General > General Technical Chat
Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus
dietert1:
On German TV there was a report that in cities like Frankfurt companies are downsizing their office areas. They are trying to rent smaller buildings and move. In another report they showed a bank manager who said: "Right now we have 60 000 people working for us at home. Nobody could have imagined that will work, but there we are." As far as i understand, Covid19 may have a persistent impact simplifying the life of many. Of course some people will have difficulties to adapt, so it will take time. My hope would be that individual traffic as well as CO2 emissions will stay low. And yes, spending time to fix things instead of waiting in a traffic jam is an improvement.
Regards, Dieter
nctnico:
--- Quote from: james_s on July 09, 2020, 07:39:12 pm ---I'd like to see repair guy as a job come back. IMO appliances should cost at least 3-4 times what they do, they should be built to last and built to be repaired.
--- End quote ---
But you are not considering the savings by replacing an old appliance earlier. Newer appliances are more energy efficient so in the end you likely end up with a device which costs less to use. Which in turn means it needs less energy. In the end you pay for energy costs to produce something.
tom66:
--- Quote from: james_s on July 09, 2020, 07:39:12 pm ---I'd like to see repair guy as a job come back. IMO appliances should cost at least 3-4 times what they do, they should be built to last and built to be repaired. My fridge is 18 years old and going strong, the fridge at our cabin was made in 1972 and it's still doing great too. My washer, dryer and dishwasher are all at least 15 years old, the washer and dryer were broken when I got them and I fixed them. The disposable society is crazy and the cost of products like this does not reflect their total cost to the environment.
--- End quote ---
I like things to be built like Clive's washing machine:
That is, individual modules that are easily serviceable. I understand, things go wrong. Make the parts available, and not too difficult to replace, and an appliance can be kept running for decades.
The charging port on my VW Golf GTE has started to play up. For some godforsaken reason VW integrated the charging port lock into the main wiring harness, whereas BMW put it on a separate connector. So to replace that to "Dealer Standard" would be a new wiring harness plus labour, because it is "HV system" it will likely cost more than £600 for what is a £10 actuator. I'm gonna fix it myself somehow, because I refuse to bow down to that crap.
james_s:
--- Quote from: nctnico on July 09, 2020, 09:17:58 pm ---But you are not considering the savings by replacing an old appliance earlier. Newer appliances are more energy efficient so in the end you likely end up with a device which costs less to use. Which in turn means it needs less energy. In the end you pay for energy costs to produce something.
--- End quote ---
Got data to back that up?
Refrigerators had a very significant efficiency boost sometime around 30-40 years ago due to new insulation technology. Washing machine efficiency increased when the front loading machines became popular. These significant bumps are rare though, things like clothes dryers from a few years ago are virtually indistinguishable inside from clothes dryers made 50 years ago. Replacing a 30 year old appliance with a modern one may result in a significant efficiency boost, but replacing one that is 10 years old likely won't, unless it happens to cross one of those occasional breakthroughs where efficiency is bumped up. The "upgrading now will save you money" is largely a lie pushed by salespeople, if you look at the actual energy efficiency ratings and compare it to the one from the appliance you're replacing you'll likely find it to be underwhelming.
Given the total cost of running my refrigerator (I've measured the consumption over several days with a kill a watt) even if I upgraded to a new one that consumed zero energy it would take around 5 years to pay for itself. In reality a new refrigerator is going to consume much more than zero energy, a more realistic number is perhaps a 20% reduction which puts the break even time well beyond a decade. That's completely ignoring the environmental cost of transporting and scrapping the old fridge, extracting and refining the materials to build a new one and then transporting that.
themadhippy:
--- Quote --- The "upgrading now will save you money" is largely a lie pushed by salespeople,
--- End quote ---
or bureaucrats who limit the power of devices to "save the planet" but fail to mention half the power takes double the time,so energy used is still the same
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version