Tag: Household

Understanding Your Dishwasher: Hot Water Connections and Built-In Heat Exchangers | June 08 2026, 12:43

I know how a dishwasher works. I’ve fixed it a couple of times => read the technical details. In the USA, it’s connected to the hot water supply on entry. Dishwashers have a weak heating element; it increases the temperature by only ~3°C/min, so heating up a full tray from scratch takes a while. It’s a good practice to run the hot water tap to warm up before starting the dishwasher. In countries with 220V, dishwashers often heat the water themselves. Bosch has an interesting solution: a heat exchanger in the wall. While the water heats up and is sprayed by the spray arms, a new batch of water pours into the heat exchanger. Then, the temperature of the new water batch slowly rises – while the ambient temperature in the chamber gradually drops, to avoid thermal shock for glasses when switching from dirty to clean water. And additionally, the heat exchanger provides a cold surface for drying – water from steam condenses there.

And everything stops not just on a timer (or rather, not only), but also by a turbidity sensor — an aquasensor. An infrared LED and a phototransistor inside the tray. It shines a beam through the water: strong signal received — water is clear, dishes are clean, time to wrap up; weak signal — too much dirt, need to keep running. That is, the machine itself decides whether to add a rinse. It also estimates the volume and dirtiness of the load — partly by the same turbidity, partly by how much the water cools when it’s sprayed onto the cold dishes (thermal mass) => the same Auto program can last either 1.5 hours or 3.

And here’s the most counterintuitive part. You should not rinse dishes before loading them. It’s not just soap, but a cocktail of surfactants (reduce surface tension), emulsifiers (make fats mix with water), dispersants (keep washed off dirt suspended so it doesn’t settle back), and enzymes (protease, amylase). Enzymes need food to latch onto. The main dirt on dishes is not fat (handled by surfactants and emulsifiers), but dried/burnt proteins and starches – large polymer molecules, insoluble in water and just mechanically adhering to the plate. You can’t knock them off with a jet, and there’s no one to rub them off. Enzymes — biological catalysts, cut these long molecules into small soluble pieces (protein into peptides and amino acids, starch into sugars), and these bits then easily wash away with water. Protease works on proteins, amylase on starch, sometimes lipase is added for fats. If you rinse everything off in advance – they just have nothing to do, washing off idly. If the aquasensor sees clean water at the start, it decides there’s not much to do, shortens the cycle, reduces intensity. Rinsing — you make the machine wash worse (but faster). Just scrape off solid chunks and load as is.

Insight about capsules. With each drain, water also carries away the dissolved detergent, so the machine injects the main dose only in the main wash — after it has drained the dirty preliminary water. But the pre-wash compartment is open, with holes, and the detergent leaks out right away. The capsule only opens in the main cycle, so for the first 10 minutes the machine runs clean water idly and no one is dealing with the fat then. That’s why powder is better than capsules: you can charge both compartments, and the pre-wash immediately tackles the fat.

Unexpected Perks: A Tale of Four Kettles and a Smart Ring | May 22 2026, 19:21

I ordered a Breville kettle. Costs a hundred bucks. Yes, I could have bought a similar one for 30, but I have all Breville products, plus a kettle is bought for several years. I come home – there’s a box up to my waist at the door. Not that surprised, because Amazon likes to put some little thing in the far corner of a huge box, it’s easier for them. But doubts increased after I couldn’t lift it with one hand. I bring it inside — and there are four kettles.

I open Amazon, check the order – everything’s correct, just one. Maybe they sell a 4-pack for 100 bucks? No, the description says one kettle. I contact support, a robot responds. I select the “brought extra items” option. The robot says “our fault, keep them”. Well, okay, now I have four kettles. Big family, one kettle for each.

Nadia has an Oura Ring 4. She says it has to be charged often. She says it used to last longer. I get in touch with support. A robot responds. I activate my own robot and ask it to draft a good letter to support. Their robot empathizes, says, “I’ll now connect to your ring and understand everything.” Connected, understood. Says, expect a new ring. Today, a plain envelope arrived with the ring inside. If it weren’t for FedEx it’d be easily lost in spam.

I love robots, almost got seven hundred bucks worth of goodies because of them. Well, good, at least the ring was a warranty case, although I expected to be dismissed with my battery complaints.

Well then, I asked the robot to make an illustration for the post.

Unexpected Visitor and the Power Switch Mystery | April 02 2026, 18:01

Everything is normal, I’m working, suddenly there’s a knock from the backyard and the power goes out in the whole house. I look over my right shoulder – and there through the window IN MY LOCKED BACKYARD is some guy.

