Monday, March 29, 2010

The green dishwasher

Of course it's you, using much less water and detergent. I'm just fed up with dish waters. It's very good for the dishes, but if you have a wok, a pot and a pan to wash on average each day, it's a pain. My dish washer is of standard size. It can hold dishes for about 100 people but not enough pots and pans for a day's work. Unless I wash the dishes twice everyday, I have to hand wash the pots and pans. Pity that you can wash only the dishes once every two days or more.

I found out that you don't need any detergent if you use microfiber cloth, the best version being one soft side and one hard scrubbing cloth, with a sponge enclosed inside. You don't even need detergent if you stir fry something using lots of oil.

Detergent is pretty useless anyway. If your utensils are not messy, like using non-stick surfaces, grease just rinse away, and the rest wiped away with microfiber cloth. Ordinary cloth works but since they accumulate grease and dirt, they don't last a few minutes. For average quality ceramics, using detergent do not make any difference. For messy pots, it's really the food sticking onto the pots, and detergent do not help a bit. Try detergent on anything dirty like the extration fan above hood. It doesn't make a dent on the accumulated grease.

Household cleaners contain too main ingredients - degreaser and acid(or safer alternatives). Hand wash detergent contain almost none and so useless to clean anything else. Whereas washing machine detergent contains pretty strong stuff, enough to remove sticky dried food from pots and pans. You only need strong stuff because you let the situation get worse in the first place. Dried sticky food are best soaked away with water. Keep the dishes wet until you have time to clean them.

Using warm to hot water, oil will rinse away from most surface, except for your hands and natural fiber cloths. Detergent is really useful only for keeping your hands feeling clean and the natural fiber cloth clean. Because oil and dirt don't accumulate on microfiber cloth, residue oil on any surface can be simply swipe away depending on the amount of water you use. Of course you can use a drop or two when you want to.

For the gemophobic, bacteria and virus need air and water. Oil is a pretty good food preservative if the food is covered thoroughly with oil on the surface. A lot of traditional cooking do not need refrigeration for left overs. Residue oil on the dishes is no worse than residue water.

Acrylic pet house continued

The drain under the cage is a bad idea. It's too complicated when you are going on vacation and leave the cage to somebody else. But I can always tape the drilled hole and pretend nothing happened. Hosing the cage hoping that only the inside get wet is not clever. If you need to hose the cage you need to go somewhere empty and that you do not care to collect the dirt water.

The raised platform is a good idea, surviving many storms at the least. In addition, the bottom of the cage can collect many dirt before being scooped out.

The detachable lavatory tray is partially good. The tray with litter/bedding is too comfortable that the bunny likes it too much and pee elsewhere at the corner. It did poop there though - rather neat pallet. The tray is in the middle of the platform furthest away from the door. The kids have trouble going deep inside and take the tray out.

The good idea seems to be using a "fixed" tray at the corner. There's no need for the tray bottom. The kids can just lift the whole platform to one side and scoop away the dirt using a spade with a long handle. That's how I need to clean the platform anyway. The design will be much simpler and stronger.

The sticky poop on acrylic is a big problem. Ordinary household cleaners cannot clean it fast enough without hard scrubbing. Strong acids like CLR biodegradable version can dissolve the poop fast with little scrubbing. But still it can only dissolve off the poop in layers. It take hours to soak away the poop so scrubbing is hardly needed. And you also need to rinse the acid off the platform and let dry.

I found out that the best way is to use steam cleaner, real steam. Since 1 cup or 1/2 a cup of water goes a long way, you can use the small portable ones which was some $40? Close enough to the team nozzle, the poop with disintegrate instantly. The steamer is also a blower of sort so the dirt will be collect at the corners. Drying is pretty fast because there's no much water. You can dry it instantly with a kitchen towel or two.

You don't want to steam clean everyday. The other idea is to use two very thin polycarbonate sheets, cheap, to cover the platform in turns. When one is in use the other can be washed.

I'm now using a packing sheet on top of the acrylic platform and change it everyday. No messy cleaning involved. The sheets don't cling to the platform but the bunny isn't always crazy enough to tear up the sheets.