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Appliances

Domestic Electrical Appliances

As well as the obvious page of electrical appliance shops, there's also a wealth of quirky interesting info about domestic appliances at this site, including some of the more unorthodox uses to which they can be put! There are pages explaining how they work, what can be done with them, recycling info, etc. This page helps as a centralised hub by which other pages about different types of device can be connected.

Did you know, you can choose your lottery numbers using secondhand domestic appliances? And what about converting appliances into other things? It all gets quite odd from here...

List of Domestic Appliances:

Microwave Oven
One of the first appliances to get a mention at this site, on account of How a Microwave Oven works. Prone to microwave tomfoolery, the whole thing expanded into further odd research.

Toaster
Often considered a small and almost comical domestic electrical appliance, the electric toaster gets considerable coverage here, but not with a tea towel, of course. Combined with a Fax Machine, you can get toast-o-graphs, and then there's Lotto Numbers using Bread, and a variety of Coeliac (wheat free) items. Star Wars Shop gets a mention on account of the Darth Vader Toaster (the Dark Side of Toast). Also, Canned Bread, and Marmite. Toasters are a obviously a decadent capitalist thing, as they are banned in Communist Cuba! Update (2011), Cuba is starting to become Liberated! Toasters are no longer banned! Soon, other new freedoms will be allowed! Meanwhile, to see a whole page about toasters, see the Electric Toasters page.

Kettle
There's already a whole page devoted to kettles, and the art of extreme kettling, custom kettles, high-performance GT kettles, etc. See Kettles. Kettles in the UK are typically 2500 watts at 240 volts, and a full kettle of tea can be heated to boiling point for about 4p.

Vacuum Cleaner
Typically an electric motor powered air pump which can suck up muck out of the carpet. Vacuum cleaner spares contacts include Dyson, Vacuum Cleaner Spares , eSpares , BuyRight , etc. Other mentions of vacuum cleaners including Using the Vacuum Cleaner to Choose Your Lottery Numbers and Looking for a Needle in a Haystack. In case you hadn't guessed, a vacuum cleaner should have a blow end as well as a suck end! Vacuum Cleaners may yet get a page about them here, like the one about toasters, as vacuums have been adapted and used for various purposes here. Some day, The Three Zombotrons will return!

Washing Machine
Machines for washing clothes. These get a mention in the page of industrial paper mache, and also there's how to convert an automatic washing machine glass window into a bowl. Washing machine powder Ariel Automatic had an affiliate program for one week a few Christmases ago. Antique washing machines were available on Zyra's Bazaar

Tumble Dryer
If you get 49 tennis balls, you can use a tumble dryer to choose your lottery numbers. Tumble dryers can also be used for drying your clothes, but this is expensive in electricity usage, and if the weather is dry then it's cheaper and more economical to use sun and wind and a clothesline.

Dishwasher
Instead of doing the washing of dishes yourself, you put them in a machine. This may use a lot of water, but it gets the work done so you can get on with something more important and/or more fun. In British English, the hard work of washing crockery and cutlery by hand in a bowl is known as "washing up", but that term means something different in American English. At Zyra's company, one of the company policies is "Mosquito larvae are not allowed to live in the kitchen washing up bowl".

Fridge or Freezer
After Iceland Supermarket returned, the page How a Fridge Works was created. Plus, there's another page of Freezer Fun in which various odd things are frozen with interesting effect! Mini Fridges are available from the Mini Fridge specialist company!

Cooker
Besides the obvious such as references to electrical appliance shops and kitchenware, there's also something about deliberately artificially ageing documents in a cooker in the Message in a Bottle technique for choosing Lottery Numbers, and there's a Wee Baby Belling electric oven for sale on Zyra's Bazaar

Bread Making Machine
Bread isn't expensive, so you're not making bread to save money. However, there's a certain wholesomeness to eating bread that's been made with flour that's been ground in your local wind-powered windmill, with genuine true grit of millstones included. Plus, if you're a coeliac and can't eat wheat, making your own bread with gluten-free flour makes a lot of sense! A leading manufacturer of bread-making machines for home use was Panasonic, as in "Panasonic Bread-Making Machine".

TV
Televisions. Largely now reverting to their initial form, conceived as a separate monitor and wireless set. These days this is manifested as such things as satellite TV (in its various forms), Freeview, etc.

Video Recorder
Tape recorders that can record moving pictures were very popular before the digital age, and the key feature that made them possible was the Helical Scan technique. There's a whole page of video recorder stuff, including how to mend a videotape

Telephone
Doesn't really count, in an odd way, because phones were always powered from the phone exchange rather than off the mains electricity, but also because the page of things to do with the phone is mainly not about phones themselves and more about nitty gritty tricks you can do with them. Also see BT Shop

Computer
Another quirky exception. See computers, and places where you can get computers. Again, most of the stuff is about what goes on in them, rather than the machines themselves. Technology is leaping ahead all the time. Also see EEP! and hard disc

Aircon
If you live in a cold climate, heating is important. But if you live in a climate that tends to be too hot for comfort, in-house refrigeration is good. Although their initial cost of Air Conditioners is higher than heaters of the same power, their efficiency is much better. Contacts here include Alaskan Aircon, Plasmacool and Aircon Direct, two of which are UK contacts! Aircons are heat-pumps, and as such have a reciprocal-Carnot efficiency, which is more 100%. For more about how an air-conditioner works, see How a Fridge Works

Dehumidifier
Very much an underestimated appliance, but useful for controlling the humidity inside the building. Museum curators like them. Also see Thermohygrographs which monitor temperature and humidity.

...and others to be added!

Regarding electrical appliances generally, there are some little-known things about power cuts which make interesting reading. For example, the way an electricity cut can affect gas appliances!

Also, in hard water, scale reduces efficiency? For gas appliances, yes it does, because of the efficiency or otherwise of the heat-exchanger, but for electrical appliances, no it doesn't, (thermodynamics: energy can not be created or destroyed).