When I first wrote on GreenerHouse about dishwashers, I lamented that I could not find one with a hot-water inlet. For most of the year, I have an excess of solar-heated hot water sitting in tanks, so it is a waste for my dishwasher to be electrically heating cold water. At the time, I had been misinformed by a Bosch technical expert that the inlet to my dishwasher could handle a maximum of 40 degrees. Like an idiot, I hadn’t read the manual, which says that the inlet can take up to 60-degree water.

Water heated by flat-panel solar collectors does not tend to rise much above 60 degrees, and my kitchen is far—too far—from my water tanks to ever get to 60 degrees at the tap, according to my thermometer. (Vacuum-tube panels do often produce much hotter water, and may require a thermostatic mixer to keep temperatures at safe levels.)

So I recently asked my plumber to connect the hot water to my dishwasher. My hypothesis was that the thermostat inside the dishwasher would switch off the heating element more quickly with warm water entering the machine. Using a cold-water feed, this Bosch, A-rated model uses approximately 1 kWh per load at the 35 degree “Quick Wash” setting. After connecting the hot water, I recalculated the energy consumption, using the technique outlined here. It has fallen to 0.7 kWh per wash. Over the course of a year, this simple change should save about 100 kWh preventing some 100 kilograms of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.

If my dishwasher were located closer to the hot water, the savings would be far greater. In designing a new house, ideally the north-facing roof, solar panels, hot-water tanks, bathrooms and kitchen should all be as close as possible. If this is not possible, small-diameter Pex pipes can help overcome heat loss over long distances. (Combining Pex pipes and vacuum-tube solar collectors is asking for a meltdown, however.)

I compensate by running the hot water in the sink, usually while washing pots and pans, immediately before switching on the dishwasher. That way the water enters the machine hot for the wash cycle, though only slightly warm after the copper pipes have cooled the water for the two rinse cycles. One day I will try insulating the pipes and see if I get even better results. In the winter, when the sun does not always provide enough hot water, I will try to run the dishwasher in the late morning, so as not to deplete the evening supply of hot water.

Coincidentally, just days after my plumber had made the connection and before I had a chance to measure my results or write about it, a GreenerHouse reader published a comment here, reporting how pleased he was with his hot-water connection to his dishwasher. All green minds think alike.

To raise a litre of water by one degree Celsius theoretically requires 0.0011 kilowatt hours, so heating my 1.7 litre kettle from tap temperature to boiling, 17 to 97 on my thermometer, should use 0.15 kWh. But since it took 3:48 to boil while using approximately 2750 watts, the actual consumption was more like 0.175.  (My Watts Up meter cannot handle appliances over 2000 watts, so I could not measure directly.) The inefficiency probably comes from the heat lost warming up the stainless-steel kettle itself—a plastic kettle might reduce those losses—and the delay between when the water reaches boiling and the kettle shuts off.

Of course, they don’t all share a pot of tea at once, so I used a spreadsheet to simulate two scenarios. In one, my children have suddenly become green angels, and measure out exactly one mug full of water into an empty kettle to boil. Under these ideal conditions, their additional 24 cups of tea a day would use just 0.59 kWh. The worst-case—and very common—scenario is to fill a kettle and boil it over and over again  until nearly empty before repeating the process. Under these circumstances, those same 24 cups of tea use nearly three time as much electricity, or 1.61 kWh. (Even after taking into account the warm water that is being re-boiled.)

My mystery is not entirely solved. The kettle could account for a sixth of the increase, but the rest must come from addition lights burning at desks, the refrigerator door opening and closing for study snacks, and those electronic devices that seem to take over study breaks.

Still, I’ve learned something useful. Changing kettle habits can make a significant impact on consumption. The Eco-Kettle is designed to make this simple, saving you from running back and forth to the sink to measure another cup of water. The water reservoir at the top of the kettle can release measured cups of water to the element at the bottom. It is available from a few sources in South Africa for R450 and up. Six people drinking 4 cups of tea a day with a full-kettle habit to break could probably save enough to pay for the expense in a couple of years.  I’ve seen a few complaints on the internet about durability, however, and I wonder if a simpler solution wouldn’t suffice. I plan to put a water jug next to the kettle and ask my family to measure out the water in their teacup before pouring it into the kettle. (Our kettle has a flat bottom. If yours has a raised element, it may need extra water to cover the element.) It should save them time, too. My stopwatch tells me that a cup of water boils in 51 seconds. A full kettle takes nearly 4 minutes.

While on the subject of kettles, I sometimes use ours as a back-up geyser. I try to keep the electric elements in my two, 300 litre solar-heated geysers switched off, and most days I don’t need them. But occasionally I have been seen pouring a few kettles full of boiling water into a bath on a winter night to keep my wife from grumbling about my solar fanaticism. This causes her to ask, “wouldn’t it use less electricity just to turn on the element in the tanks for an hour?” My spreadsheet provides the definitive answer. Boiling even five kettles of lukewarm water from the hot tap uses 2/3 of a kilowatt hour. The 4000 watt element on the geyser would use 4 kWh in an hour. There are times when a full kettle is green.