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Lower Your Utility Bill by Choosing an AHAM Verifide Clothes Washer

IStock_000010284764MediumThe most helpful household appliance, at least when it comes to saving time and backbreaking
work, has to be the clothes washer. Clothes washers have come a long way over the decades, and they’re now more energy efficient than ever—even while the average tub size has grown. In fact, a clothes washer manufactured in 2011 uses
over 75 percent less energy than one manufactured in 1991. Those savings really add up over the years.

Thankfully, when consumers are looking to purchase a new clothes washer, they can rely on those models that carry the AHAM Verifide mark which signifies that it has been verified by an independent laboratory to perform to the manufacturer’s product claims for energy consumption and water use. Additionally, for those clothes washers that have earned ENERGY STAR designation, AHAM’s energy verification of the unit ensures that the product meets ENERGY STAR criteria.

Ralph Hudnall, AHAM’s Director, Product Certification and Verification, explains that the independent laboratory randomly selects units from a list of models when they visit the manufacturers’ warehouses. When the units are taken back to the lab, technicians determine the capacity of the tub volume by measuring how much water and how many pounds of clothes it can hold. Special “test cloths” are used for these tests. These test
cloths,  are produced according to an industry standard so that water absorption and weight are the same across all samples, thereby ensuring accuracy. Additionally, the annual energy use is determined by calculating the amount of energy used per wash cycle and then multiplied by the total number of loads of laundry the average household does each year.

“The great thing about the AHAM Verifide program is that consumers can
trust the numbers they see on the yellow energy labels because this program has verified them. They’re not just random numbers the manufacturer has put on there. Particularly in households that have a lot of laundry, choosing the most energy efficient model can be the top priority,”Ralph says.

Click here to search for AHAM Verifide clothes washers and you can find out more about identifying AHAM Verifide products here.

College Students Need Appliances, Too

It’s that time of year when college freshman are moving into dorms and harried parents are trying to make sure their son or daughter has everything they need for the new school year. Besides a computer, probably the most important features in a dorm room are mini-refrigerators, microwaves and any other small appliances students can fit into their already-cramped dorm room.

WRAL in Raleigh, NC has a helpful article and accompanying video
that provides suggestions for parents who want to make sure their kid is
comfortable while away from home. One of the most helpful appliances for any dorm room is a coffeemaker to keep you from dozing off during the 8 o’clock a.m. Economics 101 class. The article states, “Consumer Reports recommends one that brews with pods so there are no messy grounds
to clean up. Plus, its compact size is a real perk for small spaces.”

In case you’re one of those procrastinators and haven’t purchased anything for your son or daughter’s dorm room, U.S. News and World Reports has five
useful tips on what to furnish their dorm room with while on a budget.

What appliances did you have in your dorm room?

A Brief, Interesting History of the Hair Dryer

One of the benefits of home appliances is that they not only make our lives easier, they also keep us looking our best, too.  Most women today have never had to experience what life was like before this home appliance revolutionized the way women washed and dried their hair.

Although a hair-drying device was first invented in the late 1880s in which one hooked up a heater to a dome-like device that would go around a woman’s head, there was no forced hot air like we know today. The hand-held hair dryer didn’t come around until about 1926.

As the New York Times article notes, washing your hair on a daily basis wasn’t very common until this gadget came along:

“‘What you used to do is you would sit in front of a heat source or outside in the sun and comb or brush your hair until it was dry,” says Rachel Maines, a visiting scholar at Cornell University who studies the history of technology. “If you had long hair, you would wash it once a week, if you did it that often. Having clean, shiny, fluffy hair — that’s a 20th-century thing.”

The article also has a brief interview with a British lady who collects antique hairdryers.

If you want to take a walk down Memory Lane, here are two really great commercials for a 1965 commercial for a Lady Sunbeam Jet Set Hair Dryer and a 1965 commercial for a table-top GE hairdryer.  

AHAM President Joe McGuire Discusses New Clothes Washer Sustainability Standard

JoewebIn a July column in Appliance Design magazine, AHAM
President Joe McGuire highlights the first-ever sustainability standard for
clothes washers developed jointly by AHAM, CSA Group and Underwriters
Laboratories.

McGuire writes, “The goal of this
standard is to provide meaningful environmental performance information to
manufacturers, governments, retailers, and consumers about clothes washers and
to drive innovation and continual improvement in the sustainability of these
products.??  This standard follows last
year’s release of the first-ever sustainability
standard for refrigeration products.

 “The standard is intended to be used to
evaluate products for six key attributes: materials, manufacturing and
operations, energy and water consumption during use, consumables, end of life,
and innovation, as a bonus attribute,?? notes McGuire.  The new standards can be especially helpful to
consumers who wish to have additional information when purchasing more
environmentally-friendly products.  For
example, the end-of-life category, consumers can evaluate clothes washers based
upon the amount of recyclable materials they contain.

Click
here to read more of McGuire’s column. If your company is a supplier to the
appliance industry and you wish to purchase either the standard for
refrigeration products or clothes washers, you may do so here.

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