Yes, dishwashers ARE getting slower. Here's why.

0:00 This video is sponsored by Squarespace.

0:03 In the time it takes my dishwasher [music] to run,

0:06 I could fly from Chicago to Atlanta or watch the entire

0:10 first [music] season of The Office or run a half marathon.

0:14 Okay, I couldn't, but the average actual runner [music] could,

0:17 but I could definitely wash those dishes myself in like a fraction of the time.

0:22 Dishwashers literally have one job.

0:24 [music] Why do they take so forking long to do it?

0:28 This is Minute Food and this is a new dishwasher.

0:31 We just upgraded from a 2015 model which took, let me see here,

0:36 about 110 minutes [music] to run, according to the manual.

0:39 So, my brand new dishwasher takes nearly

0:42 20% longer than its decade old counterpart.

0:45 I've heard other people complain about this [music] trend, too.

0:48 But we are a science channel.

0:49 We need cold, hard data.

0:51 So, I started digging and I found a graph of how

0:54 long it took dishwashers [music] on average to fully clean

0:57 and dry a load of dishes from 1983 to [music]

1:00 2018 based on data from my favorite appliance stalwart consumer reports.

1:06 [music] By the way, the facts and figures in this video are mostly US specific,

1:10 but similar things are happening in other places for similar reasons.

1:14 Okay, so according to this [music] data,

1:15 the average length of a US dishwasher's normal

1:18 cycle more than doubled over those 35 years.

1:21 [music] And today, normal cycles take on average more than 2 and 1/2 hours.

1:27 Some take as long as 4 hours.

1:29 So yeah, dishwashers are slower than they used to be.

1:32 Like [music] a lot.

1:34 But it turns out that's actually on purpose.

1:36 At least kind of.

1:37 And it has to do with how a dishwasher [music] works.

1:40 Well, how cleaning anything works really.

1:42 your dishes, your clothes, your dog, whatever.

1:45 [music] Back in 1959, a German chemist named Herbert S introduced the idea

1:50 that there are four main factors [music] that determine cleaning effectiveness.

1:55 Mechanical action like scrubbing or tumbling,

1:58 chemical action, that's like soap or detergents,

2:01 heat, that's I mean, you know, [music] and time.

2:04 He arranged these factors in a circle, now known as sinners [music] circle,

2:09 a wildly debaucherous name for something so squeaky clean.

2:13 Some newer sinner [music] circle diagrams

2:15 also include an additional factor of water,

2:17 which like sure to get a thing clean,

2:20 you need to fill this entire [music] circle,

2:22 but depending on what you're cleaning or how you're doing it,

2:26 you might need to tweak how much you rely on some factor,

2:29 like because your dog can't handle boiling hot water.

2:32 [music] And crap, you're almost out of shampoo, too.

2:35 So, to get your pup clean, to close the circle,

2:38 you're going to need to rely more heavily [music] on other factors.

2:41 Maybe more scrubbing or a longer bath.

2:44 Research suggests that these relationships aren't always perfectly proportional.

2:48 Like, decreasing one factor by 20% doesn't necessarily mean

2:51 you have to make up exactly [music] 20% elsewhere.

2:54 But sinner circles are a really good conceptual framework

2:57 to understand the basic trade-offs involved in cleaning pretty much anything.

3:01 [music] So, enough about dogs.

3:03 Let's look at dishes.

3:04 Modern home dishwashers work by filling up with some hot water.

3:08 That accounts [music] for the heat

3:09 and water sections of a dishwasher center circle,

3:12 then pumping that water through spinny things called spray arms,

3:15 [music] forcing crud off your dishes.

3:18 That's the mechanical action.

3:19 At some point, the detergent pops out and dissolves

3:21 [music] into the water that's getting sprayed around,

3:23 providing the chemical action.

3:25 This process [music] of filling, spraying,

3:27 and draining happens multiple times during a cycle

3:29 and is generally followed by a drying [music] period.

3:32 All that makes up the time section.

3:34 So, we have the entire circle accounted for.

3:37 But starting in 1987, federal regulations aimed [music] at conserving

3:41 resources and costs have repeatedly

3:44 limited how much water and energy home dishwashers can legally [music] use.

3:48 And a voluntary US program called Energy Star.

3:51 If you live in the US, you have almost certainly seen these labels

3:54 on appliances that promotes [music] even stricter efficiency standards.

3:58 So over time, manufacturers have been rejiggering [music] their dishwasher

4:02 center circles to reduce how much water and heat they use.

4:05 The heat section in a dishwasher is basically a proxy for energy

4:08 [music] because the vast majority of energy that a dishwasher uses,

4:12 as much as 90% goes toward heating up the [music] water.

