High Performance Clothes Washer in-Site Demonstration in a Multi-Housing Multi-User Environment

Abstract

The objective of the study was to measure, analyze and report on the efficiency of 4 high performance residential-style clothes washer brands compared to a conventional (baseline) clothes washer brand in multi-housing facilities at the Fort Hood Texas military base. The demonstration study also included a parallel study to ascertain the maintenance of these same clothes washer brands. This was the first independent in-situ evaluation of several brands of high performance clothes in a multi-housing environment in the U.S. This paper will focus on the energy savings for determining the cost-effectiveness of the machines for this multi-housing application.

The demonstration involved 6 conventional 6-year old washers manufactured by Roper (the baseline washers), and 6 new high performance washers from each of 4 manufacturers — Whirlpool, Inc., Maytag, Inc., Staber Industries, and Alliance Industries, Inc. (Speed Queen). Each of the 30 total individual washers in the study was metered in real-time for hot water use and temperature, cold water use and temperature, machine energy use, and the number of cycles completed. Data were collected from a central data logger and retrieved on a weekly basis over a phone line through the central polling computer over an 18 month period representing an average of over 350 uses (cycles) per machine.

The average machine electricity use of the baseline machines was 0.26 kWh/cycle and the machine energy use of 4 high performance brands averaged 0.20 kWh/cycle for a 23% reduction in machine energy use. The total average water use for the baseline machines was 35.4 gallons/cycle and the average for the 4 high performance brands was 18.8 gallons/cycle for a 47% reduction in water use. The baseline conventional machines used an average of 9.0 gallons hot water/cycle (5,610 Btu/cycle) whereas the 4 high performance brands used an average of 3.4 gallons hot water/cycle (2,120 Btu/cycle) for a 62% reduction in hot water use.

The averge use of the washers in this study was 6.4 cycles/machine/day. Based om that average and extrapolated for an entire year (365 days), the total average water saving of the high performance compared to the base line convertional machines is 38,780 galoons/year/machine. The machine energy saving is 140 kWh/year/machine and the host water energy saving (at the clothes washer) for Fort Hood is 81x10¹⁶ Btu/year/machine.