Hair dryers, smartphones and kettles on EU Hit List

[Jabba]

European Union to ban dozens of high-wattage household electrical appliances in follow-up to controversial ban on powerful vacuum cleaners

[Tim Watts]

Is it April 1st?

Or do to EU morons not understand that heating a fixed volume of water is about *energy" not "power".

[Jabba]

Tim Watts wrote

I liked the hairdressers response. If they have to use hair dryers longer because of the lack of power, they could suffer from RSI. That could be a serious issue as most have limp wrists to start with...

[Nightjar]

The people behind this must be Greens, so probably not.

[Tim Watts]

I don't think this one is actually the EU.

I think it's actually the UK gov trying to reduce peak demand because they f***ed up the national grid and it might get dark randomly over the coming winters.

Handy being able to blame the EU as it's as plausible as "Jimmy Saville molested my hamster".

[Tim Watts]

Probably.

Sometimes it's possible to be innovative.

The new public bog hand dryers that blast a sheet of high speed tepid air work a lot better than an old style monster that wafts slow hot air vaguely over your hands.

Clearly "kettles" is dumb.

Hairdryers are unlikely to benefit as super high velocity tepid air is not likely to help a stylist work well.

And smartphones? WTF?

That should be more or less self regulating as people desire more battery life from a single charge so everyone's trying to do it with lower power chips and screens. But there are limits. And this is trivial background load nicely spread out over the night for the most part.

[Nightjar]

...

Paper towels remove more bacteria than either type of air dryer though.

[Ian Jackson]

I don't know the exact truth of the matter, but a few days ago, I was listening to a radio phone-in. One caller claimed that the EU decreed that toilet cisterns had to be reduce in volume (75%?). As a result, many tended to need two flushes - using more water than before.

The same is certainly true of kettles. The least energy is used by the more powerful kettles (which boil very quickly). In fact, if you reduce the power below a certain level, the heat being lost by radiation and convection of the surrounding air exceeds that being supplied, and it will never ever boil (although this could be offset by adding sufficient thermal insulation).

As the previous poster suggests, this may be a move to reduce peak power consumption - but this simply faulty logic. The result will simply be appliances being used for longer in order to fulfil their intended purpose, As a result, at any one time, you might have (say) two 1kW kettles on (overlapping use) instead of one 1.5kW followed by a second

1.5kW.

[Tim Watts]

It is true that unmaintained air dryers are a horrible *source* of bugs too.

[whisky-dave]

and JS molesting hamsters isn't possible ;-)

[Tim Watts]

True IME. I fitted a high level cistern at my house and it works with one flush (and it is a standard low volume type).

On holiday, the low level bogs needed 2 flushes typically for anything more than a No 1.

Indeed - unless the power is reduced so far at takes all night to boil, in which case the elect companies will love it :)

[Tim Watts]

Thankfully the "Jimmy Savile didn't look like a paedophile did he?"

and Hugh Dennis's character replied:

"Um...YES!! He looked EXACTLY like a paedophile!"

[Andrew Gabriel]

They don't *remove* bacteria, but they don't recontaminate your damp freshly cleaned hands.

They are always unmaintained, and yes, they are the least hygenic way to dry your hands, contrary to what most people imagine.

OTOH, for most purposes, your hands don't need to be *that* clean.

[Nightjar]

According to the microbiologist I use to consult when I had a clean room, the mechanical action does remove some.

[Johny B Good]

Indeed he did, indeed he did (and if not, then he, at the every least, looked _very_ creepy).

The saddest thing to come out of Jimmy's activities is the subsequent fall out that befell the likes of Rolf Harris which just seems to be more a case of "The Victims" jumping onto the latest bandwagon rather than out of achieving any real sense of justice. It was a very different time back then.

The "Paedophile Finder General" sketches in the "Monkey Dust" cartoon series could hardly have expressed all of this societal hysteria any better.

[The Medway Handyman]

But in high volume areas e.g. motorway services, you would have paper mountains. New & used.

[The Medway Handyman]

Couldn't they save energy by not moving from Strasbourg to Brussels every month?

[Huge]

Might I be a little silly and point out (no doubt not for the first or last time) the apposite nature of your surname?

[Huge]

Other than the wet fingertips and the ringing noise in your ears from the noise.

[Huge]

And because the Die-Soon Airblades(!) don't dry your fingertips, there's always a pool of festering goo in the bottom of them. Horrid things.