New Coffee maker
 

For christmas I requested a new coffee maker since the old one was starting to fail. I figured a thermal carafe would help with power usage and hopefully keep the coffee drinkable longer then my old glass one.

This CUISINART CANADA Coffee Makers Brew Central™ Thermal 12-Cup Coffeemaker DCC-2400C was under the tree.

After a week of usage I can report that I love it. It uses 5watts just being plugged in which is worse then the old ones 4 watts but is easily fixed by unplugging it (I don't use the timer features) It also uses 975 watts vs 920 watts the old one did while brewing. The difference is the old one would kick on the heat plate at 400 watts regularly to keep the pot warm. This does nothing after the brewing cycle is over.

I don't drink my coffee scorching hot so the pot is hot enough to keep me happy 8 hours after brewing. As well it doesn't pick up a horrible burnt taste so I'll make coffee at 8am and have a final cup at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and it's fine by my standards.

What this means is I used to brew two pots some days because the mornings one would be crap by the afternoon. Now I brew 1 every day. The end result is over 1 weeks usage I'm at very close to 1/2 the power consumption and the amount of coffee wasted is way down.

:thumbup: for thermal carafe coffee makers. I bought mine years ago precisely to keep coffee hot without scorching it. Years later I realized that it was an energy saver as well. :D

Tim

I have a Technivorm and I love it. It has a 1400watt copper heater, but that means it brews in the proper length of time, about 6 minutes. The total kWh usage should be similar given that heating water takes a given amount of heat.

http://www.technivorm.com/productimages/cd-thermo.jpg

Note the total lack of a timer, or any other bells and whistles...

Just 198-204F water in ~6 minutes for full strength coffee with minimum bitterness... the best!

Nice, simple and convenient upgrade. I don't drink coffee but its nice to know. Sooner or later I'm sure it'll come up in conversation.

Is there any way to turn off the clock part of the coffee maker?
It might be worth while buying an outlet switch https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&s...w=1024&bih=475
Instead of pulling the plug every day because over time you can wear an outlet out, there are two types, one that just plugs in to an existing outlet and one that if you own your house you swap the outlet out for one that has a switch built in, if it was my choice I'd then put in a double gang outlet box so you end up with two unswitched and one switched outlet.
It seems like someone makes a power strip that shuts the outlet off once the load drops past a set point, it would of course need to be reset to turn back on so I'm not sure if someone has made a work around for that or if a home built device would be able to be built, I'm thinking about this because 5 watts is the same as the LED light that I'm sitting under that is lighting up my entire living room right now.

I have a better idea than a switch-controlled outlet -- I wired timers to outlets that feed high-wattage appliances. It's better because you won't forget to turn off the outlet.

Here's a 60 minute timer at Home Depot, I've seen 8-hour timers (sorry for the hacked-up url, please remove spaces before pasting into your browser's address bar):

www . homedepot . com/buy/ge-in-wall-spring-wound-countdown-timer-299963 . html

--Peter

I just had to go and post about my coffee maker! Well, after ~16 years (not continual service, but still) the old coffee maker died. :eek:

After a valiant attempt to fix the old coffee maker (the blown thermistor had useless markings), we bought a new carafe-type coffee maker. It uses .08 kwh to make 5 cups of coffee (our usual morning batch) and uses ~1 watt in standby (we're not leaving it plugged in). We've only made a couple of pots of coffee, but it works great so far.

I haven't mentioning the brand or model as we've only had this coffee maker a short time. But, it is Consumer Reports' highest-rated carafe-type coffee maker.

Here's a bit more info on our new coffee maker, energy use, etc. - Let's Stay in for Coffee | EcoDaddyo.com

FWIW,
Tim

Since this thread came back up. I spent $3 and bought a switched plug that plugs in similar to what hhhpppp and ryland were talking about. I find it less of a hassle to use then plugging/unplugging. The standby costs of just the clock were really low though so I'm expecting a payback period of roughly a year... The device is nice though so If I find one that takes 3 prong plugs I'll grab it for my HAM setup which at the moment gets unplugged

I've misplaced (or loaned out?) my Kill-A-Watt, so I will probably have to buy another. I'm curious about the power consumption of this coffee maker, and my new electric wood chipper, too.

Tim, you are being quite abstemious with two of you drinking just 5 cups of coffee. I drink 10 all by myself... That is 2 very large or 3 mugs for the morning up to the early afternoon. Then I stop for the day. :-)

Edit: I must have had too much blood in my caffeine system -- that would be 3 large mugs or 4 "regular" mugs...

Oh, it's worse than that, our coffee is only half-caff! ;) I have tea at lunch and drink water the rest of the work day.

I don't think I'm all that abstemious - I'm just naturally hyper even before the caffeine.

Tim