4:16 But as we know, reducing those sections of the center circle means

4:19 that manufacturers need [music] to compensate

4:21 by increasing their reliance on the other factors, most noticeably time.

4:26 Put simply, cleaning dishes with less water at lower

4:29 temperatures is [music] just going to take longer.

4:32 You can see on this graph how each time

4:34 there's a new federal efficiency standard for [music] dishwashers,

4:37 the average cycle length increases.

4:40 But before you go and yell about how the government

4:43 and the tree [music] huggers are ruining your life, this isn't the whole story.

4:47 Because check out how the cycle length increases

4:49 even when no new standards have been introduced.

4:52 I mean, look at this huge increase without any government action at all.

4:56 Something else must also be driving cycles longer.

4:59 And one likely culprit is noise.

5:03 What?

5:04 Noise.

5:06 What?

5:04 Hang on.

5:05 The culprit is noise.

5:09 What?

5:09 Okay, while the noise inside a dishwasher from all

5:12 that [music] water spraying around can be weirdly relaxing,

5:16 we have an entire ASMR compilation over at our Patreon page.

5:20 From [music] the outside, dishwasher noise can be really annoying.

5:23 One study found that [music] sound was the second most important factor,

5:27 second only to price in people's dishwasher buying decisions.

5:30 [music] Better insulation can help reduce noise,

5:33 but in order to produce these super

5:35 quiet dishwashers that consumers [music] demand,

5:37 manufacturers have had to dial down all that spraying around,

5:41 which again means longer cycles.

5:44 People also want their dishwashers to, you [music] know,

5:46 actually wash dishes well.

5:48 And back in the day when cycles were shorter,

5:50 dishwashers [music] didn't get dishes all that clean.

5:53 I mean, in 1995, only 80% of dishwashers had

5:57 Consumer Reports [music] performance ratings of very good or better.

6:01 In other words, many dishwashers weren't

6:03 actually [music] closing their sinner circles.

6:05 Today's longer cycles are almost certainly helping close those circles.

6:09 [music] In part because more time simply helps dishes get cleaner,

6:12 and in part because modern enzymebased dish

6:15 detergent [music] takes a while to work.

6:17 These days, 99% of all models are rated [music] very good or better.

6:22 There are obviously other innovations out there, soil sensors,

6:25 better spray arms, clever rack designs

6:27 that have also helped improve performance.

6:29 But the point is that making dishwasher cycles longer is

6:32 a conscious trade-off to [music] not only save water and energy,

6:36 but also to help produce blissfully quiet,

6:39 high-erforming dishwashers that people actually want to own.

6:42 So based on the science,

6:44 it would be logical [music] for me to say something here like,

6:46 "So don't expect dishwasher cycle lengths

6:48 to decrease much anytime soon." But in 2020,

6:52 legislation created a new product class here in the US,

6:55 dishwashers with a normal cycle time of 1 hour or less.

7:00 The goal to, let me [music] get this right,

7:02 liberate dishwashers from federal efficiency mandates.

7:06 As an entirely different [music] class of appliances,

7:09 these dishwashers wouldn't have to abide

7:11 by the existing water and [music] energy standards and could therefore use more

7:14 and hotter water to wash dishes more quickly.

7:18 But uh almost every [music] dishwasher on the market today

7:22 already has a quick or speed cycle that does exactly this.

7:28 Mine only [music] takes an hour to wash and dry a full load.

7:31 Just like that entirely new class of dishwashers,

7:34 the fast [music] cycles on existing

7:36 dishwashers aren't beholden to federal efficiency standards.

7:39 Only the normal cycles [music] are.

7:41 But lots of people complain that these cycles don't work all that well.

7:44 And indeed, some are only recommended for lightly soiled dishes.

7:48 And that's because, [music] as we've talked about,

7:51 long cycles simply work better.

7:53 What's more, it turns out that people actually value efficiency.

7:57 Remember that survey where noise level ranked number

7:59 two as far as dishwasher [music] buying priorities.

8:02 Several measures of efficiency ranked high up there, too.

8:05 Way above a dishwasher's [music] cycle length.

8:08 All this is probably a big reason why, to my knowledge,

8:12 no dishwashers in this liberating new class have actually been manufactured,

8:16 much less sold in [music] the US since the legislation passed in 2020.

8:21 So, you know what?

8:22 I am going to go ahead and say [music] it.

8:24 Don't expect dishwasher cycle lengths to decrease much anytime soon.

8:28 Clever new innovations may incrementally [music] shorten cycles, but for now,

8:33 just enjoy your quiet, effective, and efficient cleaning machine.

8:38 I'm going to go for a run.

8:40 Well, hi, Ar.

8:43 I do I do a lot of things here at Minute Food.

8:46 I draw, I design, I code.

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