Competition is green

In previous posts I anticipated that manufacturers would eagerly jump in to the market with more 120V heat pump based appliances that make it easy to electrify. Some recent announcements lend support to this.

First, the LG WashCombo and Samsung Bespoke bring two more American-sized, all-in-one, ventless, 120V plug-in heat pump based washer/dryer units to the market, joining the GE Profile combo released last year. This is good because LG and Samsung are two of the best-reputed W/D makers out there, and the Wirecutter review of the GE was underwhelming so there’s plenty of unmet need for a better alternative. I eagerly await more reviews of those two this year!

Second, following the Rheem ProTerra heat pump water heaters that rolled out in 2022, we now have an A.O. Smith entry with very similar specs. A.O. Smith also has a great reputation, especially for quiet operation.

Each time one of these comes out it makes it just that little bit easier to envisage going the rest of the way to our total house electrification. We’re not there yet, due mostly to diminishing returns— the existing gas dryer and tankless water heater work fine and use relatively little total gas— and irreducible hassle— anytime you replace an appliance there’s some non-monetary cost to move things out of the way, schedule the installer, etc. But that’ll change quickly if anything breaks, and likely in the next few years even if not.

On a slightly related note, we also have a competitive semi-alternative to the local garbage service provider. Ridwell charges a modest monthly fee to take away a modest-sized box of recyclables every two weeks. Their recycling service purports to actually make good use of thin-film plastics which municipal services typically just throw away or burn; this is the big selling point, since those kinds of packaging plastics have historically up a considerable chunk of our landfilled trash. They also accept some other categories of waste items as a bonus; this occasionally saves us a trip to Goodwill or to the city dump’s special disposal dropoff. You do have to sort your recyclables into bags within the box by category, but we quickly got used to this bit of extra effort. If you’re in one of their service areas, it’s worth a look.