away, using 1.5 gallons of water at most, feeling good like Grand Funk Railroad. It's going on 4 hours now since you hit the start button. Of course, thanks to more stupid regulation, your heater energizes for 10 minutes. Which means you have damp dishes. So you get your grimy hands on a grimly towel, remove dishes and proceed to dry them! Then you put them in an UNSANITZED cuppoard, drawer, or someplace else that is probably teaming with germs. So what good is the sanitize cycle when you are putting the so-called sanitized dishes in an unsanitary environment?
*We all want to go green to varying degrees. Me, I go green when it makes sense and it does not break my budget. Well, thanks to piss temperature water, we now have to "clean" our washing machines! Oh boy! Who thunk that one up? So, as part of your regular domestic chores, you dutifully trudge off to your local BIG BOX, buy a "washing machine cleaner" dutifully follow the instructions to "clean" your machine.
How in the hell did my mother manage 18 years on a Whirlpool machine that never had its innards cleaned nor did our laundry suffer because of it?
Let's probe this a bit further shall we?
1. Goobermint dumbs down water temps in washing machines.
2. Water is never hot enough to fully dissolve detergent, dirt, and grime.
3. Machines begin to stink after a while.
4. Consumers complain.
5. Engineer in some cubicle dreams up a "cleaner". Gets chemical company X to make it. Includes a free sample with every machine sold. On page 45 user is instructed how to use "cleaner"
Anybody see anything wrong here? In addition to detergent, user now has to buy cleaner. Someone has to make that cleaner, use precious crude to make the plastic bottle, expand the carbon footprint to deliver it to stores, store has to make shelf space for it, et cetera. Does it make you wonder? On one hand, we're told machines operate this way because the brain trust at the DOE says they have to so we can all reduce our energy consumption. Yet OTOH, we now have to invest money and resources buying cleaners to clean the very machines, that last time I checked, are supposed to clean our laundry!
It reminds me of the oxymoron, "you may not do so unless you have already done so".
Now the HVAC industry has been infected with this nonsense. Smart t-stats, modulating gas valves, control boards that make what you find in a Dell desktop PC look like childs play, all of which are very costly to replace when they fail. And they do with alarming regularity. Again a 97% AFUE furnace is great. Wonderful. YOu're making friends with the greenies. You run it 4-5 years then the control board takes a dump. Your energy "savings" will be wiped out with one repair bill for one of those bad boys. Trust me, I've experienced it before. Go price out a "smart" t-stat. Go ahead. Try to figure out how long you have to have your 97% AFUE furnace in operation before you see any kind of payback.
I posted a link here before that analyzed some of the so called green initiatives. COme to find out, a great many of them were a Pyrrhic victory at best. Yet the dumbass consumer keeps eating it up, keeps buying the latest and greatest thinking he's one step ahead of everyone else out there.
Visitors, when I have them, are shocked that I still have a tube type non HD Toshiba assembled in USA tv. They simply cannot believe that I don't have some whiz bang flat screen with wireless capability, check book balance features, and another feature that wipes my tail after I drop duke. I mean they literally stare at the thing expecting it to grow legs or something. I rarely watch the tube now thanks to listless moronic programming. Why would I invest in a 1080 or whatever flat screen to watch the same crap that I avoid now? BTW my Toshiba is umm 15 years old, never had a repair. The color and sound work perfectly. Every and I do mean every co worker has either junked or repaired their flat screen tv no matter what the brand is. If memory serves me correctly, they seem to get them from Sam's club. Note to self, don't buy a tv at Sam's club.
Now we return to our regularly scheduled posting on AW
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