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Laundry time! (image source: sxc.hu)

Not too long ago, I saw a television commercial that touted the energy (and, hence, money) saving abilities of some-brand-or-another’s high efficiency washers and dryers. I wondered… Could dropping upwards of a grand and a half on high-efficiency washers and dryers really save enough coin to make up for the cost?

I toyed with the idea of calculating the cost of running a load through our good ‘ol Kenmore washer and dryer, but never really ran with the idea until this week, when my shiny new Kill-a-Watt energy meter arrived. With Kelly at work for the day, I shut off the furnace, emptied my bladder and set up my newly-unboxed gizmo to measure how much electricity the washer was pulling out of the wall. I figured I’d run a worst-case test – a bleach load, warm wash, with towels, and a double rinse. The results?

• Electricity – Washer: 0.32KWh ($0.018)
• Electricity – Dryer: 0.49KWh ($0.056)
• Gas – Total: About 0.3ccf, or 0.30555 Therms ($0.30)
• Water – Total: 60.3 gallons ($0.15)
• Detergent – 3.2 ounces ($0.32)
• Bleach – 4.2 ounces ($0.115)
• 1 Dryer Sheet ($0.05)

The grand total? 73.94¢. Worst case. A smaller load, with colored clothes (hence no bleach), and no towels? I’m guessing less.

So even if that magical high-efficiency washer and dryer could clean our clothes with no energy or water at all, it would still take almost 1,900 loads of laundry to pay for them. If we assume that they cut our usage in half (still, a pretty tall order) then doing about 4 loads of laundry a week (which we do), it would still take over 18 years for them to pay for themselves.

Those old ceramic-white Kenmores are looking better and better…