How hi-tech are your home appliances?

Tonyp – While I am strongly opposed to unnecessary complexity and keen on having a simple user interface, the best designs are sometimes more complex.

Some years ago it was easy to destroy expensive laptop computer batteries by leaving them on charge for long periods, whereas better laptops had more sophisticated circuitry and it did not matter if they were connected to the mains all day. I hope this problem is history by now.

Suppression of radio/TV interference and inclusion of good safety features are other examples of greater complexity resulting in a much better product. Mains-powered items often don’t have a proper power switch. On the grounds of safety and power wastage, that should not be allowed.

Having repaired some of these pre-war radios you mention, over-simplification was not a good idea then and the same applies today. CEOs should stick to what they are competent at. 🙂

Wavechange: I think you are confusing the difference between good design and unnecessarily overcomplicated design. Sometimes, as you say, there can be a good reason for additional complexity whereas what I was talking about was the addition of complexity for its own sake. In my previous life I ran an R&D department working on safety-critical avionic systems. It was often necessary to add significant complexity in order to meet system integrity requirements – a matter of trading reliability for integrity – but this is quite different from adding complexity simply because it seems to be a good marketing ploy.

The main reason for the improvement in battery life in, for instance, laptop computers is more down to the technology of the batteries than anything else. NiCd batteries had a very poor life capability, especially if re-charged after partial discharge, and hated continuous trickle charge.. NiMH batteries were much better but the latest form of Li-ion have excellent performance in all respects.

Suppression of interference and safety features are examples of good design not of unnecessary complexity, so are not particularly relevant to the discussion.

The CEO I mentioned in my previous post, by the way, was the founder of the company and a noted radio designer and innovator, so I guess he WAS sticking to his area of competence!

I don’t think either of us is confused though perhaps we are both off-topic. 🙂 My comments about laptop battery charging did refer to comparisons of computers using the same battery chemistry. There used to be significant differences between battery management in different brands of laptops, though I suspect that this may be a problem of the past. I’m sure that we could have very interesting technical discussion, though it might not be kind to inflict these on others.

Back on topic, I would suggest that all fridge and freezer manufacturers should fit an externally visible indication of temperature. As a sales gimmick the user could be alerted to problems with bells and whistles.

Which? has looked at government data for appliance fires and found that washing machines pose the greatest risk: http://press.which.co.uk/whichpressreleases/faulty-household-appliances-pose-fire-risk/

This press release was widely reported, but no-one seems to have mentioned that many people use their machines at night and don’t even have a functional smoke detector in their kitchen or utility room.

To say something relevant to this Conversation, I would like to see delay timers on washing machines and tumble driers phased out.

The Electrical Safety Council published draft figures for 2011-12 in the following link:
http://www.esc.org.uk/stakeholder/policies-and-research/statistics/
Major products involved in electrical fires in 2011/12
Cooking appliances – 11954
Electric wiring, cables, plugs – 2899
Washing machines and tumble driers – 1083
Lighting – 767
Dishwashers – 475

It would be useful to see, if it doesn’t already happen, some coordination between for example Which?, ESC and manufacturers to see just how many fires are due to an initial design fault and how many down to lack of care by the owner (many tumble drier fires apparently are due to not cleaning the fluff from filters). It is inexcusable not to fit a smoke alarm in an area with any of these electrical appliances, whether you use delay timers or not.

For those wanting to check whether any electrical item they own might has been the subject of a product recall, this service from the Electrical Safety Council seems useful:
http://www.esc.org.uk/public/guides-and-advice/product-recalls/?gclid=CPb60fPy87wCFU3HtAodQzIADw

Rather than having useless hi-tech features on tumble driers, I would suggest incorporating something to detect if the filter was blocked with fluff and shut down the machine. All that is needed is a simple pressure differential sensor.

There are numerous other ways that additional safety features can be included in domestic appliances without significantly affecting the manufacturing cost or compromising reliability.

I couldn’t disagree with you more. Washining machine fires are rare, especially when compared to cookers and microwaves.

