The post about robotic vacuum cleaners reminded me about the recent Time Magazine article about the American Dream kitchen.

The funny looking dishwasher that featured in that article was invented (and is made) in New Zealand by a very clever company called Fisher & Paykel.

This dishwasher would probably be kitchen equivalent of the Empeg for your kitchen in terms of features and design.

This dishwasher is called the DishDrawer - its a dishwasher that comes as one or two linked "drawers" - like those you store your larger kitchen utensils in. Each drawer is independent of the other but they can be used together or indivudually to wash your dishes in. The two drawer model is pretty much the same size and shape as a normal dishwasher.

I have to say that this is the ultimate "geek"/single guy cleaning appliance - with the 2 drawer model, you don't need cupboards for the dishes - you use up the clean dishes from the first drawer - putting the dirty ones in the second drawer.

When the dirty drawer is full up with dirty dishes [and the previously clean drawer is now empty], you then wash the dirty dishes, and then use the now clean dishes from the second drawer to fill up the first one again and repeat.

When our old dishwasher broke this is the one I wanted, but I was over-ruled as we needed a new kitchen first.

You can buy just a single drawer model - but wheres the fun in that?

Apparently, the DishDrawer dishwasher is popular with a lot of Jewish families as they can keep their 2 sets of dishes separate without needing two dishwashers. I think the 2 drawers share the control electronics between the drawers but everything else is seperate.

The current "Paykel" in the Fisher & Paykel name is Jewish, and its rumoured that the 2 drawer dishwasher product was created by the company due to his insistence that they build something like this.

And like any good product, it can be hidden behind your existing kitchen cabinets to really fit in [think custom fascias].


And, if you want a really cool top-loading washing machine with lots of cool buttons & display and features and options galore then check out the top loading washing machines - on the same website.

They are majorly cool to use, and very cleverly engineered - the motor that makes it agitate is effectively a large stepper motor (permanent magnet rotor, Brushless DC motor) that directly drives the drum, so that the agitation and spinning is done by the one motor, all controlled by electronics.

Because its direct drive, there are no pulleys, brakes or gearboxes to break, or leak oil etc.
The thing just runs and runs. The spin speed is pretty good too - 1000RPM, not quite fast enough to seperate uranium into its various isotopes I'd guess, but fast enough for clothes.
One thing it doesn't do is play MP3s, but it certainly makes clean clothes.

We've had one of these for 10+ years now - its our second one - the original one we got in '92 died 2 years ago - 1 day before Christmas, so we bought a new one rather than try and get the old one fixed.