Energy Efficient Dishwashers

Lowering Energy Costs

In fact, you'll find that lowering costs with Energy Star technology alone will have a positive impact on your home savings.

Because these dishwashers are efficient, they use less power as opposed to an inefficient unit where you'll burn through unnecessary cash.

Below are proven frugal strategies to keep more money in your wallet.

Energy Efficient Dishwasher

How To Make Your Dishwasher More Efficient

• Full Load

  You'll want to run your dishwasher with a full load. Since most of the power used by your dishwasher will be to heat up the water, and you can't reduce the amount of water used per cycle, running a full load will be most efficient.

• Heat Dry

  Heat drying your dishes is a big power user. In fact, it uses up about 6%-10% of your dishwashers energy use. Don't forget that heat drying also warms your house which will cause your air conditioning to work harder, also using up more power.

  We simply open up our dishwasher and let the dishes air dry. If there are dishes with water pooled in them, we turn them over to let the water drain out.

• Hand Washing

  Many people think that they can save on hot water use by washing their dishes by hand. Ahh, but we know better. Energy efficient dishwashers leave hand washing in the dust when it comes to using less water.

  Especially if you run a full dishwasher load, you're going to save money. Hand washing is just more water intensive.

  Most people either have the tap running the whole time or they'll fill up the sink with hot soapy water and still have the tap running for rinsing.

  Either way, hand washing's going to consume a good amount of water; not to mention your time.

• Pre-Rinsing Dishes

  I've definitely been guilty of this. Instead of just scraping off the food and loading the dish into the dishwasher, I scrape, rinse and load.

  This is a mistake. Especially with the newer energy efficient dishwashers, you can save warm water (and power) by just scraping and loading. Your dishwasher should be able to handle thin films of food remains.

• Light Wash Setting

  Running your unit on the lighter wash setting will save you cash because you're eliminating an entire wash cycle of hot water use.

Finding Low Cost Energy Efficient Dishwashers

• Compact Or Standard

  You'll find while shopping for your new dishwasher that they’re either going to be a compact capacity or a standard capacity. Compacts are generally more energy efficient; but you'll want to weigh your dishwashing needs.

  Compact dishwashers hold fewer dishes. This means you'll use this unit more often if you frequently need to run more dishes than the compact can fit. If this is the case, you'll save more energy using the standard dishwasher because you'll run fewer cycles.

• Cycle Selection

  Cycle selection is huge when it comes to energy cost savings with your dishwasher. The more cycle selections you have the better.

  For example, a shorter cycle selection will save you hot water which reduces your power costs.

• Booster Heater

  These are really neat. Many of the new units on the market have booster heaters installed in them.

  Now I'll tell you, the dishwashers with the booster heaters do cost more than the ones without them. However, you'll recover this extra cost in 1-2 years; especially if you keep the temperature on your hot water heater at a reasonable level.

  In case you were curious, a booster heater is a device built into your unit that'll automatically increase the water going into your dishwasher to the recommended cleaning temperature of 140 degrees.

• No Heat Dry

  Many of the newer units will have a no-heat drying power saving feature which is pretty nifty.

  After your dishwasher completes its rinse cycle, selecting the no-heat option will actually fan dry your dishes instead of using the more expensive electrical heat to do the same job.

Energy Star Dishwashers

Energy star dishwashers use less water. They also use about 40% less power then the non-energy star units - huge cost savings!

Summary