Lou wrote:

> The point is that air drying the
> dishes isn't necessarily cost free either. Neither is using a towel to dry
> them - the water is absorbed by the towel, which becomes damp. You hang the
> towel up when you're done, and that water evaporates.

True.

And again, it takes a
> certain amount of heat to evaporate a given quantity of water, and if it's
> during the heating season, that heat is coming from the furnace. If you
> live in a climate where you don't need to run the furnace, then that's not a
> consideration. I don't know how much water has to be evaporated to dry a
> load of dishes, but it doesn't look like it would be much, and the amount of
> electricity used is correspondingly small - I doubt if anyone would notice a
> change in their electricity bill one way or the other.

But that's assuming that all the energy used goes into evaporating
water. In the case of air drying that's true. In the case of heated
drying, it's hard to believe. The heat leaks into the environment
(not a total loss, of course, as the furnace runs less, but not a wash
either, since resistance heating is usually much more costly than the
furnace's heat). I don't have any figures for the percentage of total
heat used that evaporates water, but would guess it's a small
percentage. The rest goes into making the dishwasher warm, leaving
the plates warm.

(It's all theoretical to me, I've never had a dishwasher.)

Dave