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"  If you read my colleague Christina Peterson&amp;#039;s Black Friday blog and were fortunate enough to have snagged a great deal on a new washer, dryer, or dishwasher, congratulations! And, if the new appliance replaced one that was 15 or 20 years old, congratulations again. You&amp;#039;ve taken a giant leap forward in energy savings. But what may not have been immediately apparent at the store is that today&amp;#039;s machines don&amp;#039;t just use less energy. They also work very differently from older models. If you&amp;#039;ve already invested, or are about to, here&amp;#039;s what to expect from a new cleaning appliance. 1. Longer cycles It takes three things to get dishes and clothing clean: the mechanical action of the washer or dishwasher, the chemical action of the detergent, and the thermal action (or heat) of the water. Cut back on one of these three and the other two have to compensate. The main way today&amp;#039;s appliances save energy is by using less hot water. According to the Whirlpool Corporation (which produced its first electric wringer washer in 1911 and is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year), the earliest washers consumed a whopping 54 gallons of water per cycle! Yet, today&amp;#039;s most efficient machines use just 11 to 13 gallons. Newer dishwashers also use significantly less water than older ones did. As a result, clothes and dishes have to spend more time in today&amp;#039;s machines to get clean. Expect normal cycles to take from one and a half to two hours to complete and heavy duty or extra cleaning cycles even longer. Speedy or quick cycles can be anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour long. 2. Periodic pauses New appliances come equipped with all kinds of internal sensors to monitor everything from the size of the wash load, to the soil level of the dirty dishes, to the amount of moisture in tumbling clothes. Then, based on the conditions they find, the sensors adjust the amount of time remaining in the cycle and the amount of water added. When these sensors are working, you&amp;#039;ll see periodic pauses in the cycle and even extra rotations of the washer tub or dryer drum as the machine determines what to do next.  3. Preset selections There was a time when washing machines and dryers had few cycle choices and you could pretty much select any combination of time and temperature you wanted. Today, you&amp;#039;ll find more specialty cycles available, like for bedding, active wear, and sanitizing, but the time and temperature are usually predetermined at the factory. You may be able to make some slight adjustments, but can generally only go so far. While this helps prevent accidents, like washing delicates in hot water, it removes some of the flexibility and control you may be used to. It will take some trial and error to find the combinations offered on your machine to best suit your laundry needs.  If you are in the market for a new appliance, check out our Good Housekeeping Research Institute (GHRI) online reviews of washers, dryers, dishwashers, ranges, and refrigerators. To see firsthand how we test appliances and all the products we recommend, sign up for one of our Good Housekeeping Research Institute tours. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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