Americans are complaining that Department of Energy regs are ruining dishwashers

By Chris White

Thousands of people are demanding the Department of Energy (DOE) to reconfigure rules governing newer model dishwashers that supposedly make washing dishes a headache.

More than 2,300 comments were filed with the DOE asking regulators to allow faster dishwashers before the comment period closed June 25. The agency fielded requests from the public on the issue after receiving a petition in March from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market group based in Washington, D.C.

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Energy regulations on new dishwashers are impeding their ability to get dishes clean.

A rule making washing machines more efficient required “manufacturers” to “increase the cycle time” to compensate for the regulation’s inability to effectively clean dishes, DOE acknowledged in 2016. A few of the comments suggested the dishwashers are effectively useless and require more than one cycle to get dishes fully clean.

“Until we went to my parents house, who have a much older dishwasher than us, we had no clue how terrible of a job our newer dishwasher was doing compared to theirs,” one person wrote the DOE. “We are left doing hand washing a lot at home because of how poorly the top rack cleans dishes. What a waste of water.”

Another commenter argued the new dishwashers waste water and are too expensive.

“On our second dishwasher and still dishes come out smelly and not fully clean with long run times,” another person wrote. “Spent $900 on a dishwasher that is far worse than my first one bought in the early nineties that cost $200. Aren’t we supposed to be improving?”

Former President Barack Obama issued more energy standards for household appliances during his eight years in office than any previous administration, mostly as a ploy to fight global warming. Obama’s DOE claimed such standards for everyday products would save consumers money and help the environment.

But House Republicans brought in several witnesses during June 2016 who disagreed with DOE’s claims. Like those in the comment section, one testified that appliance regulations were making dishwashers less effective at cleaning dishes.

DOE regulators plan to impose roughly 23 energy-efficiency regulations for household appliances by 2018, and already the home appliance industry and policy experts find these rules just make appliances cost more and perform poorly.

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6 thoughts on “Americans are complaining that Department of Energy regs are ruining dishwashers

  1. We don’t have the problem. We removed an old dishwasher because we prefer to wash them the old fashioned way: by hand. Cleaner and use let water. We don’t like dishwashers.

  2. You should see what they did to welding machines. Buy an older Lincoln or Miller while you still can. The new ones are complete junk!

  3. Can anyone tell me what the geniuses of foggy bottom did to dish washers? How did they screw them up.

    I have to wash 10% of the dishes that come out of my 5 year old washer, and I use the best detergent I can find.

  4. Not a big problem. I wash the dishes before I put them in the dishwasher and it works fine. And I keep a small pail of water next to the toilet that I pour in just before the end of the flush so I don’t have to flush it twice. Products designed by engineers to compete on the free market work much better (because they have to), but that would thwart the Progressive principle that centralized control by government insures that products will be manufactured to conform to their ideology. Once they achieve total control over everything, we will live in a perfect Rock-Candy-Mountain world – like Venezuela, where everybody will be equal (except the elite). I find it eerily fascinating in a rather perverse way that they are trying to control the climate – and the climate is not cooperating.

  5. Blows my mind that there are still people in this country who have faith in the government to do anything right and, worst of all, still want to give the government more power over our lives. Now we can add dishwashers to the long list of consumer products screwed up by jackasses in Washington. DOE is useless and should be abolished! And we pay these morons to screw up our lives!!!!!!!

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