My Project – Evan Dittmar

How many times have you gone to do your laundry in off-campus housing and it takes 3 or 4 times just to dry your clothes? Has it ever crossed your mind how much energy we are wasting by not having efficient washer and dryers in our off-campus housing? This is something that has always bothered me, so for my project I am going to study of what the effects of every off-campus housing facility would throw out their old inefficient laundry machines and put in new energy efficient machines.

Things I will find out:

• how many people live off campus
• an average of how many people use a washer and dryer
• an average of how many times it takes to complete 1 full cycle of laundry
• how much energy older machines use? (to figure this out I will determine an average energy usage if possible through MG&E, if not through them, I will go to a few different buildings and figure it out for myself)
• what the minimum standards are for energy star appliances
• how much energy costs and how much would be saved? Thus, would it be cost-efficient to mandate this?

I hope through my research I will be able to find answers to my questions.