We’ve had Economy 7 most of our married lives (40 years) using our washers and driers at night on cheap rate without experiencing any problems. We do have smoke alarms, as should everyone. Banning delay timers just on the slim chance of a fire is ridiculous. If we followed that idea we would have to ban all petrol vehicles in case of fire and all pneumatics tyres in case of a blow out at speed.

I suggest you contact Which? and let them know that their press release or the government data must be wrong. To be fair it can be difficult to determine the cause of fires because the evidence can be destroyed in a serious fire. 🙁

Check Malcolm R’s post that gives the stats. Washing machines cause one tenth of the fires caused by cooking appliances, one third of those by faulty wiring/cables/plugs. There’s no comparison.

Most of the problems with faulty wiring/cables/plugs are avoidable if someone competent keeps an eye on them and care is taken not to buy dangerous counterfeit products, widely available online. The user may contribute to the problem. For example, sockets can be overloaded and some people force unfused 2-pin Europlugs into mains sockets.

Chip pan fires have long been the biggest cause of kitchen fires and I wonder if the cooking appliance fires in the ESC statistics include some of these. But I have no reason to doubt the information given in the Which? press release indicating the washing machines and tumble driers are the main causes of appliance fires.

Anyway, getting back to the subject 🙂 my suggestion is to scrub the high tech features of kitchen appliances and focus on ways of cutting down the number of accidents associated with kitchen appliance.

wavechange, perhaps Which? can comment on their figures vs. ESC – I am sure they are both working off valid data, it may come down to scope, or where they get the data from. So important to co-ordinate information so we know the facts. You are quite right about checking visible electrics, but less easy to check the hidden house wiring (where poor connections, mice and squirrels damage, may be a future hazard). People should also look after their tumble driers – clean them of fluff; perhaps the problem is that they don’t read the instructions. If all else fails…….

I hope that Which? will make some comment on this. Hopefully there is a perfectly simple explanation of the apparent discrepancy.

I don’t have a great deal of confidence in EHC for various reasons, not least the fact that their recall information is a disorganised mess and always has been. Nevertheless, they are – despite being a charity – doing a useful job and present information in a way that the general public can understand it. For example, they have some useful videos.

It would be good if Which? and EHC could get together and produce some advice to help us spot obvious electrical problems and to encourage us to get a competent person to look over our homes every few years.

The point about cleaning tumble drier filters is very important, but I recall an engineer posting on this website that on some models, fluff can build up unseen in the innards of driers and present a fire hazard. I hope this does not happen very often. I know pet hamsters love gnawing mains leads given half a chance and rodents have probably started many fires. The obvious solution is to include a bitter-tasting component in the plastic, a well established solution for protecting children from drinking hazardous liquids.

Meanwhile back at the topic, I wonder if there any fun ways of getting our kitchen appliances to get us all behaving more responsibly. I would quite like a microwave that would remind me to transfer my ISAs. 🙂

wavechange, “Chip pan fires have long been the biggest cause of kitchen fires”. According to Fire Statistics from Communities and Local Government for 2001-12, chip-pan fires have been on the decrease since 2000 and out of 19612 cooking appliance fires just 2600 were chip-pans. So they seem no where near a big cause of kitchen fires. The difference between the cooking appliance stats from ESC and C&LG are presumably because the latter include both gas and electric

wavechange, I don’t understand your comment about ESC – are you saying their recall information in the link is incorrect? I don’t see an equivalent offering from Which? so surely, unless ESC’s is totally wrong, it is of value to people who know of its existence and bother to look? Perhaps Which? could publish this link. Which is also a charity – don’t see why we should condemn either of them “despite being a charity”. The objective is to collect accurate information so we can consider it logically and act accordingly.

I stand corrected. I expect that deep fat friers and smoke detectors have helped. When I set up home I chucked away the basket of my new chip pan, having decided it would be safer to use as a soup pan.

Mrs R was bought an electric deep fat frier many years ago (by me!) as I love proper chips (3 eggs and chips a favourite meal). She refuses to use it! Hadn’t thought of using it for soup – generally we use the microwave for that. Life can be hard at times.

Malcolm – I have frequently looked at the recall information on the ESC website and some of the product descriptions are very unhelpful and the photos – where provided – are poor. I’m certainly not condemning ESC for being a charity but I guess they would do better if they had public funding to do their job.