I go out, say hello. He’s like, “I’ve done everything.” I say, I noticed, but who are you exactly? He’s like—you submitted an application to switch to the EV tariff. Well, I had to press a button here. I say and you’ve pressed everything already?

He says – yes. I say then close the door behind you, because my dog got freaked out here.

Then the dog comes up. Sleepy. Stunned. Who’s this, he asks.

But generally, it would be nice at least to be warned about visits and the sudden power cut. I could have shut down my computer or something.

But now it will be $0.0732 per kWh at night, and $0.12694 during the day.

From Freezer to Fridge: A DIY Cooling Hack | December 19 2025, 00:56

Today I sold a refrigerator. It has a story. The essence of it is that it’s not a refrigerator, although it looks like one. It’s a freezer. And it freezes on average to minus 18 degrees. I bought it second-hand, thinking it was a refrigerator. The buyer also came today thinking it was a refrigerator.

And here I realize that minus 18 degrees is not at all what I need.

Well, I am a Solution Architect. I didn’t want to dig into it, I just drove to Lowe’s and bought a simple blinker. It turns on and off according to schedule whatever is plugged into it. I stuck a radio thermometer inside (I had one) and adjusted the blinking frequency (20 minutes) so that the internal temperature was on average +4 degrees Celsius. The radio thermometer showed that the temperature fluctuations were very small – nominally plus or minus 0.5 degrees from +4, even less. And so it worked for me for some months until I realized that I just didn’t need it.

Sold it today with the adapter. It’s gone to the people.

The Surprising Origins of the Word “Tumbler” for Drinking Glasses | October 05 2025, 15:32

In our language, glasses are called tumblers. I decided to find out why, because a tumbler is essentially an acrobat.

There are two mutually exclusive theories. According to one, the original tumbler glasses had a rounded or slightly convex bottom, which allowed them to “rock” or “tumble” (to tumble), but not tip over completely. So, a tumbler in this sense is kind of like a “weeble.” According to the other, they were specifically made so they could not be put down on the table open, because, say on a ship, they could tip over and the valuable rum would spill out.

Solar Simplicity: How Turkey’s Homes Heat Water with the Sun | September 11 2025, 06:44

I constantly see such panels on almost every house in Turkey. Of course, my first thought was that these were solar photovoltaic panels for generating electricity. But the second thought — they are expensive, there shouldn’t be so many of them, plus typically just two panels on a roof seems too few. I started googling.

It turned out, these are solar water heaters, more precisely, flat-plate solar collectors. The system is simple, reliable, and inexpensive — that’s why they are installed on every other house.

The principle of operation: the panels consist of an absorber (usually copper or aluminum plates with a black coating), a transparent cover (low-iron glass for greenhouse effect), and thermal insulation (glass wool or stone wool). A heat-carrying fluid circulates in the tubes — either water or antifreeze (glycol).

Solar rays heat the absorber up to 60-90°C, the heat transfers to the fluid, which by the principle of thermosiphon (natural convection, without a pump) rises to the tank, which is usually nearby. The tank is a thermos of 100-300 liters, with insulation, so the water stays hot for 2-3 days.

This too was a surprise. I actually thought the tanks were just metal and heated up in the sun by themselves. That’s how it was in Baku. It turns out, no, and so they are white here, not black.

In Turkey, with over 2000+ hours of sunshine a year, such a system covers 70-90% of the hot water needs for a home. The efficiency of the collector is 40-60% (depending on the model and angle of installation, optimally 30-45° to the horizon for the latitude of Antalya). For a family, this costs from 500-1500 euros, with a payback period of 3-5 years due to savings on gas/electricity. Electricity is expensive in Turkey. Plus, government subsidies and tax incentives encourage installation.

Probably, there are also electric panels, but I haven’t seen them yet.

Yuki’s Dinnertime Dilemma: When Appetite Meets Mood | July 30 2025, 21:04

4pm. Yuki hasn’t eaten anything since morning. I take a piece of organic chicken, cook it, cut it into small pieces. He turns away. No, he’s not sick, that’s just normal for him, he won’t even eat cheese if he’s not in the mood. Well, alright, I mix it with his food, leave it.

And there’s the cat, already on duty by Yuki’s bowl, fishing out pieces of chicken. The cat is on a diet, so it won’t be long before he starts eating the dog’s dry food as well.

Yuki sadly watches his own food gradually disappearing from his own bowl and slowly tries to formulate his stance on whether to eat or not. But appetite inevitably arrives during the meal, especially when the food is from someone else’s plate.